2024/25 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

ARTF5211M The Cultural Politics of Artificial Intelligence

30 creditsClass Size: 4

Module manager: Dr Dibyadyuti Roy
Email: D.Roy1@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

This module is mutually exclusive with

ARTF3211

The Cultural Politics of Artificial Intelligence

This module is not approved as an Elective

Module summary

What does intelligence mean? Can it ever be artificial? This module will examine key cultural debates in artificial intelligence that shape the utopic and dystopic imaginaries of the future. Through analysing relevant case studies and scholarship from historians, philosophers, computer scientists, and artists, among others, you will learn to critically evaluate how the physical infrastructures enabling the benefits of big data and machine learning intersect with the harms and biases of an algorithm-driven world.

Objectives

1. Introduce you to the cultural politics of artificial intelligence and allow you to understand how terms such as nature, culture, intelligence relate to each other and help inform notions of human subjectivity.

2. Allow you to interrogate a number of key topical issues relevant to the cultural politics of AI, potentially including the nature-culture binary, virtual reality, human-machine relationships, and the human bias of algorithms.

3. Encourage you to reflect on utopian and dystopian discourses surrounding AI and how this relates to cultural politics, deepening the sophistication of your thinking through their engagement with the power dynamics over knowledge production in and about

Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following learning outcomes relevant to the subject:

1. Critically engage with literature and contemporary artefacts on and related to artificial intelligence, especially as related to cultural politics.

2. Evaluate the links between keywords such as nature, culture, human and intelligence.

3. Apply understandings of AI cultures to the study of current debates in subjectivity, culture, society, and technology.

4. Formulate independent arguments surrounding the utopian and dystopian discourses on AI.

Skills learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module students will have demonstrated the following skills learning outcomes:

5. The ability to search for, evaluate and use appropriate and relevant information sources to help strengthen the quality of academic work and independent research.

6. The ability to weigh up different arguments and perspectives, using supporting evidence to form opinions, arguments, theories and ideas.

Syllabus

Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lectures	10	3.00	30.00
seminars	2	3.00	6.00
Private study hours			264.00
Total Contact hours			36.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Each seminar presentation will receive direct and immediate feedback; the final essay will receive extensive written comment. As students will be required to develop their own research topics for the final essay, office hours will be made available for the working out of suitable topics, relevant bibliography etc.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Coursework	Written	50.00
Coursework	Oral	50.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 29/08/2024 11:06:50

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