Assignment 1: Critical argument essay (1500 words)
The aim of this assignment is to help you learn to reason ethically about issues and to communicate this to other people in society. You will learn how to use ethical concepts and moral theories to think carefully about AI-related questions.
Copyright By PowCoder代写 加微信 powcoder
This assessment asks you to apply critical ethical thinking to a particular application of technology and to choose a moral theory (utilitarianism or deontology) to argue the ethical suitability of the application. It then asks you to rebut your own argument using a different moral theory (care ethics or virtue ethics). You should write the essay as if you were aiming to convince a person who is intelligent and morally thoughtful but does not necessarily know a great deal about the ethical ideas and theories, or the use of AI.
Select one of the case study options below, and complete the following tasks for that option.
Case study options
Option 1: Care residence for people with severe psychiatric illness
Consider a hypothetical scenario in which a high-care residence (‘Meadowlands’) for people with severe mental illness has had cases of staff members abusing residents. Some residents have been found to have bruises, and two staff members have been fired after other staff made allegations that they had shouted obscenities at residents. Meadowlands finds it hard to recruit good staff both from this country and overseas. The families of the residents and others in the community are demanding greater oversight of staff and vulnerable residents, some of whom have severe cognitive impairments and experience great troubles with communication.
In response, Meadowlands’ management is considering installing video cameras in bedrooms, and common areas, to be linked to a machine learning system which:
1. Is designed to immediately detect cases of possible physical or verbal abuse using video of staff and resident interactions.
2. Uses facial recognition to identify staff and residents.
3. Is trained on historical data from overseas psychiatric residences and hospitals in which residents have been physically and verbally abused.
The idea is that this AI system will enable rapid identification of perpetrators and prevention of abuse.
Option 2: Parents tracking children
A new sophisticated app called SafeKids is being developed by a company called ‘Beta’ for use by parents. Many parents worry about their children when they are out and about, travelling to school, to friend’s houses, on public transport (etc.) or when they are home alone. Parents are concerned that their children, being under the age of 18, may – for example – get into trouble, or associate with the wrong people. The SafeKids app makes use of various smartphone features, such as the accelerometer, GPS, Bluetooth, gyroscope, and microphone to help alleviate these worries by providing important data on their child’s activities
The app captures various data, tailored for use by parents, including information on their child’s location, steps, use of social media and the internet. Easy-to-digest graphs of information about movement, time spent on social media, time spent talking, nature of texts and posts (etc.) appear on a dashboard on the parent’s smartphone. Parents cannot see exactly what children write or say, but sentiment analysis of the text and spoken word data captured indicates if their children are distressed, happy, angry, sad, (etc.).
An innovative feature of SafeKids is an AI component that makes novel predictions about a child’s actions. These include predictions about whether the child is engaging in dangerous behaviour or is at risk of running away from home. This AI feature involves machine learning, trained on data from thousands of children who have been engaged in a range of behaviours; from non-risky to more worrisome. Beta is investing a lot of money into the app’s development, believing it will result in very high sales once released.
Task 1 [No more than 750 words]
For your selected case study, present an argument for the ethical acceptability of the proposed project using either utilitarianism or deontology. Make sure you are clear about which theory you are using to support the use of the AI in that scenario.
In your argument, you may wish to incorporate some of the following key ethical ideas: trust, privacy, fairness, accountability, nonmaleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, transparency, and safety. If so, use your selected ethical theory to help explain and justify how you use these ideas or principles. Limit your argument to no more than 750 words. Excessive words (over 10%) may attract penalties and not be read.
Task 2 [No more than 750 words]
Using either virtue ethics or care ethics, write a rebuttal argument against your argument from Task 1. This means you will be opposing the proposal for using AI in the scenario. The style of your rebuttal should be presented as if the argument from Task 1 was written by a different person, who adopted a different viewpoint about the proposed project using the ethical theory that you selected (i.e. utilitarianism or deontology). Task 2, then, should be written as if you are a different person arguing against the points raised in Task 1, who adopts a different viewpoint on the proposed project (i.e., virtue ethics or care ethics) to justify the argument. Make sure you are clear about which theory you are using to rebut points raised in Task 1.
In your argument, you may again wish to incorporate some of the following key ethical ideas: trust, privacy, fairness, accountability, nonmaleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, transparency, and safety. If so, use your selected ethical theory to help explain and justify how you use these ideas or principles. Limit your argument to no more than 750 words. Excessive words (over 10%) may attract penalties and not be read.
Submission requirements
Upload your submission to the Assignment 1 submission on CanvasSubmissions must be in the form of .doc, .docx, or .pdf files, and must conform to the following requirements:
· 12-point font
· Arial font only for Word documents, or Sans Serif for Latex
· 1.5 line spacing
· Use Harvard citation style for references (if any are used)
· Use clearly defined paragraphs
· Figures and images can be used, but each figure counts for 200 words, so use them sparingly (if at all) and use them well!
For latex users, use the standard arxiv style on Overleaf (Create a new project -> Academic Journal -> Show all gallery items -> Search ‘arxiv’ and select the template “Style and Template for Preprints (arXiv, bio-arXiv)”. Make sure you set to 1.5 spacing and use Sans Serif font style.
Late submission policy
Submissions that are late will be penalised 10% per day (so 3 marks per day) up to 7 days. After the 7 days, the essay will not be marked and will score zero.
If you require an extension due to personal or medical reasons, please contact the staff before the due date requesting the extension. Thanks!
Assessment Criteria
Support & development of ideas [10 marks]
· The ideas in the report are well developed and the argumentations are well supported.
· The positions taken in the report are clear. Make sure that the statements and arguments you make are supported; that is, backed up by facts, data, reasons, or beliefs that are likely to be held by your audience. An argument is weak if it is not supported by facts and reasons. You should write the essay as if you were aiming to convince a person who is thoughtful but does not necessarily know a great deal about the ethical ideas and theories or the use of AI.
Mastery of subject content [10 marks]
· The essay demonstrates an understanding of the subject content (ethical ideas, concepts, theories) and the ability to use this understanding to critically analyse a problem and support the argument. To construct an argument, it is important that you take the time to re-visit the relevant modules and related material in the subject with the assignment in mind. Take notes and highlight important points.
Organisation [4 marks]
· The essay is well organised and follows a clear structure. Structure your essay so that each paragraph presents one argument. The first sentence of each paragraph should clearly signal the topic of the paragraph. If a paragraph is making an argument for a specific point, begin the paragraph with a clear statement of the claim you want to make, then use the rest of the paragraph to support that claim (see more below).
· Aim to keep each paragraph reasonably short: somewhere between three and five sentences. Try to keep sentences to a sufficient length: between 15-40 words is a rough guide. A sentence is too long if a reader gets to the end of the sentence and cannot remember the start of the sentence. Read your report out loud and if you need to take a breath during a sentence, it may be too long.
Clarity [4 marks]
· The essay is clear to the reader. A reader is always reading your writing from a different perspective from you, with a different background and a different level of understanding of what the essay says. If some parts of your essay are a bit unclear to you, then they will definitely be unclear to the reader. If they are clear to you, this does not mean they will be clear to the reader. It is important that when you re-read your essay to yourself, you think about reading it as if the content is entirely new to you, and highlight and passages that you think could not be clear. Note that there is a strong relationship between clarity and organisation criteria; the support and development of ideas criteria; and the criteria for demonstrating mastery of the subject content. A clear, well-structured argument that is well supported and well developed will make it easier for a reader to understand the ideas being presented, and easier to verify that you have developed mastery of the subject content.
Presentation & grammar [2 marks]
· The paper presentation is clean: spelling, grammar, complete sentences, formatted correctly, (etc). While a reader may still understand your essay, the presence of sloppy spelling and grammar, or inconsistent formatting, might give off the impression that the writer did not pay attention to detail. This can result in the reader forming a negative impression of the essay before even reading a single sentence.
Academic integrity
The University of Melbourne academic integrity policy applies. Students are encouraged to discuss the assignment topics, but all submitted work must represent the individual’s understanding of the topic. The subject staff take academic misconduct seriously. Plagiarising material from other students or from any other source may result in receiving 0 marks for this assessment or a fail for the subject.
Plagiarism declaration
By submitting work for assessment, I hereby declare that I understand the University’s policy on academic integrity and that the work submitted is original and solely my work, and that I have not been assisted by any other person (collusion) apart from where the submitted work is for a designated collaborative task, in which case the individual contributions are indicated. I also declare that I have not used any sources without proper acknowledgment (plagiarism). Where the submitted work is a computer program or code, I further declare that any copied code is declared in comments identifying the source at the start of the program or in a header file, that comments inline identify the start and end of the copied code, and that any modifications to code sources elsewhere are commented upon as to the nature of the modification.
程序代写 CS代考 加微信: powcoder QQ: 1823890830 Email: powcoder@163.com