While data science and AI create many opportunities in all dimensions of our daily lives, they also pose new legal, ethical, and political challenges. The new AI in Society MOOC, created in collaboration with the Una Europa alliance, will respond to the increasing need for more public awareness and understanding of AI.
Una Europa AI in Society Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) creates critical awareness of the basics of AI and its related ethical issues as well as its impacts on different sectors of society, including justice and jurisprudence, health care, and democratic participation. The MOOC examines how society could cope with these issues, and how the societal impact and relevant values can be considered in design, implementation, and deployment of AI.
The course has no prerequisites and is aimed at students, civil servants (e.g. within the European Union and national governments), policy makers, (ICT) companies, application developers, and regular laymen with interest in how AI will impact the society.
– Some people have prejudices toward AI systems. A better understanding of the impact of AI allows proactive dealing with the negative issues while ensuring that we all benefit from the positive opportunities, says Professor Jukka Nurminen from the Department of Computer Sciences of the University of Helsinki.
– At the University of Helsinki we have been developing MOOCs for several years already but even with that background we are particularly proud to be part of launching this very first Una Europa MOOC. We’re proud because it’s not only our effort but in the spirit of Una Europa a joint effort between our university and the universities of Edinburgh and Paris, says vice-rector Kai Nordlund.
The multidisciplinary MOOC is based on latest research on Data Science, AI and Social Sciences. In addition to the compulsory basic part, students can choose optional modules matching their interests, needs and background. To support selecting the elective modules, the MOOC gives suggestions based on the background and previous knowledge of the student.
The course was launched 2 June 2022 at the event Are you ready to live with AI? in Think Corner. Watch the launch event on YouTube.
– The MOOC has a modular structure and the first three chapters are the introductory parts, obligatory for completing the course and they give basic conceptual framework for understanding how AI is all around us in the society, how it is changing the society, what kind of challenges and promises there are, but also how we could deal with the challenges, so we have a sort of solution-driven approach, so we are not only pointing to the problems, we are giving at least some ways to think about how to solve these problems, said Tomi Kokkonen at the launch.
Una Europa AI in Society MOOC is provided by University of Helsinki in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Una Europa is an alliance of leading European research universities, to which University of Helsinki is a member of.
Story edited on 6th June 2022.
Una Europa Helsinki team una.europa@helsinki.fi
Professor of Computer Science Jukka K. Nurminen jukka.k.nurminen@helsinki.fi
Administration Laura Johansson laura.k.johansson@helsinki.fi