[WiSe 2025/26] Critical AI Literacy: Hype, Benefits, Harms, Governance, and Individual Responsibilities

Course Description

Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT professor and inventor of Eliza the first chatbot, said in 1960s, “Once a particular program is unmasked, once its inner workings are explained in language sufficiently plain to induce understanding, its magic crumbles away”  [Hao, Karen. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. Penguin Group, 2025. page.no. 421].

AI is everywhere and moving fast. Some call it a hype and others call it superintelligence. Some preach its amazing future benefits to our societies while others are scared of future scenarios of existential threats. But what really is AI? How does it work? What can it do and what not?  What are AI risks? What can we do as individuals and societies?

In this seminar, we discuss these questions and the topics they cover. They  are important for everyone living now but particularly important for Informatics students and how AI might impact their future careers as software developers or as developers of AI technologies themselves.

The students will have the opportunity to gain knowledge of AI and its related concepts. They’ll engage critically with topics on AI’s capabilities, harms, ethics, governance and individual responsibilities. The students will engage critically with the literature by presenting a paper to fulfil the required assignment to gain the 3 credit points of the seminar.

Who Can Enroll?

This seminar is fit for undergraduate students and does not have any prerequisites.

Learning Objectives

  • Get familiar with AI’s technology and related terminology.
  • Gain a deeper understanding of how aI works, its benefits and impact on our societies and environment. 
  • Engage critically with the literature on AI.
  • Get familiar with different AI research disciplines.
  • Improve academic presentation skills.

Learning Resources

  • All the material used in the preparation of the lectures are shared in this Google sheet. These sources cover different research papers as well as articles and Keynotes or interviews videos.

Enrollment

Spots to this seminar are assigned via the central seminar assignment system.

AI Use Policy

  • It is not allowed to use AI to generate text, argument or discussion points in there students' presentations. It is also not advised to use AI tools to summarise the research papers that the student chooses to present.  
  • AI could be used to check grammar other spelling mistakes.
  • AI could be used to generate an example or a use case to support the student's argument. If AI is used for this case, it must be clearly stated where it is used and which model and version generated that.