Course Description

Companies, public organizations, and governments increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI). It creates new business opportunities and can be a powerful tool to address societal challenges such as health and sustainability. However, AI empowers those who understand how to harness this new technology and potentially disadvantages those who don’t have the skills, knowledge, and know-how to understand or shape it.

Fundamentally, AI is a technology that allows us to automate decisions that are usually made by people or organizations. AI decides which news is important, who should get a loan, and what medical treatment might be most promising. In that sense, AI affects all of us, whether we realize it or not. In a broader sense, AI affects all of society. This raises fundamental questions:

  • How should AI be used, for what purpose? And who decides this?
  • How can we ensure that AI is used responsibly? And who gets to decide what responsibility means?

You are training to become a designer. As a designer, it is highly likely that sometime during your career, you will be involved in designing and developing an AI-powered product or service and make design decisions that affect a wide range of people. Thus, these questions become your questions:

  • How do you, as a designer, decide how AI should be used and for what purpose?
  • As a designer, how do you ensure that AI is used responsibly?
  • And what is your understanding of “responsible AI”?

To answer these questions, designers must expand their repertoire of tools and methods. This is what AI & Society is about. To equip you with the technical foundation, ethical concepts, and design framework to analyze the issues raised by AI, to design responsible AI products and services, and to make convincing arguments about the value and impact of your designs.

This course focuses on the use of AI by the Municipality of Amsterdam. The Municipality of Amsterdam is at the forefront of employing digital technologies and a strong proponent of the responsible use of AI.