Midterm 1

Midterm 1 is due by Weds Sept 25 at 11:59 pm.  Late submissions are allowed but will be assessed a penalty as described in Late Work on syllabus.

 The exam is based on Chapters 1 - 10 of our text Justice. You may consult Justice and other resources, but please do not discuss the exam with other human beings. Your answers must be expressed in your own words so please continue to follow our policy on not using AI writing tools in any way (as described in our syllabus and reproduced below).

Please prepare your exam answers in the same way you have been preparing your personal essays - compose your answers entirely in a single Google Doc  and then submit a single URL when the exam is finished. Make sure that you have the Doc set so that anyone with the link is an editor. Your version history must show the complete evolution of all your answers from start to finish, so please do not start your answers somewhere else and then cut and paste them. Each question has a minimum word length requirement of 500 words (like our personal essays). If a question has multiple parts (like 3 and 4) the total length of all parts combined together should be above 500 words. 

If you have questions about the exam, please post those to this thread on the discussion list on Canvas so that  everyone gets the same information about the exam. Please allow up to 12 hours for a response to questions.

When mentioned on this exam, philosophical foundations refers to the following : 

1. Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham

2. Utilitarianism of John Stewart Mill

3. Libertarianism

4. Immanuel Kant and Categorical Imperative I and II

5. John Rawls and the Veil of Ignorance and The Difference Principle

6. Aristotle

There are four exam questions. Please make sure to number your responses in your Google Doc. You do not need to copy the question into your response although you can if you find that helpful. Do not of course include the questions in your word count.

Start of Midterm 1 Questions

1.  [5 points] Please listen to the episode of The Public Philosopher entitled "Would life be better if robots did all the work?" This is available for streaming or download here : 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08gxndc

I have also put a copy of the mp3 in our Canvas Files, just in case you have trouble accessing the BBC site. 

This is a debate moderated by Michael Sandel, the author of Justice. In your answer to this question please discuss the following : What was the question (or questions) being debated, and what were the strongest arguments made on each side of the debate? Which of those arguments connected to our philosophical foundations or ideas from Justice, and how? You should connect the arguments in this debate to at least three different foundations or ideas from Justice. Which side would you take in this debate, and what additional arguments would you make to support your position? Support your own arguments with at least two foundations or ideas from Justice.

2. [5 points] There is an ongoing lawsuit against Microsoft and Open AI by newspaper publishers regarding large language models like ChatGPT. That lawsuit is described here and in many other sources which you are free to consult.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1248141220/lawsuit-openai-microsoft-copyright-infringement-newspaper-tribune-post

I have also put a pdf of this article in our Canvas Files in case you have trouble accessing this link.

Due to your in-depth understanding of ethics, you have been asked by the court to formulate a set of just principles that all stakeholders in this case would be likely to accept. The stakeholders include OpenAI/Microsoft, the newspaper publishers, the writers of the newspaper articles, and the users that have signed up for ChatGPT (free or paid version). Use John Rawl's Veil of Ignorance and The Difference Principle to arrive at your set of just principles. Make sure that you use both. Explain what your principles would be, how you arrived at them, and why each group of stakeholders would be likely to accept. You do not need to summarize the case but you can add details about it if that helps explain your solution.

3.  [points in question] This is a hypothetical scenario that I will ask you to accept as given. If there are additional assumptions needed for your response you may add those and explain them as a part of your response. 

Assume you live in a community of 80,000 people where an AI data center is consuming about 20% of the available water. As a result every home, apartment, business, etc. is without water for 4 hours every day to make sure the AI data center has water 24 hours a day every day of the week. You think it is wrong for human beings to be deprived of water in favor of an AI data center. You decide to disable the AI data center by cutting off the water supply. You are able to do this in a way that doesn't destroy any property or harm anyone although this does deny 10,000 users located around the world access to their chatbot AI services. Every time the AI company fixes what you've done you quickly return to shut off the water again. Finally the AI company decides that the water supply problems you have created have made it impossible to operate in your community and they shut down the AI data center. Thirty AI data center employees lose their jobs as a result. The water supply goes back to normal and there are no more 4 hour outages and all residents of your community have water all the time.

a. [3 points] Are your actions ethical according to Immanual Kant's Categorical Imperative I and II? Explain why or why not. As a part of your answer explain the Categorical Imperatives in your own words. 

b. [2 points] Are your actions ethical according to John Stewart Mill's formulation of Utilitarianism Explain why or why not. As a part of your answer explain Mill's formulation in your own words.

The following provides some background on the real life issue underlying this question. You don't need to read this to answer this question, it's just here if you are curious.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/06/water-why-a-thirsty-generative-ai-boom-poses-a-problem-for-big-tech.html

4. [points in question]  This is a hypothetical scenario that I will ask you to accept as given. If there are additional assumptions needed for your response you may add those and explain them as a part of your response. 

Assume that you are using the search engine Bingle. You are doing an image search and you observe that when you search for "school girls" the results often include teen age girls often in suggestive and sexualized poses. You also observe that when you search for "school boys" you get images of younger boys (typically less than 10 years old) wearing backpacks and engaging in traditional school activities. There is nothing suggestive or sexualized in these results. You are concerned by the gender bias in these results and you report this to Bingle and ask them to fix their results so that a search for "school girls" produces images of young girls going to school without any sexual or suggestive connotation. Bingle notes your concern and decides to do nothing since their market research suggests that searches for "school girls" are most often motivated by a desire for suggestive content. Is this an ethical decision by Bingle? 

a. [2 points] What would Aristotle say? Use Aristotle's ideas to create an argument consistent with his principles. 

b. [2 points] Make an argument that this is not an ethical decision. Use at least one of our foundations in support of your argument. 

c. [1 points] What do you say? Use at least one of our foundations to support your argument.

End of Midterm 1 Questions

Please follow our policy on Use of AI Writing Tools (from our syllabus)

Please do not use automated writing tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, CoPilot, etc. at any point in developing work for this class. This includes our Personal Essays, any take home Exams, and your Podcast. Do not use them for brainstorming ideas, do not use them for writing, and do not use them for polishing or correcting your work. 

All of your written work should be composed entirely in Google Docs. You may use the spelling and grammar checking tools provided in the standard version of Google Docs but do not use or add-on anything beyond that for any of our assignments.  

Why such a strict policy? I read all of your written assignments and exams. I listen to your podcasts. I do not offload the grading of your work on to a teaching assistant or an automated AI tool. I read what you submit carefully, and I would like to hear your own unique voice come through in the work you do for this class. I genuinely enjoy this experience. These tools obscure your voice and restrict your imagination. They make you sound more generic and less like the unique individual that you are. 

Any work that you submit in this class must be uniquely and exclusively written by you. This means no AI Writing Tools, it also means no cutting and pasting or overly close paraphrasing from other sources (which is essentially what these AI tools do, just in a very fancy and elaborate way). If you submit work that you did not uniquely and exclusively create, you may receive a 0 on that assignment.