CPS 273: Teaching & Learning Machine Ethics

The following databases are used most often by students studying the Earth and Environmental Issues. Use them to search for high-quality research related to your topic. For a very interdisciplinary topic like this, it might be a good idea to start with Social Sciences Full Text to cast a wide net.

• Resources (e.g., minerals, water, electricity) 
• Accountability and responsibility 
• Environmental concerns (lithium, rare earth metals, water use and emissions)

The machine ethics material to be added to this course would examine the mining, mineral use, water use, and CO2 emissions in Indigenous areas for resources going to AI development, from machines themselves to data centers. The objective is to make connections between existing major concerns and long-running Indigenous environmental justice struggles regarding pollution and unbeckoned ecological change. 

In this class, students will explore how Indigenous livelihoods and struggles for environmental justice come to be at stake together. The idea of being Indigenous and the concept of environmental justice are regular topics of debate. This seminar tracks their interrelated fates. Upon close examination, neither has a fixed definition, which opens space for high-stakes power struggles, political tensions without easy answers, and activism contesting visions for environmental futures. The term Indigenous tends to denote a historically elaborated relationship to a specific environment, designating a pre-colonial presence, often in a colonial or post-colonial context. The term environmental justice evokes the fair distribution of the opportunity to enjoy a healthy and ecologically sound life on one’s own cultural and economic terms. Since the “discovery” of “new” land all over the world exposed it to centuries of colonization, Indigenous peoples and the environments they inhabit have been subject to a dizzying variety of injustices. Throughout these centuries, “Indigenous” has denoted many things. Early, it meant sinful colonial subjects to convert and exploit. More recently, it implied a population considered the world’s most poor, excluded, and environmentally vulnerable. Today, Indigenous people are widely represented as a class of citizens seen to make important contributions to national culture and entitled to special land and language rights. At the same time, they are often disparaged as people perennially in the way of extractive industry and large-scale development projects. This course focuses on the contemporary nexus of indigeneity, ecology, and justice, with each seminar week focused on a distinct theme and Indigenous community.