Dr. Michael Quinn - Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Seattle University

As artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities that make the unimaginable routine, it also raises unasked ethical questions whose answers will determine if humanity reaps the benefits of AI equitably. Increasingly however, we find ourselves in uncharted territory, grappling with unanticipated ethical quandaries stemming from the continuing entwinement of machine learning & mankind. Perhaps now more than ever we should recall Albert Einstein's prescient assertion that "Relativity applies to physics, not ethics." To help us navigate between the Scylla of moral dilemmas and Charybdis of virtuous justifications AI provokes, we call upon Dr. Michael Quinn. As Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Seattle University, Dr. Quinn & his colleagues recently launched a free public course entitled "AI Ethics for Business", an offering whose timeliness can’t be overstated. We speak with Dr. Quinn about the journey students of his course will cover, as well as some of the universal terrain all AI practitioners inevitably encounter. En route we'll learn about getting software developers to think more ethically, the 9 common rationalizations people use as moral excuses to avoid ethical thinking, and the dark side to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto “Move fast and break things.”