Many students, even those who are quite young, are aware of the rapid pace at which technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are developing. This lesson entails an exploration of what the world might look like if all human jobs become automated, or done by robots. Are there jobs that humans can do that a robot … Robots at Work
The new technology of driverless cards has opened up a real-world corollary to the 65 year old tradition of Trolley Problems. The basic question here involved how the cars should be programmed: to protect their passengers or others out on the road? Read these the two articles and watch the video dealing with issues arising from … Should Driverless Cars Kill Their Passengers?
On November 6, 2015, NPR aired a story about the very controversial topic of stem cell research. This story can be used as the basis for a philosophical discussion of a variety of topics including what it is to be human and the ethics of medical research. Here is a link to the story: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/06/454693391/should-human-stem-cells-be-used-to-make-partly-human-chimeras … The Ethics of the Creation of Dual-Species Chimeras
The first half of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley depicts a socially programmed society in which advances in science and technology have created a world full of people who are biologically human but may not be fully human in other ways. This lesson sequence can be done after a few days of initial work on … What is a Human Being?
PLATO is part of a global UNESCO network that encourages children to participate in philosophical inquiry. As a partner in the UNESCO Chair on the Practice of Philosophy with Children, based at the Université de Nantes in France, PLATO is connected to other educational leaders around the world.
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