扒哥吃瓜

Enrolling in the MPhil has really shown me the wealth of knowlege that one can be exposed to in just 9 months! One of the best aspects of the MPhil is the diverse cohort of students that it attracts. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, academic disciplines, and professional experiences, I have learned so much about AI ethics from a variety of viewpoints. This diversity not only exposed me to a range of subjects (such as politics, engineering, and philosophy) but was also fundamental to the interdisciplinary nature of AI ethics.

I appreciated having the freedom to delve into a range of topics within the realm of AI ethics that aligned with my own interests and passions. Everyone in the department truly encouraged me to carve my own academic path and write my essays about topics that resonated with me. With the guidance of my supervisors, I have really enjoyed exploring intersections between AI, ethics, law and philosophy in my work. 

Zoya Yousef (April 2024)

'This MPhil slaps. I did my undergraduate at 扒哥吃瓜 in Philosophy, and Claire is one of the best lecturers, supervisors and course leaders I've had in my time here, and definitely the best for me overall for doing all three simultaneously. She's really gone the extra mile for us all this year with post-lecture queries, fast and genuine receptiveness to student feedback, career clinics/guidance, and she emails us PhD openings and other opportunities over email all the time. Her care for and expertise in AI ethics is palpable in all her lectures and supervisions, it's substantially enhanced my experience as a student.

The course has a really sensible structure. The lectures end up being stimuli and starting points for the courseworks you write which is a lot less pressured (and more enjoyable) than having to note down all of the content for exams. You get the freedom of being a researcher but also the guidance of being a lectured student, which is the best of both worlds. The lectures have also all been fantastic, and there's enough time between them to do career work and research. The backweighing of the courseworks is also really affirming, it's a nice balance of getting warmed up with smaller projects in the CAE and Re1 while learning content in lectures and then getting the chance to build stronger theses in Re2 and the Dissertation so you can build on the content you've been learning all year when it counts. You're rewarded for exploring broadly early, and the diversity of the lecture content really makes doing broad learning easy.

As for the content itself, it's been really helpful. The core lectures, the Evaluations series with John, and the elective on human-centred design with Tomasz and Alan get my shoutouts as the ones that make me feel confident today that I have a strong foundation for careers in consultancy, governance, policy, evaluation or auditing. I would encourage applicants to manage their expectations though about how comprehensive the course is. There's not much taught content on legal or regulatory frameworks, but that's understandable because the legal and regulatory frameworks are still being developed. The EU AI Act for example was approved only 8 months before my cohort matriculated, and the UK AI Safety Institute was announced in November last year, a month after we'd started. The course might include more AI governance content in the future as laws are rolled out - I don't know - but in the meantime exploring the foundational ethical considerations feels like great training to understand, criticise, and potentially even write some of the regulation and guidance that will come out over the next few years. The philosophy is topical and the clay is still wet, and in my view there is nowhere better to be than CFI 扒哥吃瓜 to become educated and credible on AI Ethics.

Joseph Fennell (April 2024)