Islam, AI, and the Future of Humanity

Week 1 — January 9

Topic: Introduction: AI, Humanity, and Islamic Perspectives

Readings:

• Chaudhary, “Islam and Artificial Intelligence.”
• Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4e, Ch. 1.
• Wooldridge, Brief History of Artificial Intelligence, selections.
• Donnelly, Descent of Artificial Intelligence, Introduction and Ch. 1.

Supplementary Readings:

• Nilsson, The Quest for Artificial Intelligence.
• Crawford, Atlas of AI.
• Domingos, The Master Algorithm.
• LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton, “Deep Learning for AI.”
• Dick, “Artificial Intelligence.”

Lecture and Discussion:

• History and Development of AI 
• What are the foundational assumptions about mind, consciousness, and language that underlie contemporary AI? 

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Week 2 — January 16

Topic: Moral AI or Moral Human Beings?

Readings:

• Véliz, “Moral Zombies: Why Algorithms are not Moral Agents.”
• Bostrom, “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence.”
• Faruque, “Opening Pandora’s Box: AI and Its Ethical Dilemmas”
• Qur’anic passages on moral agency

Supplementary Readings:

• Inloes, “The Golem, the Djinni, and ChatGPT: Artificial Intelligence and the Islamicate Occult Sciences.”
• Bostrom, Superintelligence.

Lecture and Discussion:

• Can we program morality into machines?
• Islamic ethics: cultivating the self vs. engineering behavior

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Week 3 — January 23

Topic: Consciousness: Islamic and Scientific Views

Readings:

• Faruque, Sculpting the Self, selections.
• Faruque, “AI versus Human Consciousness.”
• Strawson, “The Consciousness Deniers.”
• Grève and Xiaoyue, “Can Machines Be Conscious?”

Supplementary Readings:

• Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4e, Ch. 28.
• Wooldridge, Brief History of Artificial Intelligence, Ch. 9.

Lecture and Discussion:

• What is consciousness?
• Are we projecting human qualities onto machines?
• AI becoming conscious or minds becoming machines?

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Week 4 — January 30

Topic: Knowledge and Intelligence: Islamic and Scientific Views 

Readings:

• Yazdi, Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy, selections.
• Gottfredson, “Mainstream Science on Intelligence.”
• McCarthy, “What Is Artificial Intelligence?” 

Supplementary Readings:

• Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4e, Ch. 10.
• Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy.
• Azadpur, Analytic Philosophy and Avicenna.
• Chomsky, “The False Promise of ChatGPT.”

Lecture and Discussion:

• Is “knowledge” the same as “information?”
• Is “intelligence” natural or artificial? 
• Defining the term “human-level.”

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Week 5 — February 6

Topic: AI and Human Identity: Tools, Mirrors, or Partners?

Readings:

• Fuchs, “Narcissistic Depressive Technoscience.”
• Alang, “AI Is a False God: The Real Threat with Super Intelligence is Falling Prey to the Hype.”

Lecture and Discussion:

• Are LLMs tools, colleagues, or mirrors?
• The dangers of anthropomorphizing AI

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Week 6 — February 13

Topic: Reflections and Futures: Toward a Spiritually Responsible Technology

Readings:

• Faruque, “Immortality through AI?: Transhumanism, Islamic Philosophy, and the Quest for Spiritual Machines.”
• Faruque, “We are Not Our Brains: How Poets and Philosophers Saw the Immaterial Life of the Self.”

Supplementary Readings:

• Zuboff, Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
• Bostrom, Deep Utopia.
• Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Nearer.

Lecture and Discussion:

• How will AI shape our future?
• What does it mean to remain truly human and flourish in the age of AI?