What is a Better Future?

MIT equips and encourages its students and researchers to develop technology for a better future - in computing, AI, biological engineering, and countless other fields.  But what is a better future? How do we know what sort of future we should be designing and developing? Who decides, and how?

This course will provide undergraduate and graduate students in the Media Lab the opportunity to step back and ask themselves what sort of future is worth building, what is truly worth valuing and pursuing, and how technology can promote aims such as human rights, dignity, and justice, from the perspective of multiple ethical frameworks.

The class will invite multiple subject experts, representing both technical fields that raise ethical questions, and ethical frameworks of both secular and religious varieties, to address the question: what does it mean to build a better future?