NO AI OR PLAIGARISM THIS PROFESSOR ALWAYS SNIFFS OUT AI
You must select one and only of the following as your topic prompt:
Prompt 1: What kind of Aristotelian friendship would be the most difficult to have with someone in a virtual medium?
Prompt 2: From an Aristotelian perspective, would regular interactions with a sufficiently advanced general artificial intelligence constitute a friendship?
Assignment Guidelines and Expectations
1. Your essay should be between 650 and 700 words, and not more than 750. (This overrides the word count specification on the course syllabus)
2. Follow essay format – for example, that you write in distinct paragraphs, each of which has a clear topic sentence that unifies the material in the paragraph. Be sure to keep your introductory and concluding paragraph brief. Avoid long paragraphs and long sentences at all costs.
3. Your introductory paragraph should state your main point, which is your answer to the prompt you’ve selected. Concluding paragraph should concisely (in three or four sentences) restate your thesis and the reasons you provided in support of it in the body of the paper.
4. Be clear which prompt you are responding to, and note the following:
4.1. If you are responding to prompt 1, it’s not necessary that you discuss all three kinds of Aristotelian friendships, though you may briefly refer to them to show a contrast in connection with your main argument. But you should be clear about the essential features of the kind of friendship you’re discussing and what specific feature(s) make it difficult to have in a virtual medium – for example, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, etc. Also, it may be important for you to distinguish between generating a friendship in a virtual medium and the sustaining a friendship in a virtual medium but which began with physical co-presence; the former may be more difficult than the latter.
4.2 If answering prompt 2, be sure you’re clear about what a sufficiently advanced AGI would be like, and how current AIs are examples of that or approximate it.
5. You must quote Aristotle at least once in the paper, and reference at least one other source. Be sure to include a Works Cited page at the end of your paper. You may use parenthetical references in the body of the paper – for example, (Jaspers, 2002: 87) or – for Aristotle – (Ethics, 8:4) to indicate book 8, section 4.
6. Your response should be typed in standard font (e.g, Times Roman), double-spaced, include a word count.
