Should the Government promote or control developments in
machine learning and AI?
It will have 4,000 words maximum. Whilst the focus of the essay is likely to be machine
learning and Artificial Intelligence, the student may wish to focus on specific areas, that
is a type of application and/or technologies and/or a specific type of organisation.
Choose an area you already have some familiarity with (perhaps you are working in or
regularly engage with) or strategically you would like to understand for your future
research. The review should be critically evaluative, that is, it should be critically
framed, using the literature and other resources, to bring together arguments that
support and question what is going on. In other words, just a description is not
sufficient. The evaluative review should broadly include the following sections:
▪ a half page abstract summarising the main points;
▪ with reference to the key literature, an introduction to the topic, its historical context
and why any particular application area, technologies and/or type of organisation
was chosen;
▪ an short explanation of the approach (methodology) used to produce the review;
▪ a presentation of the main elements (and their dynamics) of the aspects that you
are focusing on together with a consideration of the pros and cons;
▪ a critical discussion of the relevant data ecology and impacts for data science and
on society;
▪ draw your conclusions and any hypotheses you may raise for further research;
▪ a list of references cited in the text according to the Harvard convention.
