In-class/discussion participation (includes attendance), three writing assignments of varying difficulties, and a written final exam comprise your grade. I thought this was a very interesting course that examined the philosophical and moral bounds of personhood and how that relates to rise of generative artificial intelligence. Professor Irving is both passionate and knowledgable, but not as skilled or adept at lecturing. He would progress through the classes' presentation at a very slow rate, and while his explanations were helpful, he would most often ramble and not directly address the content on the slides. A fun note: he would get progressively quieter as his sentences went on so as he was finishing up a thought, you would not be able to hear the last five or so words. That was interesting. The TAs were very nice but often my discussion would sit silent and listen to the lecture recap. The writing assignments were dense, but I was able to complete them the night of and still receive good marks. All in all, a fascinating course topic that could be executed better across the board.

This course took too long on too basic topics. It got boring because an entire lecture was focused on something that could be covered in a single slide, so it really tanked my motivation later in the semester. A lot of the concepts are really really cool and it can sometimes be good that he explains it so simply, but for the most part I think it is just a little too slow paced.

If you don't like philosophy and taking this course to fulfill a requirement, you will probably not enjoy this class. I did not find this class interesting partly because the topic is not very enthralling and partly because lectures were very disorganized. As someone who is used to STEM classes, where we are to understand facts and processes, this course left me thinking "Now what?" I'm sure my lack of enthusiasm comes from a lack of effort to understand the content, but it often felt like we were talking in circles about problems and concepts that are not applicable.

I think Professor Irving is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable in this field, however, how he lectures is not conducive to learning (especially if you have never taken a philosophy course). It feels like we talk in circles, so much so that you can't decipher what point to take away. When you ask questions or volunteer in class, Professor Irving can sometimes come across as condescending, which could be just due to how knowledgeable he is in the topic.

he TAs are much better at explaining the content, but even then you only have so much time in discussion to discuss the content you don't understand.

The class structure was pretty disorganized as well. I took a look at the syllabus and the grade break down does not add up to 100% and only adds up to 80%, so I am not sure where remaining 20% will come from. The final is also not optional, and appears to be pretty difficult. Below is the grade breakdown.

Participation: 15%
Paper 1: 15%
Paper 2: 10%
Paper 3: 20%
Final: 20%

Overall, I would not recommend this class, but it seems like I may not enjoy philosophy in general.

This is the most boring class I've ever taken in my life.

Prof Irving is clearly very passionate, knowledgeable, and very very nice. But his lectures will spend weeks covering the same, ridiculously basic and obvious concepts which both indignantly underestimate his audience's intelligence and overestimate their attention span/patience. I got the feeling he was VERY nervous speaking in front of large crowds, which is a difficult aversion to have when that is your entire job. The TA's are great— I learned more in discussion than I did in lecture, ever. The lectures are always on zoom though, which is amazing.

Taking this class bored me to the point of literally creating a courseforum account to write this review. The professor is painstakingly tedious; the content is insultingly simple; all assignments are so disorganized (usually forgotten to be published) that they often get dropped altogether. If you don't mind a boring class for an easy A, this was super low commitment and easy to understand. But for a college curriculum that you are paying for, I'd encourage anyone to make better use of their tuition dollars elsewhere.

This is my favorite class I've taken at UVA thus far. It was my very first philosophy class ever and while I did feel overwhelmed at times, in hindsight, I had almost all the skills I needed walking in and whichever ones I didn't have, Professor Irving and the TAs taught over the course of the semester.
The course material itself was super interesting. We started the semester talking about machines and what makes them intelligent. We talked a lot about the Turing Test and its variations, as well as the main philosophers that worked with it. The second part of the class talked about beings and what makes a self. It's basically the philosophy of AI. Professor Irving live streams and records all of his lectures, so it's not necessary to go to class. His office hours are super helpful and incredibly underused. I went five or six times and was often the only student there. He helped a ton with the essays, and always re-explained the concepts he went over in lecture. James Reed was my TA, and he was great. He was always available to meet, and gave great ideas for the papers as well. Going to Irving's office hours is great, but if you really want to maximize your time, I recommend just meeting with your TA, because they grade your papers. The assignments were definitely challenging, but the grading was very forgiving because they knew that a lot of people had never written a philosophy paper before.
We had to write three papers. The first one was an argument summary and response, which was a relatively easy paper to start with. Irving was really helpful with this in office hours. The second paper required you to have a conversation with Copilot and then write a paper using that conversation to determine if Copilot is intelligent or not. Really interesting, and definitely more challenging than the argument summary. The third paper felt the most like a traditional essay, and I found it to be the easiest. All the papers were at least somewhat based in class material. Irving assigned papers to read for almost every class, and they're all very long and confusing. I read the first few, fell behind pretty quickly, and then stopped reading them unless they pertained to a paper. I don't think I suffered at all because I didn't read, since all of the material on the final was things that we had talked about in class.
I was really nervous for the final. It was all written, and it's not like you have a bank of terms and definitions you can memorize. However, I did find the short answer part to be really similar to the AP Psych exam FRQs, with the whole define and apply format. It was definitely a lot easier than I expected. Go to the study session that they have and definitely re-read notes/rewatch lectures and do the practice that they give you.
Overall, I really loved this class. Professor Irving is great, the TAs are great, and the material is really interesting and relevant. Definitely take this class if you have the chance.

This was my first ever philosophy class. I feel like the instructors did a great job at gearing the class towards newcomers like me, they always explained philosophical concepts in ways that were easy to understand and basically assumed I walked in with zero background in philosophy (which I did). The lectures were all recorded but discussion attendance (once a week) was mandatory for a participation grade. My TA was Prof. Welchance, who was awesome at breaking down concepts in ways that were easy to understand.
I found the content pretty interesting. To be clear, this is not a class about the "ethics of AI" (like copyright and stuff), it's more like Turing Test stuff (like, "what is intelligence?" or "do AIs have real thoughts or do they just simulate thoughts?") It was kind of all over the place, sometimes it felt like we were just using AI as an excuse to talk about more pervasive questions in the field of philosophy (which personally didn't bother me at all). Other times, we got into some more nitty gritty details about how AIs work. It was really interesting to think about philosophical questions that even those who are very knowledgable about the technical details of AI aren't able to answer.

Really fun topics and challenges your perspective of the world. Two lectures + One Discussion per week. Excellent TAs and the professor is very friendly. He always stays after class for questions. The lectures are not that engaging, it usually introduces an argument and provides a couple of objections. Our paper had to tackle these moral challenges and explain through your own understanding of the subject. The discussion sections are a must-go; it not only helps you absorb the material; but also helps your term paper and argument building. Believe me, your view of the world and mind would be completely changed after taking this course.