AI Ecologies

Catalog description

AI technologies are now a pervasive presence in contemporary life, reshaping everyday experience at multiple registers simultaneously. In effect, the development and deployment of AI technologies form a complex ecosystem of relations among politics, economics, engineering, education, creativity, psychology, scientific discovery, and more. AI Ecologies is based on the idea that examining these relations and their role in our shared lives requires more than just one perspective. In response, this course brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to share their approaches to AI in real time. It is designed for first- and second-year undergraduates from all disciplines. The course introduces students to technical, interpretive, and humanistic vocabulary necessary to critically engage with pressing professional, ethical, and civic challenges posed by twenty-first-century AI. In parallel, students experiment with data sets, learn how neural networks are trained and fine-tuned, work with generative AI models, and analyze the reliability of decision-based AI applications.