About the Course

Study AI. Stay Human.

This course provides students with a highly interactive, interdisciplinary, and flexible course that can be tailored to their specific areas of interest, while exploring essential topics for understanding artificial intelligence as it is being developed and deployed within societal contexts.



We will look at how and why AI is being developed and used in specific contexts and consider the potential benefits, that is, the reasons for the intense appeal that these technologies hold for so many industries and sectors, as well as the complex challenges and problems that are arising as a result. But the course will move beyond these questions to discuss the larger foundational issues that AI creates or reveals, which now urgently require reconsiderations of some of society’s most basic assumptions, principles, and structures. We will examine current case studies in contests between regulators, users, and digital technology companies as well as hidden problems that have been identified through interviews with AI researchers and industry personnel. Students will have options to use game-based, simulation-based, and/or real-world projects and scenarios to test the boundaries of technologies such as generative AI images and text. We will explore uses, limitations, and dangers, while also envisioning possible responses and trajectories within relevant societal systems.

Please note: The goal is to create an engaging, low-stress learning environment where each student can think deeply about the content of the course.

As part of this effort, selected readings will be reasonable in quantity and length, and students will be able to tailor some of the readings to their areas of interest. In addition, all efforts have been made to provide free access to readings and resources through university and library services. A course guide is being developed for this course, which will be available to help students easily find what they need. Books assigned (for instance, those on the Canvas reading list) will not be read in their entirety. Some books are very long, but only certain portions (for instance a chapter or two) will be assigned. The chapters read may vary between students, so even if a full volume has been digitized and listed as required on the reading list, this does not mean students will be reading the whole book. This is just the best (and only) method for making these readings available for students at no cost.