Course Syllabus

Date

Lecture

Topic

Instructor

Notes

9/4/24

Lecture 1

Introduction

Cannon/Chilton

What is this course? Why is this course?

9/9/24

Lecture 2

History of Intelligence

Chris Wiggins

Reifying intelligence with statistics, 1900s

9/11/24

Lecture 3

History of Intelligence

Chris Wiggins

Can machines think? 1940s-1960s

9/16/24

Lecture 4

History of Intelligence

Chris Wiggins

AI without data, 1950s-1990s

9/18/24

Lecture 5

History of Intelligence

Chris Wiggins

From programming to learning, 1990s-2010s

9/23/24

Lecture 6

External Speaker/Panel

Lydia Chilton

9/25/24

Lecture 7

From NN to LLM: Rise of the Machines

Vishal Misra

Introduction to Neural Networks

9/30/24

Lecture 8

From NN to LLM: Rise of the Machines

Vishal Misra

Deep Learning Revolution

10/2/24

Lecture 9

From NN to LLM: Rise of the Machines

Vishal Misra

Transition to Transformer Architectures

10/7/24

Lecture 10

From NN to LLM: Rise of the Machines

Vishal Misra

The Era of Large Language Models and ChatGPT

10/9/24

Lecture 11

External Speaker/Panel

Brendan Fleig-Goldstein

10/14/24

Lecture 12

Philosophy and AI: Mental States?

Katja Vogt

Can we ascribe beliefs and intentions to AI? Can LLMs speak? Can they lie?

10/16/24

Lecture 13

Philosophy and AI: Alignment

Katja Vogt

Can AI be aligned with human values? What is explainable AI (XAI)?

10/21/24

Lecture 14

Philosophy and AI: Fairness and Accuracy

Katja Vogt

What makes an AI “fair”? How does fairness relate to accuracy and other values? 

10/23/24

Lecture 15

Philosophy and AI: Generics and Bias

Katja Vogt

How should LLMs deal with generics? What about social generics and bias?

10/28/24

Lecture 16

External Speaker/Panel

Jeremy Dauber

20th Century science fiction and modern AI

10/30/24

Lecture 17

Art and Music with AI: Tools, Assistance, and Collaboration in Creative Computation

Seth Cluett

Deep learning and the generative shift in creative computation; a history of algorithmic art and music, creative labor replacement anxiety

11/4/24

No Class

Fall Break

11/6/24

Lecture 18

Art and Music with AI: The Voice, the Face, the Object, and the Environment

Seth Cluett

Worldmaking, subjecthood and objecthood; detection, comparison, completion, recommendation, and fabrication; Fakery

11/11/24

Lecture 19

Art and Music with AI: Methods and Processes

Seth Cluett

Media rich and time-based corpus development, training sets, extant tools and future directions; Creative mis-use

11/13/24

Lecture 20

Art and Music with AI: Copyright, Authorship, and Ownership

Seth Cluett

How does deep learning and generative AI alter conceptions of authorship, how does the framing of intellectual property shift when machines (co)create works of art and music, how will creative labor evolve?

11/18/24

Lecture 21

External Speaker/Panel

Maurizio Forte

11/20/24

Lecture 22

Language and  AI

Dennis Yi Tenen

Grammars and Schemas: Chomskian grammars.  Exercise: Remake Yngve's "English Sentence Generator"

11/25/24

Lecture 23

Language and AI

Dennis Yi Tenen

Chains and Vectors.

11/2724

No Class

Thanksgiving Break

12/2/24

Lecture 24

Language and AI

Dennis Yi Tenen

Writing with AI. Prompt engineering and its impact on responses. Best practices.

12/4/24

Lecture 25

Language with AI

Dennis Yi Tenen

Platform comparison. Gemini, Copilot,  Meta AI and others. 

12/9/24

Lecture 26

Epilogue

Cannon/Chilton

How will you use AI next?