INTL 274 - Thinking Internationally About and With AI

Cross-Listed as COMP 274

The sudden recent rise of LLM-based artificial intelligence (AI), notably but not only ChatGPT, is having deep sociocultural, political, economic, and educational effects. In this course we will think about, and with, AI in a global frame. After asking “what is AI?” and reviewing its history, we will explore AI topics including environment, labor, higher education, cognitive surrender, consciousness, personhood, recursivity, hallucination, geopolitics, warfare, alignment, existential risk, the post-Mac professions, and AI in film and literature. Rather than keep AI at a distance, we’ll work with it: carefully, skeptically, critically, together. But often we’ll avoid screens altogether. Every other year (4 Credits)