HMS-313P Artificial Intelligence in Society

3 Credits

This course will introduce students to the study of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the context of their social, historical, theoretical, and technical stakes. Starting with portrayals of intelligent machines in popular media, the course will examine the origins of traditional computation and how this provided a foundation for new technologies such as various forms of early machine learning, and now, the deep learning of artificial neural networks. The course will also explore the limitations, dangers, hidden costs, and biases of these technologies, and their relation to issues of privacy, surveillance, accumulation, prediction, extraction, manipulation, control, oppression, capitalism, and more.