As the media are flooded with articles touting doom and miracles, this course seeks to give students the general knowledge needed to judge these claims themselves. Understanding how a new technology changes our world is as much about society, and culture, as it is about the technology. The first session will deliver a basic understanding of what AI is and how it works (explained without the math). This will give students the foundation to judge and reason about the potentials and limits of AI. The second session will start with the limits of AI and then explore how current technologies are raising questions about the nature of intelligence to a whole new level. The third and fourth sessions will look at AI and Society. Just as the way the industrial revolution developed was determined by societal power structures, so too will the changes from AI. Major issues in economics, law, morality, the environment, sociology, and culture are all affected by this. At the same time, different groups stand to profit from either claims of doom or miracles. We will walk through examples of these issues and debate what is hype and what is not.

This course will combine lecture with class discussions.