Final Projects

As our AI course nears its conclusion, our students have begun pursuing independent research and creative projects to explore some of the most pressing questions we have addressed in our course.

Click through to take a look at what each student is investigating:

The Effects of Reducing Screen Time

Ella is conducting a personal research project examining the effects of limiting social media use and modifying smartphone settings. Drawing on data she has collected about her own habits, she will explore how reduced screen time influences focus, mood, sleep, and overall well-being.

AI Art, Writing, and Creative Communities

Elizabeth is examining how writers, readers, artists, and educators perceive AI-generated creative work. Her project will include original survey data collected from students and teachers, as well as a discussion of the opportunities and challenges AI presents for creative communities.

Measuring AI Attitudes

Griffin and Payce are conducting a statistical study of AI usage and perceptions among students and teachers. Using surveys, they will examine how factors such as grade level, gender, and academic department influence attitudes toward artificial intelligence.

AI and Accessibility for Individuals with Hearing Loss

Maddie is creating a documentary-style project exploring how AI is improving accessibility for people who are hard of hearing. Her research will highlight advances in AI-powered hearing aids, real-time captioning technologies, and other innovations that are transforming communication.

AI and Accessibility for Individuals with Hearing Loss

Maddie is creating a documentary-style project exploring how AI is improving accessibility for people who are hard of hearing. Her research will highlight advances in AI-powered hearing aids, real-time captioning technologies, and other innovations that are transforming communication.

Want to Keep Up to Date with Our Reading List?

See below for each week's readings and join the conversation!

Weeks 37-38 - No assigned readings

Week 36

1. Michael Gerlich, “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking”

2. Nataliya Kosmyna, “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using AI” pages 1-4, 21, 

3. Jinrui Tan, “Learners’ AI dependence and critical thinking: The psychological mechanism of fatigue and the social buffering role of AI literacy”

4. James O’Sullivan, “Stylometric comparisons of human versus AI-generated creative writing”

5. Particle6, “Hi, I’m Tilly Norwood!”

6. Masahiro Mori, “The Uncanny Valley: The Original Essay by Masahiro Mori” 

Week 35

1. Jacqueline Fendy, “Vibocracy and the Collapse of Shared Reality”

2. Jodi Kantor, “The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court”

3. Tony Rehagen, “Welcome to Post-Truth America”

4. Maxi Heitmayer, “The Second Wave of Attention Economics. Attention as a Universal Symbolic Currency on Social Media and beyond” 

Week 34

1. Wiki, Utopia

2. Thomas More, Utopia selections

3. Jamie Dimon, “Letter to Shareholders 2026”

4. US Govt, “National Security Strategy November 2025 Policy Document” (from last week’s readings!)

5. Alex Karp, The Technological Republic in Brief (from X)

6. Talmon Smith, “The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, With Familiar (Rich) Winners”

Week 33

1. Alexis Madrigal, “The Energy in Things”

2. Eve Warburton, “Nationalist enclaves: Industrialising the critical mineral boom in Indonesia”

3. Nisha Talagala, “Data as The New Oil Is Not Enough: Four Principles For Avoiding Data Fires”

4. Juana Summers, “Dirty nickel: The health costs of mining in Indonesia”

5. Lawrence Wright, “Lithium Dreams”

6. Greg Rosalsky, “Why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with a 160-year-old economics paradox”

7. Camilla Domonoske, “Their batteries hurt the environment, but EVs still beat gas cars. Here's why.”

8. Rithwik Kalale, “Lithium mining for EVs: how sustainable is it?”

9. Soumya Karlamangla, “The California Lake Billed as the ‘Saudi Arabia of Lithium’”

10. Image, “This is a silicon wafer” 

Week 32

1. 1. Wiki, “Mother Nature”

   2. Ken Silverstein, “America’s AI Boom Is Running Into An Unplanned Water Problem”

   3. Elizabeth Kolbert, “The E.P.A. vs. the Environment”

   4. Adam Zewe, “Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact”

   5. Shaolei Ren, “The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts”

   6. Carmen Gonzalez, “Environmental Justice, Human Rights, and the Global South Environmental Justice, Human Rights, and the Global South”

   7. Megan Mastrola, “How AI Can Help Combat Climate Change” 

Week 31

1. Nathan Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?”

2. Matt Shumer, “Something Big is Happening”

3. Kashmir Hill, “Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.”

4. Jennifer Devries, “How Bad Are A.I. Delusions? We Asked People Treating Them.”

5. Rhitu Chatterjee, “Their teenage sons died by suicide. Now, they are sounding an alarm about AI chatbots”

6. Stuart Heritage, “‘I felt pure, unconditional love’: the people who marry their AI chatbots

7. Shannon Bond, “AI chatbots upended their lives. Now they're finding support from each other”

8. Johanna Costigan, “China's AI Boyfriend Business is Taking On a Life of Its Own”

9. Miles Klee, “This Spiral-Obsessed AI ‘Cult’ Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots” 

Optional:

1. Andrew Clark, “The Ability of AI Therapy Bots to Set Limits With Distressed Adolescents: Simulation-Based Comparison Study”

2. Juliet Schor, “Dependence and precarity in the platform economy” 

Week 30

10. Wiki, “Satoshi Nakamoto”

11. John Carreyrou, “My Quest to Solve Bitcoin’s Great Mystery”

12. Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”

13. TechScope, “Meme Coin Mania and Mayhem: Navigating the Blind Spots”

14. CoinMemeCap, “Top Memes Tokens by Market Capitalization”

15. Florida State, “Ponzi Schemes”

16. Ganesh Sitaraman, “We Must Prepare for an AI Bubble Now”

17. Michał Klincewicz et al., “Slopaganda: The interaction between propaganda and generative AI”

18. Kyle Chayka, “The Team Behind a Pro-Iran, Lego-Themed Viral-Video Campaign”

Week 29

Week 28

19. Independent Reading Selections (second half)

Week 27

1. Independent Reading Selections (first half)

Weeks 25/26

Does AI Have a Soul? Ethical AI, Palantir, Anthropic, and the US Government

1. Berber Jin, “Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals”

2. Image, “Should I Walk to the Car Wash?”

3. Matteo Wong, “Drink Whole Milk, Eat Red Meat, and Use ChatGPT”

4. Amrith Ramkumar, “Pentagon Used Anthropic’s Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid”

5. Claude, “Claude’s Constitution”

6. Socrates, from Phaedrus on the soul

7. Various, Palantir Readings

1. 1. Mona Khalil, “Palantir, Seemingly Everywhere All at Once”

   2. Steven Hubbard, “ICE to Use ImmigrationOS by Palantir, a New AI System, to Track Immigrants’ Movements”

   3. Alex Karp, “Letter to Shareholders February 2026”

   4. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, “The Palantir Guide to Saving America’s Soul”

Week 23 

How Does it Work? The Basics of AI Functionality

1. Janelle Shane, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How AI Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place chapters 1-4

2. Ex Machina (2014) - in class

Week 22 

General Introduction to the Field’s Ethical Questions

1. Sarah Roberts, “Your AI is a Human”

2. Michael Schrage, “Philosophy Eats AI”

3. Molly Smith, “Can Generative AI Chatbots Emulate Human Connection? A Relationship Science Perspective”

4. Meghan O’Gieblyn, “Do We Have Minds of Our Own?”

5. Kyle Chayka, “That New Hit Song on Spotify? It Was Made by A.I.”

6. John Cassidy, “The Dangerous Paradox of A.I. Abundance”

7. Harvard, “How Close Are You to the Way ChatGPT Thinks?”

8. Robert Capps, “AI Might Take Your Job. Here are 22 New Ones It Could Give You”

9. Sam Kriss, “Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?”

10. Bill Wasik, “A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.”

11. Cindy Shan, “Does new 'Cognify' tech allow prisoners to complete years of social rehabilitation in minutes?”

Optional:

1. Ajay Agrawal, “Genius on Demand”

2. Olivia Guest et al., “Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies”

Independent Reading Project Selections

1. Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

2. Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

3. Kashmir Hill, Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

4. Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

5. Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

6. Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

7. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power