The First Week of Our AI Class

Week one set the intellectual tone for the course by asking students to begin with ethical positions. We opened with a structured inquiry into five philosophical perspectives on artificial intelligence—Doomerism, Defensive Realism, Pragmatism, Partnership, and Sycophancy—treating them as lived orientations toward emerging technologies.

Working in groups, students claimed one perspective and mapped the following onto a shared note:

• Common attitudes, beliefs, talking points, and stakeholders

• What the perspective assumes about people, knowledge, and agency

• Educational and societal consequences

• Failure points and internal contradictions

The activity was deliberately open-ended. By the end of the exercise, students could articulate not only the strengths and blind spots of each position, but also locate themselves within—or against—them. The conversation that followed made visible a central tension of the course: whether AI should be understood primarily as a threat, a tool, a partner, a mirror, or something else.

We then shifted from philosophy to history with an introductory discussion of the origins of artificial intelligence, tracing early questions about computation, intelligence, and imitation through key moments and figures, including Alan Turing. This historical grounding will carry into next week, when we turn to neural networks and the metaphors (the brain, the network, the rhizome) we use to make these systems understandable.

From Wednesday through Friday, the class relocated to the library for workshop. Students engaged with a set of general-interest essays and scholarly articles that approach AI from cultural, economic, psychological, ethical, and literary angles:

• Sarah Roberts, “Your AI Is a Human”

• Michael Schrage, “Philosophy Eats AI”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Cindy Shan, “Does New ‘Cognify’ Tech Allow Prisoners to Complete Years of Social Rehabilitation in Minutes?”

Optional readings included Ajay Agrawal’s “Genius on Demand” and Olivia Guest et al.’s “Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies” for students interested in extending the conversation.

Looking ahead to next week, students will deliver short presentations on one reading or question that most challenged, unsettled, or clarified their thinking.

We will also publish our first student-authored guest essay in The AI Chronicles, which is designed to exemplify what public-facing scholarship on AI can look like for the next generation of learners! More details on that contribution are coming soon.

Questions, curiosities, and productive disagreements are always welcome. Our course is designed as an ongoing conversation and thoughtful engagement from beyond the classroom strengthens that work markedly. I encourage you to reach out directly to share your thinking!