Class Schedule

Focus: Where are we now with generative AI?

August 26 (in Person Class) 

Part 1) I'll introduce class information and teach you about the focused-reading notes you'll keep for your responses. We'll take a short survey to assess your interests and needs, if you have not already taken it.  For our first class, you should do the following readings/viewings?

• Watch Malcolm Gladwell's 30-minute interview with IBM's AI guru, Dario Gil. "Generative AI: A Conversation With Malcolm Gladwell and Dario Gil."

Orienting questions for class : how does what Gil and Gladwell discuss relate to your experience with AI? What are your concerns about your future work, after watching this (in particular, the parts of the video following 15:44 about the future of work)?

• Kinder, M. et. al. Brookings Institution, 10 October 2024. "Generative AI, The American Worker, and The Future of Work."

Orienting question for class: How do you think YOU can prepare in this class and elsewhere for a workplace where AI usage is not only common but demanded?

Part 2) After our discussion, I'll introduce you to the tasks ahead for next week, notably beginning your reading/viewing journal (much of your participation grade, 50% of your final grade in the course).

Slides from class can be found here.

Focus: When to use it? When not?

September 2 (in Person Class)

Be sure you have read and have journal entries for each of these by 9am, the day of class. You can see how the journal should look from this example I did for last week's reading/viewing. I will begin grading journals this week.

Discussion Partners tonight (AI generated!):
Group 1: Bijan, Caitlin, Dylan, Haley

Group 2: Jayden, Katie, Kenny, Mauricio
Group 3: Sean, Tierra, William

• Bogost, I. "College Students Have Changed Forever." 17 August 2025, The Atlantic. (I will provide a copy & gift link).

• Mollick, E. "15 Times to Use AI, 5 Times Not To" (Blog post)

• Sano-Franchini, J. et al. "Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies." (blog post/manifesto).

• Essid, J. "The CCCC and Refusing AI: A Rebuttal" (blog post).

Slides from class can be found here.

Focus: Prompt Engineering

September 9  (class via Zoom)

At home, begin a prompt-engineering worksheet. Make a copy and have it ready by class. Also copy it into your journal. Finally, be sure you have read and have journal entries for each of these by 9am, the day of class. 

• Mollick, E. "A Guide to Prompting AI (For What It Is Worth)" (blog post)

• Giray, L. "Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT: A Guide for Academic Writers." 

We will use NotebookLM (Google account required) and/or Research Rabbit AI Tool (requires free account) in class to find other articles of interest. Check to see if you can access these tools at home before class.

Focus: Ethics & AI

September 16 (in Person Class)

Be sure you have read and have journal entries for each of these by 9am, the day of class.

• Asimov, A. The Three Laws of Robotics (from Wikipedia).

• Prisznyák, A. "Ethical AI." Read Part 1 (163-166), Part 3 (167-169), Table 5 (174). Skim the rest as needed.

• Yujie Sun, Y. et al. "AI Hallucination: Towards a Comprehensive Classification of Distorted Information in Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content." Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11, Article number: 1278 (2024). Pay close attention to the discussion section near the end, in particular.

Our goal: to train an AI to answer questions ethically, using criteria your group develops for one AI. Each group will try a different commercial AI for this purpose. Groups will each give a short presentation of their findings

Focus: How Quickly is AI Evolving?

September 23 (class via Zoom)

Be sure you have read and have journal entries for each of these by 9am, the day of class.

• Roose, K "Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I." (I'll provide a a copy).

• Reisner A. "Chatbots are Cheating on their Benchmark Tests."  (I will enable a gift link over the weekend. It expires fast, so go in and listen to the podcast). I can provide a PDF copy.

• Mollick, E. "Prophecies of the Flood" (blog post), 

• Essid, J. "What is The Flood? Will It Hit a Floodwall?" (blog post).