Design of Learning Environments (301-0-20)

Topic

AI, Equity, & Public Education

Instructors

Sepehr Vakil

Meeting Info

Annenberg Hall 303: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Over the past year, we have been inundated with the hype, excitement, curiosity, and concern regarding the advent of generative AI technologies. Education, both K-12 and higher education, continues to be a focal and highly contested use case of AI. Will AI technologies transform public education? The future of learning? And if so, in what ways will the changes occur? What are the societal, political, and environmental costs, and how do we simultaneously hold the harms of AI alongside its potential to improve society?

To address these questions, in this course we will explore the origins and development of AI as a field, placing the current discussions of generative AI technologies like ChatGPT in historical context. Early founders of the field have defined Artificial Intelligence as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs" (McCarthy, 2007). While the field of AI is the result of decades of academic research at the intersection of many disciplines, including computer science, mathematics, cognitive science, learning sciences, engineering, and neurology, it is also very important to recognize the outsized influence of the technology industry in the current AI innovation ecosystem. A tech industry, we note, that is driven by its own interests as well as those tied to the objectives of US global competitiveness and geopolitical dominance.

In this course, we will ask and think together: How do the political and historical conditions from which AI innovation emerged and is located within set the stage for current discussions about AI and education? What agendas are being pursued and prioritized? And ultimately how should we be thinking about the possibilities and dangers of AI technologies for learning?