Course Schedule

Tuesday, August 26 (in person) – Introduction to the course and to each other

Introductions
Course overview
AI community agreement discussion
Perceptions of AI discussion

Tuesday, September 2 (zoom) – What is AI? Technical Perspectives

Buschek, Christo, and Jer Thorp. “Models All the Way Down.” Knowing Machines. https://knowingmachines.org/models-all-the-way.
Muhlbauer, Zach. “About AI.” Teach@CUNY AI Toolkit. https://aitoolkit.commons.gc.cuny.edu/about-ai/.
Ortiz, Santiago, et. al. Moebio Mind Project. Moebio Labs. https://moebio.com/.
Teaching Critical AI Literacies: “Explainer” and Resources for the New Semester
Webb, Michael. “A Generative AI Primer.” Artificial Intelligence, 14 Aug. 2024, https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2024/08/14/generative-ai-primer/.
Wolfram, Stephen. “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?” Stephen Wolfram Writings, Feb. 2023. writings.stephenwolfram.com, https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/.

Tuesday, September 9 (in person) – What is AI? Philosophical and Epistemological Perspectives

JD Porter. “Talking AI.” n.d. (in group library).
Alkhatib, Ali. “Defining AI.” 6 December 2024, https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai.
Altieri, Charles. “Modes of Intelligence.” Poetics Today, vol. 45, no. 2, Jun. 2024, pp. 207–14. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-11092791.
Crawford, Kate. “Introduction.” The Atlas of AI: Power Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, Yale University Press, 2021. (e-reserve [link in group library])
Crawford, Kate and Joler, Vladan. “Anatomy of an AI System.” Anatomy of an AI System, 2018, http://www.anatomyof.ai.
Hayot, Eric. “Only Persons Intend.” Poetics Today, vol. 45, no. 2, Jun. 2024, pp. 275–81. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-11092898.
Strickland, Eliza. “The Great Chatbot Debate: Do They Really Understand?” IEEE Spectrum. 10 April 2025. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-chatbot. (YouTube video)

Tuesday, September 16 (zoom) – What is AI? Playing with and understanding AI

Guest Speakers: Stefano Morello, Zach Muhlbauer, and Stephen Zweibel

Narayanan, Arvind and Kapoor, Sayash. “AI as Normal Technology.” Knight First Amendment Institute, 15 April 2025, http://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology.
Playing With Unicorns: AI Dungeon and Citizen NLP – Minh Hua and Rita Raley
Crawshaw, David. “How I Program with LLMs.” Ars Technica, 8 Jan. 2025, https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-i-program-with-llms/.
Salter, Anastasia. “DSC #23: Dawn of the Coasting AI.” Data Sitters Club, 25 Aug. 2025, https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/dsc23.html.
The Chaos of AI Agents. Directed by Emergent Garden, 2025. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YYjPs8t8MI.

Tuesday, September 23 – NO CLASS

Tuesday, September 30 (zoom) – Critical Toolkit: Surveillance Capitalism, Platform Capitalism, and Data Capture

Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. “On the Very Real Dangers of the Artificial Intelligence Hype Machine.” https://lithub.com/on-the-very-real-dangers-of-the-artificial-intelligence-hype-machine/ 13 May 2025.
Edwards, Benj. “Meta’s new AI image generator was trained on 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos.” Ars Technica. 6 December 2023.
Edwards, Benj. “Meta’s New AI Image Generator Was Trained on 1.1 Billion Instagram and Facebook Photos.” Ars Technica, 6 Dec. 2023, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/metas-new-ai-image-generator-was-trained-on-1-1-billion-instagram-and-facebook-photos/.
Mökander, Jakob, et al. “Auditing Large Language Models: A Three-Layered Approach.” AI and Ethics, vol. 4, no. 4, Nov. 2024, pp. 1085–115. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-023-00289-2.
Srnicek, Nick. Platform capitalism (Introduction, Chapter 3)
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Ch 18 “A Coup from Above”)

Tuesday, October 7 (zoom) – Critical Toolkit: Critical Race Studies

Bender, Emily M., et al. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜.” Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency [New York, NY, USA], FAccT ’21, 2021, pp. 610–23. ACM Digital Library, https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.
Brown, Michelle Lee, et. al. “Relation-Oriented AI: Why Indigenous Protocols Matter for the Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/debates-in-the-digital-humanities-2023/section/98dc1c8f-8583-4428-ac84-17ff072bdcad#ch04.
Hao, Karen, et. al. “AI Colonialism.” MIT Technology Review. 19 April 2022.
Hundt, Andrew, et al. “Robots Enact Malignant Stereotypes.” Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency [New York, NY, USA], FAccT ’22, 2022, pp. 743–56. ACM Digital Library, https://doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533138.

Tuesday, October 14 – NO CLASS (Monday Schedule)

Tuesday, October 21 (zoom) – Critical Issues: Ed Tech, AI, and the University

Guest speaker: Luke Waltzer

Burke, Timothy. “Academia: Dispatches From the AI Front.” Substack newsletter. Eight by Seven, 8 May 2025, https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-dispatches-from-the-ai-front.
Conrad, Kathryn. “A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education.” Critical AI, vol. 2, no. 1, Apr. 2024. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-11205245. (log in through library)
Kirschenbaum, Matthew, and Rita Raley. “AI and the University as a Service.” PMLA, Oct. 2024, pp. 1–12. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1632/S003081292400052X.
Selwyn, Neil. “On the Limits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education.” Nordisk Tidsskrift for Pedagogikk Og Kritikk, vol. 10, no. 1, 1, Jan. 2024. pedagogikkogkritikk.no.
Seybold, Matt. “Against Technofeudal Education.” Substack newsletter. The American Vandal, 10 Jun. 2025, https://theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-technofeudal-education.
The Thought Project. “Teaching for the Age of AI.” https://www.gc.cuny.edu/news/teaching-age-ai. (Podcast)

Tuesday, October 28 (in-person) – Critical Issues: Environment and AI

Crawford, Kate. “Earth.” The Atlas of AI: Power Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, Yale University Press, 2021. (Library Access)
McMenamin, Lex. “ChatGPT Is Everywhere — Why Aren’t We Talking About Its Environmental Costs?” Teen Vogue, 7 May 2025, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/chatgpt-is-everywhere-environmental-costs-oped.
Hogan, Mél. “The Fumes of AI.” Critical AI, vol. 2, no. 1, Apr. 2024. Silverchair,
https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-11205231 . (Library Access)
Dawson, Ashely. “The Costs of the Cloud.” New York Review of Books. 27 September 2025. (PDF)
O’Donnell, James and Crownhart, Casey. “We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.” MIT Technology Review, 20 May 2025, https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech

Tuesday, November 4 (zoom) – Critical Issues: Writing and AI

Guinzburg, Amanda. “Diabolus Ex Machina.” Substack newsletter. Everything Is A Wave, 1 Jun. 2025, https://amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-ex-machina.
Dongmei Cheng, Mimi Li , and Tony Lee. “Leveraging ChatGPT for research writing: An exploration of ESL graduate students’ practices.” Computers and Composition 76 (2025). (PDF)
Zhaozhe Wang and Chaoran Wang. ” A posthumanist approach to AI literacy.” Computers and Composition 76 (2025). (PDF)
Greg Hlavaty, Heather Lindenman, and Travis Maynard. “All the attention, all the time: How first-year students experience writing in a horizontal digital ecosystem.” Computers and Composition 76 (2025). (PDF)

Recommended, but not required:

MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI Working Paper: Overview of the Issues, Statement of Principles, and Recommendations. July 2023.
“Writing in the age of AI with Lizzie Callaway and Scott Black.” The Virtual Jewel Box. 1 April 2025. https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/writing-in-the-age-of-ai-with-lizzie-callaway-and-scott-black/

ETA:

John R. Gallagher, “The Curious Question of AI-written Lists: Or, LLMs are Genre Machines.” John Gallagher’s Technology Newsletter. 18 July 2025. https://meresophistry.substack.com/p/the-curious-question-of-ai-written

Tuesday, November 11 (zoom) – Critical Issues – Art, Creativity, and AI

Bridle, James. “Inside the infinite imagination of a computer.” DAZED. 17 September 2018, https://www.dazeddigital.com/science-tech/article/41363/1/james-bridle-new-dark-age-artificial-intelligence.
Chayka, Kyle. “Is AI Art Stealing From Artists?“ The New Yorker. 10 February 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-ai-art-stealing-from-artists.
Kumar, Harsh, et. al. “Human Creativity in the Age of LLMs: Randomized Experiments on Divergent and Convergent Thinking.” Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 15 Feb 2025, pp. 1-18. arXiv.org, https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714198.
Maiberg, Emanuel. “AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums.” 404 Media. 17 June 2025, https://www.404media.co/ai-scraping-bots-are-breaking-open-libraries-archives-and-museums/.

Tuesday, November 18 (zoom) – AI in Film and TV

Choose 1:

2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick Productions, 1968.
Blade Runner. Directed by Ridley Scott, The Ladd Company / Shaw Brothers, 1982.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Directed by Stephen Speilberg, Warner Bros. Pictures / Dreamworks Pictures / Amblin Entertainment / Stanley Kubrick Productions, 2001.
Ex Machina. Directed by Alex Garland, Film4, DNA Films, 2014.
Her. Directed by Spike Jonze, Annapurna Pictures, 2013.
Black Mirror selected episodes (choose 1-2):
- “Be Right Back.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, season 2, episode 1, Zeppotron, 2013.
- “White Christmas.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, House of Tomorrow, 2014.
- “Hated in the Nation.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, season 3, episode 6, House of Tomorrow, 2016.
- “USS Callister.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, season 4, episode 1, House of Tomorrow, 2017.
- “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, season 5, episode 3, House of Tomorrow, 2019.
- “Plaything.” Black Mirror, created by Charlie Booker, season 7, episode 4, Broke & Bones, 2025.

Required Readings:

Zinman, Gregory. “The Replacements: AI in the Movies.” Criterion Collection. 10 August 2023, https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8225-the-replacements-ai-in-the-movies.
Murphy, Paula. AI in the Movies. Edinburgh University Press, 2024. Chapter 1 (PDF)

Tuesday, November 25 (zoom) – AI in Fiction

Primary Literature – Choose 1:

Kritzer, Naomi. “Cat Pictures Please.” Clarkesworld Magazine, January 2015, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel,” “Funes the Memorius,” and “On Exactitude in Science”

Critical Literature

Baudrillard, Jean “The Precession of Simulacra” pp 1-12; “The Orders of Simulacra” pp 92-102, 120-121; 146-147, 151-152 (text available here)

Project Check-in Due

Tuesday, December 2 (zoom) – Student Presentations / AI in Fiction Part 2

Primary Literature:

Chiang, Ted. The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Subterranean Press, 2010.
Wells, Martha. All Systems Red. Reactor, 2017.