Download Humans + Machines: - Tulane School of Architecture

Tulane University
ATCS6800 (3cr) / SISE4952 (3cr)
Shawn L. Rickenbacker, e mail: [email protected]
Meeting Time: Tuesday
Humans + Machines:
The Future Social Impact of Artificial Intelligence
Topic:
The relationship between humans and machines is evolving at a tremendous pace. The most recent of this evolution
is the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. According to Wikipedia; Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence exhibited
by machines. In computer science, an ideal "intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its
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environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal. Colloquially, the term "artificial
intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds,
such as "learning" and "problem solving". Just about every professional field, companies, governments, and
individuals alike have all embarked on paths leading toward a future where Artificial Intelligence is expected to
enhance our existence, through increased capacity for better research, design, decision making, and ultimately
outcomes.
Course Description:
There is little doubt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of many promising and exciting technologies that are
shaping humanity’s relationship with its future. AI’s influential rise is responsible for very advanced systems both
large and small. Many of these we interface with on a daily basis, such as search engines, speech recognition
technologies (Alexa, Siri and Ok Google), photo tagging, as well as more sophisticated systems, like self-driving cars,
automated design, and human and capital investment models. These systems learn to perform these and other
historically human tasks through large dataset libraries and machine learning algorithms. Recently, we have also
witnessed some unsettling failures by these very systems that can be attributed to their artificial intelligence. AI
models have, and continue to mistakenly exhibit, gender and racial biases with photo sorting and urban services,
unfair employment and educational performance rating models, and flawed credit ratings, to name a few. Prominent
members of the technology and design community such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have also
cited concerns and warned against these and other potential AI risks to humans. These and other real world
examples will serve as case studies toward examining a less than perfect AI.
Course:
Through a critical lens the course will ask, how, why and through what methods can we monitor, augment and teach
future AI to avoid implicit bias and other unintended errors? Lectures, readings, videos and real time AI testing will
provide an introduction to the current methods and models of training machines and artificial intelligence, and will
allow us to examine their possible effects on society. Student teams will research, explore new methods, and offer
proposals through design thinking, futurecasting and design fictions, to counter these and other plausible social and
cultural problems AI may represent.