AI. Culture. Creativity.

This course explores the intentional design of
socio-technical systems through the use of AI as a
design material. Students will prototype AI
projects through ethical and sociocultural lenses.


In exploring systems-thinking and artificial
decision-making, the course draws on natural
systems and different forms of natural
intelligence and knowing to imagine new
technological worlds and new dimensions to our
own.

Students will learn critical prototyping
techniques and AI basic concepts. The course will
engage in ethical design conversations rooted in
the challenges of AI: transparency,
accountability, and inclusion of - and impact on -
a multitude of lived experiences.

This course will use the social tech design tool
poieto, as well as generative art and prototyping
tools like Wekinator, Runway-ML, Teachable
Machine, Processing, and p5/ML5 to craft projects
throughout the semester. As part of critical
prototyping explorations, students will be
introduced to microcontrollers. Students will hear
from experts in the AI Art and AI Industries as
well as poieto community members sharing work
crafted with the poieto tool. Students will
produce two individual AI Art projects, and a
shared group project.