Syllabus

This syllabus is a living document, and readings might be adjusted as we go along. We’ll let you know in advance, but please check back each week.

Unit 1: AI in Code and Culture

Week 1 (January 16) | Introduction to AI

Required materials

Oziewicz, Marek. 2017. pp. 1-9, 15-21 from “Speculative Fiction.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, March. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.78. PDF on Canvas.
Ford, Paul. 2015. Sections 1 and 2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.2 from “What Is Code?” Bloomberg.com. June 11, 2015. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/.
Galloway, Alexander. 2019. “Are Algorithms Biased?” cultureandcommunication.org. January 26, 2019. http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/are-algorithms-biased.

Optional materials

Hardt, Moritz. 2014. “How Big Data Is Unfair.” Medium. September 26, 2014. https://medium.com/@mrtz/how-big-data-is-unfair-9aa544d739de.
Dickey, Megan Rose. 2017. “Algorithmic Accountability.” TechCrunch. April 30, 2017. https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/30/algorithmic-accountability/.

Week 2 (January 23) | Reality, or That Which Is Quantifiable

Assignment: “Create a Dataset”

Required materials

Liu, Ken. 2012. “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.” PDF on Canvas.
Onuoha, Mimi. 2014. Browse project documentation for “The Library of Missing Datasets.” http://mimionuoha.com/the-library-of-missing-datasets/.
Harris, Jonathan. 2013. “Data Will Help Us.” number27.org. http://datawillhelp.us/.
Mattern, Shannon. 2018. “Databodies in Codespace.” Places Journal, 2018 (April). https://doi.org/10.22269/180417.

Optional materials

Keyes, Os. 2019. “Counting the Countless.” Real Life. 2019. https://reallifemag.com/counting-the-countless/.
Excerpt from Bowker, Geoffrey C, and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. Sorting Things out : Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Asimov, Isaac. 1942. “The Psychohistorians” from Foundation.

Week 3 (January 30) | Is Fairness the Same as Justice?

Guest lecture: Os Keyes

Required materials

LeGuin, Ursula K. 1993. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Jemisin, N. K. 2018. “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” in How Long ’til Black Future Month?
Keyes, Os, Jevan Hutson, and Meredith Durbin. 2019. “A Mulching Proposal: Analysing and Improving an Algorithmic System for Turning the Elderly into High-Nutrient Slurry.” Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA ’19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310433.

Optional materials

Hoffmann, Anna Lauren. 2019. “Where fairness fails: data, algorithms, and the limits of antidiscrimination discourse.” Information, Communication & Society, 22:7, 900-915, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2019.1573912.
Keyes, Os, Josephine Hoy, and Margaret Drouhard. 2019. “Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI.” Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300569.

Unit 2: Political Economy

Week 4 (February 6) | Sameness, or Minimalist Malaise

Due: “Create a Dataset”

Assignment: “Op-ed From the Future”

Required materials

Chiang, Ted. 2002. “Liking What You See: A Documentary.”
Jakober, Marie. 2008. “The Continuum of Meaning: A Reflection on Speculative Fiction and Society.” In The Influence of Imagination: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy as Agents of Social Change. Jefferson, N.C.: Mcfarland & Co. PDF on Canvas.
Chayka, Kyle. 2018. “Style Is an Algorithm.” Vox. April 17, 2018. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/17/17219166/fashion-style-algorithm-amazon-echo-look.
Shane, Janelle. 2019. “We Shouldn’t Bother the Feral Scooters of Central Park”. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/future-scooters-central-park.html.

Optional materials

Chayka, Kyle. 2016. “Welcome to Airspace: How Silicon Valley Helps Spread the Same Sterile Aesthetic across the World.” The Verge. August 3, 2016. https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification.
Seaver, Nick. 2018. “Captivating Algorithms: Recommender Systems as Traps.” Journal of Material Culture, December, 135918351882036. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183518820366.
Carr, David. 2013. “Giving Viewers What They Want.” The New York Times, February 25, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-to-guarantee-its-popularity.html.

Week 5 (February 13) | Surveillance

Required materials

Liu, Ken. 2015. “The Perfect Match.”
Harvey, Adam. 2017. “CV Dazzle.” https://cvdazzle.com/
“The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America.” 2016. Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology. https://www.perpetuallineup.org/.
Burrington, Ingrid. 2018. “A Non-Exhaustive Taxonomy of Tools of Data-Driven Policing.” Urban Omnibus. November 28, 2018. https://urbanomnibus.net/2018/06/non-exhaustive-taxonomy-tools-data-driven-policing/.

Optional materials

“Algorithmic Justice League.” https://www.ajlunited.org/.
Excerpt from Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lee, Crystal and Zong, Jonathan. 2019. “Consent is Not an Ethical Rubber Stamp.” Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/consent-facial-recognition-data-privacy-technology.html

February 20 | Presidents’ Day

Week 6 (February 27) | Hidden Labor, Invisible Infrastructure

Due: “Op-ed From the Future”

Required materials

Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2005. Never Let Me Go.
Roberts, Sarah T. 2019. Chapter 2 “Understanding Commercial Content Moderation” from Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media. Yale University Press.
Crawford, Kate, and Vladan Joler. 2018. Consider the chart (reading the essay is not required) in “Anatomy of an AI System.” 2018. https://anatomyof.ai/.

Optional materials

Irani, Lilly C., and M. Six Silberman. 2013. “Turkopticon: Interrupting Worker Invisibility in Amazon Mechanical Turk.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’13. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470742.
Newton, Casey. 2019. “The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America.” The Verge. February 25, 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona.
Excerpt from Hicks, Marie. 2018. Programmed Inequality : How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing. Cambridge, (Mass.): The MIT Press.
Excerpt from Gray, Mary and Suri, Siddharth. 2019. Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass.

Week 7 (March 5) | Capitalism Ex Machina

Assignment: “Teachable Machine”

Required materials

Park, Seonghwan. 2019. “Readymade Bodhisattva.”
Chiang, Ted. 2017. “Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear.” BuzzFeed News. December 18, 2017. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway.
Taylor, Astra. 2019. “The Automation Charade.” Logic Magazine. July 22, 2019. https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/.
O’Connell, Mark. 2016. “Letter of Recommendation: The Useless Machine.” The New York Times, August 31, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-useless-machine.html.

Optional materials

Chiang, Ted. 2002. “Seventy-Two Letters.”
Chen, J.S. 2018. “Tech Workers Need to Keep Organizing.” Jacobinmag.Com. Jacobin Magazine. 2018. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/tech-worker-organizing-google-union-walkout.

Unit 3: AI and Intersecting Identities

Week 8 (March 12) | Race

Guest lecture: Ruha Benjamin (pre-recorded)

Due: “Teachable Machine”

Assignment: Final Project Proposal

Required materials

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. 2008. “AH.” yhchang.com. 2008. https://www.yhchang.com/AH_V.html.
‌Gilliard, Chris. 2019. “Friction-Free Racism.” Real Life. October 15, 2019. https://reallifemag.com/friction-free-racism/.
Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Chapter 3 “Coded Exposure” from Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Books.

Optional materials

Excerpt from Jerng, Mark C. 2018. Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction. New York: Fordham University Press.
Angwin, Julia, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, and Lauren Kirchner. 2016. “Machine Bias.” ProPublica. May 23, 2016. https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing.
Excerpt from Safiya Umoja Noble. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: Data Discrimination in the Age of Google. New York: New York University Press.

March 14-23 | Spring Recess

Week 9 (March 26) | Gender

Due: Final Project Proposal

Required materials

Morley, Madeleine. 2020. “What Would a Feminist Alexa Look, or Rather Sound, Like?” AIGA Eye on Design. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/what-would-a-feminist-alexa-look-or-rather-sound-like/
Edmonds, Samantha. 2019. “Reading Feminist Futurism in the Age of the ‘Female’ Virtual Assistant.” Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/reading-feminist-futurism-in-the-age-of-the-female-virtual-assistant/.
Geffen, Sasha. 2019. “Spoken For.” Real Life. https://reallifemag.com/spoken-for/.
Keyes, Os. 2018. “The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2 (CSCW): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274357.‌

Optional materials

Jonze, Spike. 2013. Her.
Bivens, Rena. “The Gender Binary Will Not Be Deprogrammed: Ten Years of Coding Gender on Facebook.” New Media & Society 19, no. 6 (June 2017): 880–98. doi:10.1177/1461444815621527.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women : The Reinvention of Nature.

Week 10 (April 2) | Class

Required materials

Clifton, Brian, Sam Lavigne, and Francis Tseng. 2017. “White Collar Crime Risk Zones.” thenewinquiry.com. https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com/.
“Automating Inequality” Interview with Virginia Eubanks. The Open Mind. December 5, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avxm7JYjk8M.
Misra, Tanvi. 2018. “The Rise of ‘Digital Poorhouses’.” CityLab. February 15, 2018. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-of-digital-poorhouses/552161/.

Optional materials

LeGuin, Ursula. 1974. The Dispossessed.
Excerpt from Virginia Eubanks. 2018. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.
Ludwig, Sarah. 2015. “Credit Scores in America Perpetuate Racial Injustice. Here’s How.” The Guardian. October 13, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/13/your-credit-score-is-racist-heres-why.
Matsakis, Louise. 2019. “How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong.” WIRED. July 29, 2019. https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/.

Unit 4: Literacy, Subjectivity, Self

Week 11 (April 9) | The Social Self

Required materials

Netflix. Black Mirror. “Nosedive” (S3E1).
Chiang, Ted. 2013. “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.”‌
Horning, Rob. 2017. “Sick of Myself.” Real Life. May 17, 2017. https://reallifemag.com/sick-of-myself/.
Matias, J. Nathan. 2017. “The Real Name Fallacy.” https://coralproject.net/blog/the-real-name-fallacy/
Reeve, Elspeth. 2016. “The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens.” The New Republic. February 17, 2016. https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens.

Optional materials

Haimson, Oliver L., and Anna Lauren Hoffmann. 2016. “Constructing and Enforcing ‘Authentic’ Identity Online: Facebook, Real Names, and Non-Normative Identities.” First Monday 21 (6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i6.6791.

Week 12 (April 16) | Bodies and Synthetic Media

Required materials

Liu, Ken. 2011. “Simulacrum.” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/simulacrum/.
Link, Kelly. 2015. “The New Boyfriend”; “Two Houses”; “Valley of Girls”
Cole, Samantha. 2018. “Deepfakes Were Created As a Way to Own Women’s Bodies—We Can’t Forget That.” Vice. June 18, 2018. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/nekqmd/deepfake-porn-origins-sexism-reddit-v25n2.

Optional materials

Brandom, Russell. 2019. “Deepfake Propaganda Is Not a Real Problem.” The Verge. March 5, 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18251736/deepfake-propaganda-misinformation-troll-video-hoax.
Excerpt from Hayles, N. Katherine. 2010. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Week 13 (April 23) | Machine Yearning

Due: Final Project

Required materials

Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. 2013. Chapter 1. Beyond Radical Design? from Speculative Everything : Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The MIT Press.

Optional materials

Hall, Louisa. 2015. Speak.
Hong, Sun-ha. 2019. “Smart Machines & Enlightenment Dreams.” March 26, 2019. https://sunhahong.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/enlightenment-dreams-1/.
boyd, danah. 2018. “You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You?” http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html.
Agre, Philip. 1997. Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html