COURSE OVERVIEW 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is suddenly upon us, crashing like a wave over global culture. What are its implications for humanity, and especially for the disciplines known as the humanities, which study, critically assess, and promote the most valued expressions of human culture?  

This course will draw upon readings from a variety of perspectives, including recent arguments by proponents and detractors of AI as well as texts from fields including science and technology studies, cultural and media studies, political economy, philosophy, educational sociology and anthropology, and the long tradition of humanistic reflection on human nature and technological change. It will bring these perspectives to bear on questions like these:  

• How should we conceive of the relationship of AI to humans: for instance, is it the latest technological extension of humanity, a thoroughgoing rewiring of society and/or psychology, a mirror of present social or political-economic conditions, a product of extractive-capitalist dynamics, an artificial companion, or a doppelganger or “evil twin” whose goals are suspect and outside of our control? What are AI’s potential benefits and costs, including social as well as ecological costs, and how can the latter be mitigated? 

• How does AI in all its forms challenge concepts of “the human” and practices within the humanities? How does the possibility of machine intelligence, indeed super-intelligence, challenge us to rethink the virtues and limitations of humanistic learning, including skills such as reading, writing, critical thinking, oral storytelling, and the creative and performative arts? 

• Given generative AI’s growing capacity to duplicate what passes for human thought and creativity, what it is that is distinctly human that cannot be replicated by machines? Are there aspects of our lived experience as biologically embodied, ecologically and culturally embedded social creatures, that can neither be understood nor reconstructed by LLMs? If so, how are these affected by current AI development? Do they need protection, support, or revaluing and/or revisioning?  

• What motivations and goals are guiding the present development of AI technologies, and which ones (if any) should be guiding that development? What are the viable alternative ways of developing such technologies? 

We will undertake exercises with AI and examine efforts to regulate, steer, or pause AI development, as well as those that use AI for a variety of purposes, including for social justice and environmental change. 

FORMAT & EXPECTATIONS 

Since AI is so new and rapidly evolving, the format of the course will be primarily workshop-style, not lecture-style. Students, instructors, and occasional guests will work together  

• to critically engage these new technologies, sharing their own experiences and perspectives (and those of peers, accessed through extracurricular “fieldwork”) in seminar-style discussion, writing, and media; 

• to read, discuss and debate, and write and publicly communicate about a range of critical perspectives on AI and the humanities (and arts), including those that prioritize public accountability, social and ecological justice, and ontological pluralism; 

• and to develop a deepened understanding of the role of AI in society and the ways in which they may challenge and strengthen our appreciation of what it means to be human in a more-than-human world.  

Discussions, in-class reading and writing exercises, quizzes, and scaffolded writing assignments will be complemented by applied or creative projects in which students will be tasked with conducting field research and/or collaboratively communicating a clear perspective on “AI and the humanities” in a public (online or offline) venue using artistic and/or humanistic methodologies.  

Key goals will include to build a sense of classroom community and to connect with the work of the Digital Democracies Institute (as well as SFU’s Institute for the Humanities, among others) as a hub of creative thinking on some of the most important issues of our time. The class will be guided by the DDI Data Fluencies 2.0 project’s three “streams” of activity: “Understanding AI,” “Reimagining AI,” and “Teaching Multivocal AI,” with a keen eye on the sociotechnical imaginaries informing much AI development and the social justice impacts of its dominant forms. For instance, in resonance with the second of these, “Reimagining AI,” the applied project will “combine critical inquiry with creative practice” (2b) and “offer[…] young adults compelling pathways to civic participation and data fluencies through interdisciplinary research and media production” (2a). It is hoped that some students may later become part of the “Humanities and Multivocal AI” stream of graduate study that the DDI plans to develop.  

Search for a new outline