Honors 360 Sections 001 & 002

Course Schedule

The schedule of readings will almost certainly change during the course of the semester, depending on the interests in the class. We may not discuss all readings in class, but you should be prepared to discuss the readings if and when they come up in class discussions.

Week 1 (Aug 26 – Sept 1): Course Intro: How did we get here?
Background readings (Wiener, Turing)
Discussion Post 1

Week 2 (Sept 3 – 8): What if we succeed?
Labor Day—classes do not meet Sept 2
Human Compatible Chapters 1 and 2
Essay 1: AI in your field due Sunday Sept 8

Week 3 (Sept 9 – 15): Superintelligence
HC Chapter 3
Form Presentation Groups
Discussion Post 2

Week 4 (Sept 16 – 22): AI Dangers
HC Chapters 4 and 5
Discussion Post 3

Week 5 (Sept 23 – 29): AI Debates
HC chapters 6 and 7
Discussion Post 4

Week 6 (Sept 30 – Oct 6): Beneficial AI
HC Chapters 8 – 10
Group Preliminary report with preliminary sources due Sunday Oct 6

Week 7 (Oct 7 – 13):  Contexts: AI and Protein Folding
Callaway, E. ‘It will change everything’: Nature 588, 203-204 (2020) 
doi: https://doi-org.mutex.gmu.edu/10.1038/d41586-020-03348-4
Saplakoglu, Y. How AI Revolutionized Protein Science but Didn't End It Quanta (June 26, 2024)
Discussion Post 5

Week 8 (Oct 15 – 20) Contexts: AI Risks
Hanna, A. & Bender, E. "AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype" Scientific American (Aug 10, 2023)
Dzieza, J. "AI is a Lot of Work" The Verge (June 20, 2023)
Bender, et a. "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" ACM Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency Conference 2021
https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922
(Groups 1-2 articles and questions)
Discussion Post 6
Individual Progress Reports due Sunday Oct 20

Fall break—classes do not meet Oct 14)

Week 9 (Oct 21 – 27) Contexts AI Organizations
DAIR (https://www.dair-institute.org/)
AI4ALL (https://ai-4-all.org/)
Stanford HAI (https://hai.stanford.edu/)
GMU MARC (https://marc.gmu.edu/)
(Groups 3 - 4 articles and questions)
Discussion post 7

Week 10 (Oct 28 – Nov 3) Your Turn
Presentations 1 and 2
(Groups 5 – 6 articles and questions)
Discussion Post 8

Week 11 (Nov 4 – 10)
Presentation 3
(Groups 7 - 8 articles and questions)
Discussion Post 9
Tuesday Nov 5: Election Day. Classes do not meet

Week 12 (Nov 11 – 17)
Presentations 4 and 5
(Groups 9 - 10 articles and questions)
Discussion Post 10

Week 13 (Nov 18 – 24)
Presentations 6 and 7
Discussion Post 11

Week 14 (Nov 25 – 26)
Presentation 8
Discussion Post 12

Thanksgiving break: Wednesday Nov 26–Sun Dec 1)

Week 15 (Dec 2 – 8)
Presentations 9 and 10
Discussion Post 13

Last day of classes: Monday Dec 9
Essay 2 (individual essay on group topic) due Dec 13

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