CoursesWhose safety? Whose security? Communication Approaches to AI (New)
COMM 2520

Whose safety? Whose security? Communication Approaches to AI (New)

New technologies (the personal computer! the internet! social media!) all produced a range of emotional responses from excitement to fear. All that access! All that freedom! But could regular users be trusted? In many ways, contemporary debates about the promises and perils of artificial intelligence (AI) are no different. This course gives students tools to navigate the hype about AI’s current harms and potential dangers by historicizing the debate about safety and innovation in technology.

This course turns to an interdisciplinary range of literature that explores the sociology, anthropology, history, and politics of technological debates. We draw on approaches in political communication, science communication, and journalism to explore how technological innovation is designed, how its promises and perils are communicated to a nontechnical audience, and how it is ultimately governed in the public interest. Readings and virtual visits from Ruha Benjamin, Saifiya Noble, Timnit Gebru, and other scholars and technologists working at the intersection of social justice and public interest technology will enhance our understanding as we explore different flashpoints of domestic and foreign policy concerning technology and its deployment. Over the course of the semester, students will explore how technological innovation reproduces existing hierarchies of value, central among these existing hierarchies of safety and security. The course questions the monopoly the state holds on safety and the provision of security. We pay close attention to citizen-led and community-driven efforts to protect individuals and groups, like peer-to-peer protocols, mesh networks, and other forms of technical decentralization, autonomy, and care. No prerequisites are required but an interest in AI, the effects of data extraction on marginalized groups, community activism, decentralization, and/or policing and surveillance would be appropriate.

Instructors: Felicity Hannah Paxton and Rayya El Zein