Faculty & Staff
The Art of AI
In the new course AI in Context, faculty from across the University teach AI through the lens of philosophy, music, literature, and other domains.
The use of generative AI by students in higher education is fraught with controversy. With a bit of prompting, programs like ChatGPT can write code, conduct research, and even produce entire essays. An anonymous survey of more than 6,300 college students found that almost two-thirds of them use or have used AI as part of their studies.*
Critics have cited the threat of cheating, as well as weakened critical thinking, as reasons why ChatGPT and similar tools should be banned from schools. But others, like Columbia Engineering’s Adam Cannon, believe students need to be educated about the technology so they can make better decisions about its use.
“The genie is out of the bottle, so we need to learn how to accommodate generative AI into our classes and into education more broadly,” says Cannon, senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. “If we can educate them about not just the technology but also the societal impacts of the technology, then they will not only be better and more innovative users but also more responsible users.”
An interdisciplinary course designed to be accessible to all majors
This fall, Cannon and faculty from Engineering and Arts and Sciences launched AI in Context, a course that covers the history, development, applications, and societal impacts of AI. The course consists of five modules, each taught by a faculty member from a different part of the University. It offers students an opportunity to explore the potential of the technology in different contexts.
“No matter what our students major in, they’ll need the analytical tools to ask what AI is and how we should relate to it,” says Katja Vogt, professor of philosophy at Columbia and co-founder of the ValuesLab. “These questions require collaboration between fields, including philosophy.”
Eight years ago, Cannon started an interdisciplinary course, Computing in Context, that has proved immensely popular with students. The course explores elementary computing concepts, along with use of computing in disciplines like the social sciences, economics and finance, and digital humanities.
Similarly, AI in Context starts with the history of intelligence beginning in the 1900s and the advent of AI in the 1950s, taught by Chris Wiggins, associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia. Vishal Misra, professor of computer science, then describes the evolution of neural networks and large language models. Vogt covers philosophy of AI, with topics such as fairness, alignment, and biases.
“As a philosopher, I’m interested in values, language, and the mind. Applied to AI, this means I’m interested in what it would mean for AI to be aligned with values and whether this is possible,” she explains. “In class, we discuss this with regard to a range of values — some ethical or moral, some concerned with language and thought: fairness, truth, accuracy, understanding, interpretability, and more.”
Students also work on a semester-long generative AI project led by Lydia Chilton, assistant professor of computer science. Seth Cluett, a lecturer in music, will close out the course with faculty members Kirkwood Adams and Maria Baker from Columbia’s Writing Center. These modules will delve into the use of AI in creative fields.
The course is designed to be accessible to all majors, in the hope that students outside of Engineering will attend. Cannon foresees AI in Context becoming a mainstay course at Columbia that will evolve as the technology continues to rapidly advance.
“We're going to learn a lot from [the first cohort] while they learn from us. It's going to be as much an education for the faculty involved as the students,” he says. “We think that this is a technology that's going to grow in its importance and impact on our culture and society, and so it needs to be incorporated into a 21st century education.”
*Von Garrel, J., Mayer, J. Artificial Intelligence in studies — use of ChatGPT and AI-based tools among students in Germany. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10, 799 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02304-7
Lead Photo Caption: Vishal Misra, professor of computer science, teaches a module describing the evolution of neural networks and large language models
Photo Credit: Chris Taggart/Columbia Engineering