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As we delegate more to artificial intelligence (AI) and integrate AI more in societal decision-making processes, we must find answers to how we can ensure AI systems are safe, follow ethical principles, and align with the creator's intent. Increasingly, many AI experts across academia and industry believe there is an urgent need for both technical and societal progress across AI alignment, ethics, and governance to understand and mitigate risks from increasingly capable AI systems and ensure that their contributions benefit society as a whole. Intro to AI Safety explores these questions in lectures with targeted readings, weekly quizzes, and group discussions. We are looking at the capabilities and limitations of current and future AI systems to understand why it is hard to ensure the reliability of existing AI systems. We will cover ongoing research efforts that tackle these questions, ranging from studies in reinforcement learning and computer vision to natural language processing. We will study work in interpretability, robustness, and governance of AI systems - to name a few. Basic knowledge about machine learning helps but is not required. View the full syllabus at http://tinyurl.com/42rb2sfv. Enrollment is by application only. Apply online at https://forms.gle/v8msM8nJ5FgeEHx1A by 9:00 PM PDT on Saturday, March 16, 2024.

The world is changing in contradictory ways. Emerging technology, the evolving geopolitical economy, and ecological challenges present opportunities but also cascading risks. The pathway from our current destructive and extractive economy towards a more regenerative economy is unclear. There is a stark tension between gigascale opportunities such as AI, fusion energy, nanotech, quantum tech, space colonization, and biomanufacturing on the one hand, and degrowth necessities such as rethinking growth and using less resources on the other. This tension is steeped in political choices constrained by industrial power dynamics and conditioned by inequality. To what extent do visions and incentives align across industry, government, and social movements? What would the choice to scale or descale entail in each case - and are they mutually exclusive? The course introduces empirically driven systems thinking with in-depth modules on both emerging tech and degrowth, and scenario-based tech foresight. We combine the tools of technology foresight, gaming, scenarios, speculative fiction, and worldbuilding, exploring and assessing utopian or dystopian trends, visions, and projects (e.g. the Eden project, biomanufacturing at scale, smart cities, the Metaverse, generation spaceships, space colonization, human longevity, mega-disruptive startups, global health governance, radical longtermism, and religious `heavens'). The goal of the course is to gain clarity on the innovation boundaries within which the next 50 years might develop. The course prepares students to become disruptors of governance principles, strategies, and leadership of corporations, philanthropies, economies, and civilizations.

The global risk environment is changing. Seemingly distinct large-scale risks affect what we now realize are mutually interdependent human, socio-technical, and ecological systems. As a result, consequences are more catastrophic, and costs are set to accelerate. How do we determine the top risks of this decade to prioritize actions, and how are both risks and actions likely to evolve and interact? This course investigates the data, methods, and insights mobilized by key actors such as corporations, governments, and academics to assess systemic risk, create future scenarios, and generate predictions. What are the track records of recognized systemic risk assessment and modeling toolkits? Going forward, how can we get better at risk prevention and mitigation? This year, the course will focus on combined risks from the environmental, health, and emerging tech domains. The key objective is to quickly learn relevant vocabularies (risk, tech, and futurist) by engaging with both traditional and emerging assessment methods, in order to discover how to shape positive societal outcomes in the next decade and beyond. The course prepares students for key roles in the assessment, management, and prediction of risks, technologies, markets, industries, infrastructures, and futures. People with these skills can affect the governance principles, strategies, and leadership of corporations, philanthropies, states, economies, and entire societies.

Independent research. Student develops own project with supervision by an STS faculty affiliate. Students must email Prof. Edwards with brief project description and name of faculty supervisor. May be repeated for credit.

Every unit of credit is understood to represent three hours of work per week per term and is to be agreed upon between the student and the faculty member. Instructor consent required. Please contact the department for a permission number.

Students obtain internship in a relevant research or industrial activity to enhance their professional experience consistent with their degree program and area of concentration. Prior to enrolling students must get internship approved by the STS Program Director. At the end of the quarter, a one-page final report must be supplied documenting work done and relevance to degree program. Meets the requirements for Curricular Practical Training for students on F-1 visas. Student is responsible for arranging own internship. Limited to declared STS majors only. Course may be repeated twice. Instructor consent required. Please contact the department for a permission number.

The Science Technology and Society (STS) Program has a student journal, Intersect, that has been publishing STS student papers for a number of years. This course involves learning about how to serve as an editor of a peer-reviewed journal, while serving as one of the listed editors of Intersect. Entirely operated online, the journal uses a work-flow management to help with the submission process, peer-review, editing, and publication. Student editors learn by being involved in the publishing process, from soliciting manuscripts to publishing the journal's annual issue, while working in consultation with the instructor. Students will also learn about current practices and institutional frameworks around open access and digital publishing.

From texts to techne, from artifacts to discourses on science and technology, this course is an examination of how Black people in this society have engaged with the mutually consitutive relationships that endure between humans and technologies. We will focus on these engagements in vernacular cultural spaces, from storytelling traditions to music and move to ways academic and aesthetic movements have imagined these relationships. Finally, we will consider the implications for work with technologies in both school and community contexts for work in the pursuit of social and racial justice.

This is a required monthly meeting for STS Honors students.