Special Subject in Media Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds great promise as a technology to enhance digital productivity, physical interactions, overall well-being, and the human experience. To enable the true impact of AI, these systems will need to be grounded in real-world data modalities, from language-only systems to vision, audio, sensors, medical data, music, art, smell, and taste. This course will introduce the basic principles of AI (focusing on modern deep learning and foundation models) and how we can apply AI to novel real-world data modalities. In addition, we will introduce the principles of multimodal AI that can process many modalities at once, such as connecting language and multimedia, music and art, sensing and actuation, and more. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and a significant research component, this course will develop critical thinking skills and intuitions when applying AI to new data modalities, knowledge of recent technical achievements in AI, and a deeper understanding of the AI research process.

The emergence of transformer architectures in 2017 triggered a breakthrough in machine learning that today lets anyone create computer-generated essays, stories, pictures, music, videos, and programs from high-level prompts in natural language, all without the need to code. That has stimulated fervent discussion among educators about the implications of generative AI systems for curricula and teaching methods across a broad range of subjects. It has also raised questions of how to understand both these systems and the at times overstated claims made for them. This class will introduce the foundations of generative AI technology, and participants will explore new opportunities it enables for K–12 education. It will also describe and explore how an analytical frame of mind can help make clear the core issues underlying both the successes and failures of these systems. Much of the work will be project-based, involving implementing innovative teaching and learning tools and testing these with K–12 students and teachers.