Splash Biography

You've probably used ChatGPT by now and know something about the rapid advancement of research into AI. With this acceleration, there are many concerns about safety and whether intelligent systems will do more harm than good. It is becoming increasingly important to be well-versed in these technologies as they have the potential to disrupt many aspects of our lives. In this class, we'll dive into these topics and ask questions like: how fast are AI systems improving? What are the actual capabilities that AI currently has ... is it all hype? Who's behind these developments, and what are their motivations? Is it possible to "align" AI with human interests?

Have you ever wondered how people learn their first language? Or how we decoded hieroglyphics? How explorers who came to the New World learned to speak Native languages? Linguistics is the scientific study of languages and how they function. In this class we will try our hand at a number of linguistic puzzles that cover a range of topics. With these puzzles you will have to decode languages, translate scripts, and learn new grammar rules.