Oberlin College will offer a new minor in Critical AI Studies beginning next year. The new program seeks to train students to think critically about and evaluate artificial intelligence systems.
Focusing on the impact of AI technologies on society, the new program will require students to study both computer science and the social sciences. Students will be required to take one foundational course in computer science or data science, followed by a new core course — CAIS 100, Critical AI Studies — which will cover the history of AI and its application to various academic disciplines.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Michael McCarrin, who has contributed extensively to the development of the minor, emphasized that the program will encourage students to think about AI from an interdisciplinary perspective.
“What I want them to take away from the minor, if they’re coming from the computer science side, is not to feel that they have mastered this area, but to know enough about the work that’s happening in the humanities, the arts, and their colleagues’ fields to know when it’s time to ask someone with another kind of expertise for help with what they’re doing,” McCarrin said.
Students will also take one of several critical methods courses — including Theories and Methods in American Studies or Introduction to Sociology — followed by two additional electives selected from a broad range of courses in the Computer Science, History, Philosophy, and Anthropology departments, among others.
Assistant Professor of Religion William Underwood, who also worked on developing the minor, said that the program will be accessible to students in many fields, including those who are critical of AI technology and its impacts.
“For humanistically inclined students who are thinking about technology from a more critical perspective, or even from a Luddite perspective, it is actually useful to have a sense for what we’re reacting against,” Underwood said.
After completing five courses toward the minor, Underwood said students will come away with the foundation to think seriously about AI tools and how such technologies are discussed in the public sphere.
“Broadly, we are preparing students to think and speak and act intelligently around the suite of technologies that go under the heading of artificial intelligence,” he said.
The announcement of the new program comes amid Oberlin’s Year of AI Exploration, an initiative launched by the President’s office to engage the campus community with the social, economic, and academic impacts of generative artificial intelligence tools.
