Generative Artificial Intelligence
Instructor: Michael Werner

January 21, 23, 24 | 1-3 p.m.

With new artificial intelligence tools, computers are competing with artists, writers, and composers. Anyone can write convincing essays, stories and poetry, draw and paint like trained artists, even compose music. Simply describe what is wanted and get back a result which at first seems professional, although on deeper inspection may be less convincing. These new technologies threaten to uproot traditional notions of human creativity. 

There is extensive criticism of the new AI tools. Are they a threat to human creative artists? Do they appropriate works from the Internet without attribution or royalty payments? Will teachers be able to detect counterfeit student submissions?   Will AI take over?

This class starts by sampling together publicly available generators such as ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. Class discussion is encouraged, including Show-and-Tell of home experiments. The course will give a high-level view of how AI generators work.

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The class will be highly interactive. In the first class we will try out some of the many generative AI tools with free versions available on the Internet. Students are encouraged to experiment on their own and share their experiences in Show-And-Tell at the start of sessions 2 and 3. Logistically this will work provided you send the instructor materials from your experiments well before the class. 

Following 30 years teaching computer science at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Michael Werner, PhD Northeastern University, gave several senior college courses primarily on computer history and artificial intelligence. Recent courses have covered Bay State transit history. Michael and his wife divide their time between Medford MA, Camden ME, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and he has taught in each location. You may see him around town sketching or dabbling with watercolors.

January, 21, 23, 24 1-3PM