HIST 3815 History of Big Data and AI 3.0 Credits
Big Data and AI define much of our contemporary life, but they do have a long history. This course challenges students to look at current promises and perils of Big Data and AI through the lens of premodern automata, the mechanization and automation since the Industrial Revolution, the time and motion studies in Progressive Era America and Revolutionary Russia, and the Cold War experiments to automate pattern recognition that led to current AI deep learning. While much of this history emphasizes technologies of industrial mechanization and control associated with Big Data and AI, the course also explores their emancipatory possibilities and their surprising presence in liberatory social and political movements in the Global South.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit