Project Objective

The project for the AI unit is a 'Letter to the Editor' that will provide an overview of your group's concerns about this technology and corresponding policy recommendations to address them. The content should summarize your dialogues for the prompts released over the three weeks of the unit, and highlight the most important, interesting, or contrarian ideas that surfaced. Like the podcast and video from the earlier units, this should be a fun and creative way for your group to discuss the complex issues surrounding AI.

The Letter to the Editor is due 11/21 at 5:00pm.

Dialogue Guidelines

Review the Dialogue Trainee Manual for information on how your dialogue sessions should be conducted.

Appoint one of your group members as the Facilitator. The facilitator's role will be to lead each discussion, and to keep the group organized. This means maintaining the focus of the group, helping to move the conversation towards the end goal of the creation of the Letter to the Editor, and scheduling meetings and making sure everyone attends. Only one person should serve as the facilitator for the entire unit. The facilitator for this project should be different from your facilitators for the last two units.

Meet with your group each week for at least one hour to hold a discussion on the assigned prompt. Prompts will be released at the beginning of each week. See the Tuesday lecture information in the Course Calendar for the prompt and any additional instructions for that week's dialogue session.

Each group member should be given an equal voice in the dialogues, and have equal input in the Letter to the Editor.

Keep the discussions friendly and avoid arguments (this isn't Twitter!), but don't shy away from ideas that might be considered controversial.

Documenting Your Discussion on the Weekly Prompts

Appoint one of your group members as the Scribe. Only one person should serve as the scribe for the entire unit. The scribe for this project should be different from the scribes for the last two units.

The scribe's role will be to keep notes for each session. The ideas the group wants to highlight in the Letter to the Editor should be recorded, along with any context you want to provide for why those ideas are important (Did an idea trigger a long dialogue? Were there diverging opinions on it when it was raised? Was it an idea that was new to the entire group?). You don't need to turn in the notes, but they should be reflected in the Letter that is submitted as the project's deliverable.

Writing the Letter

This letter must meet the following requirements:

1. The letter must be one to two pages in length. Prof. Scheirer is looking for concise writing here.

2. The letter must be addressed to a public official or a newspaper publication. The choice of destination is up to you.

3. The letter must argue for a specific position on a topic and back it up with evidence or references. You may need to do additional reading to find information to support your arguments.

4. All group members must co-sign the letter.

Make sure to note at the very bottom of the letter who was the facilitator and who was the scribe.

The Scribe will add the Letter to the Editor file to their shared Google drive folder for the course. Ahead of the deadline, the scribe should send Ellen an email or slack message noting that your drive is the one that the TAs should check to retrieve the submission.

Expectations of Group Effort

All members of the group should contribute their fair share to the dialogues and the Letter to the Editor. The Facilitator and Scribe are expected to put in some extra work. These roles will rotate in each unit, meaning everyone in your group will serve as either the facilitator or scribe, thus the work will balance out over the course of the semester.

A form will be circulated to each group member after the assignment is turned in so that they can assign what they thought was the effort each person put into the dialogues and Letter to the Editor. These effort reports will be factored into the individual grades that will be assigned to the students in the group.

Prof. Scheirer will be grading the letters, and is very interested in what you have to say. Some of you will go on to work at companies developing AI systems following graduation, and your ideas may shape the future of this technology. This project will help you think about what is possible and good in the realm of social technologies.