Faculty First Year Seminars 191SOM4 - OriginalThought/Era of AI Slop

In this course, we will review the history of the modern tech industry in America. We will begin with a review of Google's innovation in indexing the early worldwide web, then move into how their early revenue model influenced the subsequent social media behemoths of Silicon Valley, and finally, how models like ChatGPT function - the good, the bad, and the ecologically horrifying. Throughout each discussion, our conversation will focus on two key questions: 1) What is the value of original human thought in the era of agentic AI?, and 2) How do we use amoral technology morally?

First-year (R1ST)