HSCI-225: Many Minds

In this class, we will examine diverse intelligence occurring in complex systems through the latest scientific lenses, which offer a critique of traditional cybernetics. While foregrounding AI, we will combine computer science and behavioral science to understand how cognition arises and scales up. We will develop the understanding of mind as a pattern that expresses itself through different interfaces, in many mediums. To that effect, we will look at subjects such as large language models as well as neural and non-neural cognition. Further, the class will develop frameworks for designers to understand and design for diverse intelligence and its expressions in hybrid environments. As we ask questions about the societal and ethical impacts of the above scientific approaches, we will open the discussion to student defined solutions, and speculative explorations of multiple approaches while working towards cognitive sovereignty.