CS 416K

This course traces the long history of artificial intelligence, from its roots in cybernetics and/or computation and formal logic to the early internet to today's large language models and autonomous weapons. We revisit landmark moments (Turing's imitation game, the ELIZA chatbot, the rise and fall of expert systems) and look at early science-fiction to understand how ideas about machine intelligence have evolved alongside shifting social and military priorities. Students situate contemporary AI within a deeper genealogy of computing, asking how past visions, failures, and ambitions shape the systems we use and fear today. The course connects technical history to questions of power, warfare, and the politics of automation.