Empire of AI Book Club Series: History of Technology Showcase (Hybrid)

Study a curated selection of historical collections and rare book manuscripts from the Kislak Center for Special Collections that explore the intersection of material archaeology, computational visuality, and natural knowledge in the pre-modern world. Examine representations of automata, mechanical devices, computational objects, humanoid robotic sentience, cryptography, and more, in relation to gender, labor, multilingualism, and environmentalism. Discover how cultures across the Afro-Eurasian and Mediterranean spheres envisioned complex forms of natural knowledge through schematic illustrations and diagrams.

Location:  Kislak Center Vitale II Lab for Book History and Digital Humanities, Van Pelt-Dietrich Center Library, Room 623

Learning Objectives

• How do our current discussions about AI appear in historical contexts?

• How multilingual is AI?

• Where does all the training data for an LLM come from?

• What is the connection between material objects and computation?

Prerequisites:
You are welcome to contextualize yourself on the History of AI as a technology and a hype cycle with the Empire of AI Chapter 4 “Dreams of Modernity”

Familiarity with Libguide focused on AI / ML and Best Practices encouraged.

Software required:

No Device / Software Installation Required.

About the Facilitators:

• Jaj Karajgikar: library.upenn.edu/staff/jajwalya-karajgikar
• Dot Porter: https://www.library.upenn.edu/staff/dot-porter

Image credits: Shady Sharify / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/