AI & Politics

Artificial intelligence is increasingly both a political object and a tool for political and social life. This course introduces students to the core concepts behind AI systems while examining their political, social, and institutional consequences. The course combines the politics of AI — how AI reshapes power, resources, governance, markets, elections, labor, infrastructure, and global competition — with AI for politics — how AI tools can be responsibly used in research, policy analysis, civic work, public administration, advocacy, journalism, and other social applications.

Students will learn the basic intuitions behind machine learning, generative AI, large language models, training data, evaluation, bias, and uncertainty, without requiring advanced programming or computer science preparation. They will also analyze real-world applications and conflicts involving AI in public opinion, campaigns, bureaucracies, regulation, firms, data centers, geopolitics, and social-service delivery. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to explain core AI technologies, assess their political and social implications, evaluate opportunities and risks in applied settings, and design a project that uses or studies AI in relation to a concrete social or political challenge.

The course is co-taught and runs two parallel tracks. Mondays (Prof. Paci) examine the political economy of AI: who demands it and to what political effect, who produces it and on what terms, and the infrastructural and geopolitical conflicts that follow. Wednesdays (Prof. Xu) build applied understanding of how AI systems work and how to use them well — deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, generative AI and large language models, post-training, and agents. The two tracks are sequenced independently and meet in the final project. Three sessions are taught jointly: the introduction and the two final presentation sessions.