10/07/19
Spring 2020 Honors College Seminar Opportunity: CSE 410-Algorithms Have Arrived. What’s next? Open to ALL Majors
Posted by Tim on October 7, 2019 in Academics, Honors Experiences, Honors Seminars
Consider taking an Honors seminar this spring! There are three courses offered and they are all open to ANY major and there are NO Prerequisites for these courses for Honors scholars.
CSE 410: Algorithms have arrived. What’s Next?
registration #: Please contact Tim Matthews for registration into this course at trm7@buffalo.edu
Professor Atri Rudra
214 Norton Hall
Algorithms make decisions in all parts of our
lives, starting from the mundane (e.g. Netflix recommending us movies/TV
shows), to the somewhat more relevant (e.g. algorithms deciding which ads
Google shows you) to the downright worrisome (e.g. algorithms deciding the risk
of a person who is arrested committing a crime in the future). Whether we like
it or not, algorithms are here to stay: the economic benefit of automation
provided by algorithms means companies and even governments will continue to
use algorithms to make decisions that shape our lives. While the benefits of
using algorithm to make such decisions can be obvious, these algorithm
sometimes have unintended/unforeseen harmful effects.
This class will look into various algorithms in use in real life and go into
depth of both the societal as well as technical issues. For students who are
more technologically inclined, the hope is that this course will open their
eyes to societal implications of technology that such students might create in
the future (and at the very least see why claiming “But algorithms/math
cannot be biased” is at best a cop-out). For students who are more
interested in the societal implications of algorithms, the hope is that this
class will give them a better understanding of the technical/mathematical
underpinnings of these algorithms (because if you do not understand, at some
non-trivial level, how these algorithms work you cannot accurately judge the
societal impacts of an algorithm).
Overall the hope is that students who will build the technology of the future
will be equipped to grapple with societal implications of their work (note that
we are not saying that folks building technology need to be activists but when
presented with two viable technical options they would pick one that has more
societal benefits) and students who will be the future decision-makers can make
more informed decisions on how algorithms can impact others (note that we are
not saying that decision makers should create algorithm themselves but they should
be able to understand how algorithms interacts with real life data).
Pre-requisites: Section A1 (which is for CSE majors) has a pre-requisite
of CSE 331 OR CSE 474. Section A2 (which is meant for non-CSE majors) has no
formal pre-requisites (besides being a junior in their major). For both
sections, willingness to think beyond your usual boxes and openness to
unfamiliar ideas will be crucial.
Tentative Logistics
The main graded component for the students will be a project that the students
will be working on over the semester. The students will form groups of size 2-3
(depending on class size) and explore application of algorithms on some segment
of society. Ideally, the group should not have everyone from the same school.
The students are expected to come up an impact of the chosen algorithm in the
said segment of society that has either not been studied before or has received
little attention (either in popular media or academic research). The group is
supposed to identify a potential research question that can be investigated
further (some initial suggestions will be provided). The mini project will have
three main components: (1) a written report, (2) a YouTube video and (3) a demo
of a prototype. The students will submit a preliminary version of the report by
the middle of the semester so that they can get feedback from the instructor
that they can use towards their final report, video and prototype. Tentatively,
the final report should be up to 10 pages and the video up to 10 minutes long.
Each group will also meet with the instructor every week for a short (<= 10
mins) update on their progress in the last week. This is to ensure that the
groups are making sufficient progress as the semester moves along.
Students in Section A1 are expected to be the main contributors in their group
of building the prototype while students in Section A2 will be the primary
contributors in their group to looking into the societal implications of their
project. Students in two sections will be graded differently on the prototype
based on their primary contributions.
Every week, the class will focus on one segment of society (e.g. criminal
justice system or human resources (i.e. hiring)) and discuss the impact of
algorithms on that segment of society OR will talk about a stage in the
algorithm development pipeline. Students will be expected to participate in the
in-class discussion. Whenever possible, we will have domain experts (e.g.
someone from law school talking about the criminal justice system) come and
talk during the week.
Depending on the class size, the last week (or two) will be used to screen the
videos that various student groups have submitted and the groups will
answer any question or address any comments/thoughts that the class might have.
All this feedback will be incorporated in the final report and prototype, which
will be due in the finals week. We will use the final exam time for demo of the
prototypes.
Any followup Questions?
If you would like to know more about this course, please stop by for Atri’s Honors College office hours from 2-3:20pm on Thursdays in Capen 106C. If that does not work, please feel free to email atri@buffalo.edu