AILA hopes you are staying warm! 🙂
Upcoming Events
Sign up for the Sustainability Hackathon!!
By AI in the Liberal Arts, Sustainability at Amherst, and Ideas 2 Innovation
📅 November 15-16th (Saturday – Sunday)
Application Is Open!!
As achieving sustainability becomes the primary goal of our generation, this year’s Hack the Herd invites teams to harness AI-driven solutions to campus sustainability challenges.
Over the span of 24 hrs, you and your friends will build and pitch a project that tackles the complex and multifaceted challenge of sustainability. Challenge areas will be Food Waste & Sustainable Dining, Waste Management & Recycling, Sustainable Transportation & Campus Mobility, and Climate Resilience & Carbon Footprint Tracking.
This year’s hackathon is hosted by the AI in the Liberal Arts Program (AILA), Office of Sustainability, and Idea 2 Innovation Venture Accelerator (i2i). It will take place from November 15th – 16th.
Scan the QR code to submit your application today!
💻 When: Hacking takes place November 15th @ 11am –16th @ 11am
📍 Where: Science Center (room A131)
🏆 Final Presentations & Awards: November 16 @ 2 pm in the CHI Think Tank — open to the public!
No programming experience required—students from all disciplines are encouraged to participate. Bring your creativity, collaborate with friends, and compete for prizes while helping make Amherst a greener place.
📲 Follow us on Instagram @aila_amherst to stay updated on more events this semester.
November Book Selection Announced!
We’re excited to share that this month’s AI Book Club pick is Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari . Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. (I promise we will make December’s book shorter!)
You can find the online discussion platform here on Padlet.
Books are available to borrow from the Jones and Frost Libraries!
Next Book Club Meeting:
November 16th @ 2 pm in Pemberton Lounge in Chapin Hall, Amherst College.
You will be able to sign out copies of December’s book selection on site again!
Please feel free to reach out to the Book Club team with any of your thoughts, questions, and feedback. We look forward to reading your reflections on Padlet and seeing you on campus, in town, and on November 16th @ 2pm!
Alumni Panel With Ahmed Aly
Join AILA in welcoming Amherst alumnus Ahmed Aly, founder of Vship, for a conversation on how a Liberal Arts education inspired bold innovation in the age of artificial intelligence. Ahmed will share his journey from studying political science and computer science at Amherst to building AI systems that empower truck drivers nationwide — exploring how technology, inclusivity, and human values intersect in shaping our future.
Date: November 6th, 2025
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: Chapin Chapel, Amherst College
AILA x I2I: Is Google Obsolete?
A Discussion on the Rise of AI Search
Join AILA in an informal discussion on the future of search engines as more and more users turn to AI.
Date: Oct. 30th, 2025
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: Chapin Chapel, Amherst College
Events Recap
AI in the world of climate change: how we are addressing the new energy demands of AI by looking to nature
Alumnus Will Fishell ‘21
On Monday, Oct 20, 2025, Amherst Alumnus Will Fishell ‘21 returned to campus upon AILA’s invitation to present his recent work on AI’s impact on nature and climate change. After graduation, Fishell pursued a master’s in computer science at Columbia University before joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Since his time writing a thesis on AI and music and Amherst, Fishell commented on how, although his passions in AI remain, his career trajectory and interests have also shifted.
During his presentation, Fishell discussed the implications of AI on climate and the approaches his research has raised in potentially addressing this issue. In particular, he emphasized that AI exists beyond technology and is, rather, rooted in nature. He highlights neuromorphic computing, an approach that aims to guide AI to mimic the human brain in order to efficientize computing systems and step away from the highly extractive, energy-intensive, and polluting nature of AI as it currently operates.
Though a promising approach, Fishell warns that neuropomorphic computing is not yet scalable by any means and is an area of research that is still up and coming. The future of Fishell’s research, neuromorphic computing, and sustainable solutions to AI’s environmental harms is still unfolding.
AI Book Club: Thinking With and About AI
This month, the AI Book Club dug into some of the trickier questions about how we understand and interact with artificial intelligence. The conversation centered on the idea that AI often sounds more capable than it truly is, which raises concerns about how easily we can be convinced by confident-sounding models. As one member noted, “It could be doing it incredibly badly—but it appears so impressive at first.”
Members reflected on AI’s role as both a creative partner and a social equalizer, offering new tools to those with less experience while also exposing deep inequities in access and affordability.
Rather than treating AI as an independent mind, the group discussed the value of seeing it as a “co-intelligence,” a tool that reflects our own intentions, limitations, and biases. The discussion highlighted that how we define intelligence, authorship, and fairness in AI has as much to do with people as it does with machines.
‘The Eye of the Master’ with Matteo Pasquinelli
On October 21st, Matteo Pasquinelli discussed his book “The eye of the master” and challenges the dominant narrative that artificial intelligence seeks to “solve intelligence” through mimicking the human brain. Instead, he argues, AI is best understood as a continuation of industrial automation, rooted in the spatial computation of factories, the division of labor, and the surveillance of collective behavior. Drawing on Marxist, feminist, and macroeconomic perspectives, Pasquinelli reframes AI not as a path toward autonomy or sentience, but as the highest stage of labor automation.
He emphasizes that AI emerges wherever labor costs are high, driven by imperatives of profit, time, energy, and resource efficiency. From Babbage’s calculating engines to modern psychometrics and algorithmic surveillance, Pasquinelli urges a new literacy of AI, one that recognizes its origins in social organization and economic control, not cognition. As he asserts, the mystery of AI lies not in intelligence, but in its capacity to replicate and obscure systems of exploitation.
Featured AI News
It’s hard to keep up with all the AI-related News these days, but here are a couple stories that have us thinking and discussing. Let us know what AI News stories have you riveted!
OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization
OpenAI has officially shifted to a for-profit structure, creating a new company called OpenAI Group under its original non-profit foundation. This change lets them raise money and make acquisitions more freely—something that was previously restricted. Microsoft now owns about 27% of the company (valued at $135 billion), and SoftBank’s massive $30 billion investment helped push the change through. The foundation still holds a big stake and appoints the board, keeping some oversight.
Grokipedia: Musk’s challenge to Wikipedia
Yesterday, Monday Oct. 27th, Elon Musk released Grokipedia. This is the most recent endeavor in Musk’s increasingly strong online ecosystem. The goal of Grokipedia? To offer an AI generated encyclopedia sans the “propaganda” collaboratively written encyclopedias, exemplified by Wikipedia, Musk claims to distribute. Though the number of entreis in Grokipedia is still a fraction of Wikipedia’s this new release raises questions surrounding the future of search engines and encyclopedias. Will AI take over current forms of knowledge consumption?
Interested in hearing more about how AI is shifting the landscape of search engines as we know it? Join AILA this Thursday, Oct. 30, at 5 pm in Chapin Chapel on an informal discussion where we ask: is Google obsolete? Is Wikipedia?
Recommended Watch
Archive
2038: George Almore is working on a true human-equivalent AI. His latest prototype is almost ready. This sensitive phase is also the riskiest. Especially as he has a goal that must be hidden at all costs: being reunited with his dead wife.
Have Something to Say About AI?
AILA is accepting submissions of opinion or scholarly pieces to be published on our website! The prompt? There is none. Whatever field you are in and however AI is on your mind right now, if you have the urge to say something, then contact us aila@amherst.edu.
Explore Some AI Tools!
Our AI Mentorship and Tools team is always exploring new applications of AI. Access some interesting tools from our website below and explore them freely from with your personal account. Be mindful of bias, accuracy, content ownership, and use of personally identifiable information with these tools. Institutions are evaluating the use and configuration of AI-based tools, so please check with your IT department before using these tools with college or institutional systems or data.
The Artificial Intelligence in the Liberal Arts initiative at Amherst College aims to engage a broad, interdisciplinary community of participants in discussions and activities related to artificial intelligence, exploring and facilitating multi-way interactions between work in artificial intelligence and work across the liberal arts. Our newsletter contains the latest AI-related events, tools, scholarship, and news in AI.