AILA welcomed Amherst College alumnus Daniel Flores Garcia (‘24) back to campus for a richly engaging talk on AI and Music, exploring how technological innovation is reshaping musical tools, creative processes, and cultural representation in music. Flores Garcia, whose work centers on generative systems for rhythm and percussion, opened by tracing a lineage of music-making…
By: Caitlin Kennedy Downey This year’s Hack the Herd: AI & Sustainability Hackathon brought together an impressive group of about 20 student innovators from Amherst College, Smith College, and UMass Amherst for an intensive, collaborative, and high-energy weekend of problem-solving and creation. Over the course of 24 hours, students worked in teams of up to…
By: By Brooke Ingemi Featured in: The Amherst STEM Network Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a part of everyday life, transforming how we learn, think, and communicate, while also raising deep questions about what the future will look like. Previously confined to computer science labs, AI now touches nearly every field, from art and law…
Facing the Algorithm: AI in Police Reports and Its Impact on the Criminal Justice System Speaker: Robert Thies, Investigator, Federal Public Defender – Eastern District of MissouriHosted by AILA and LJST | November 11, 2025 By: Caitlin Kennedy Downey, AILA Staff AILA and LJST welcomed Robert Thies, Investigator with the Federal Public Defender’s Office for…
Alumni Speaker Series: Ahmed Aly ’24 on Liberal Arts and Bold Innovation By: Caitlin Kennedy Downey, AILA Staff The second event in AILA’s Alumni Speaker Series featured Ahmed Aly ’24, a Computer Science and Political Science graduate and founder of Vship, a startup using AI to empower truck drivers and promote equity in the logistics…
An AILA x i2i Venture Accelerator Event | October 30, 2025 By: Caitlin Kennedy Downey & Jiaqi Huang, AILA Staff Students, faculty, and staff gathered for a lively discussion hosted by the AI in the Liberal Arts Initiative (AILA) and i2i: Idea to Innovation on how AI-driven search tools are reshaping research, learning, and creativity….
AILA hosts local Art Lawyer, Kate Lucas Writeup by: Caitlin Kennedy Downey, AILA Staff The intersection of artificial intelligence and creative production is forcing society to revisit some of the most fundamental questions in copyright law: Who, or what, can be an author? What is the distinction between the “expression of an idea” and what…
The vision for the AI Book Club: The AI Book Club strengthens Amherst’s intellectual ecosystem by creating a mini-community that reflects AILA’s mission: bringing together people from different walks of life, professions, stages of life, and levels of AI knowledge to explore big questions through literature. By using literature as a common language, we create…
by Hena Ershadi, AILA Student Assistant AI in the Liberal Arts recently hosted an informative discussion on generative AI that brought together students from various disciplines to explore the field of artificial intelligence. The event featured speakers from Ideas 2 Innovations (i2i), with Dhyey Mavani as the chief guest, joined by Ryan Ji and Liam…
by Emmanuelle Toulouse, Spring 2024 AILA Assistant In the 1950s, if you asked a computer to write you a love letter, it would produce something like this: “My sympathetic affection beautifully attracts your affectionate enthusiasm. You are my loving adoration, my breathless adoration. My fellow feeling breathlessly hopes for your dear eagerness.” Today, ChatGPT can…