Join the AI Book Club in reading God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn over winter break! We will meet in February to discuss the book in Pemberton Lounge with snacks and engaging conversation. Date TBA! Email: aila@amherst.edu to join the mailing list or for questions about the…
December’s selection is “Seventy-Two Letters,” a novella by Ted Chiang, from the collection Stories of Your Life and Others. This story is set in an alternate history, Victorian-era England where people can animate automata called golems by speaking names into objects. It explores the intersection of religion, science, and alternative history, particularly the idea of creating artificial life…
Date: December 4, 2025Time: 5:00 PMLocation: CHI Think Tank in the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Lyceum Join us for an exciting Alumni Speaker Series event featuring Daniel Flores Garcia ’24, who will present: Musicking with Generative Models As generative AI tools for music become increasingly capable, autonomous, and accessible, how can artists work with…
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…
November’s book 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. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early…
Amherst Lost and Found – the winners of the Spring 2025 Hack the Herd – AI and Sustainability Hackathon.
Winners and creators of Amherst Lost and Found: Tetsuya Tanaka , Alston Chen, Yichen Liu, Annabelle Lee.
Also pictured: Judges Jacob Robinson from the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, Audrey Woods the Grean Dean of the Sustainability Office and Amherst Alum Dhyey Mavani (’25).
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The application deadline for the Hackathon is on Wednesday, 10.12.25 at 11:59pm. Teams of 1-4. One registration per team! This year’s hackathon is hosted by the AI in the Liberal Arts Program (AILA), Office of Sustainability, and Idea 2 Innovation Venture Accelerator. It will take place from November 15th – 16th, and the challenge areas…
Join us monthly on Sunday afternoons at Amherst College to explore nonfiction (and the occasional fiction) on AI. Discussions, led by AILA staff, students and guest faculty, will also continue online. Borrow your copy from Jones or Frost Libraries and be part of the conversation. Email: aila@amherst.edu to join the mailing list or for more…
Facing the Algorithm: AI in Police Reports and Its Impact on the Criminal Justice System AILA will host Robert Thies, Investigator, Federal Public Defender, on November 11th, 2025 at 5pm for a virtual talk on Zoom. You are welcome to join us in the Science Center, room E208 for a virtual screening of the talk!…
Join us for a movie screening this Thursday, November 6th @ 8pm in the Keefe Theater. The AI Film Club brings the Amherst community together for screenings of movies that explore artificial intelligence and machine learning. We show a range of films from speculative science fiction to documentaries about real-world innovations. Each screening is followed…