Thanksgiving break is in sight!
Upcoming Events
Sustainability Hackathon Deadline Today!!
By AI in the Liberal Arts, Sustainability at Amherst, and Ideas 2 Innovation
📅 November 15-16th (Saturday – Sunday)
DEADLINE Nov. 12th 11:59pm
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)
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.
🌿💡 Hack the Herd: Judging & Awards Ceremony Invitation🏆🤖
Sunday, November 16 | 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM | CHI Think Tank
Join us as we wrap up the AI & Sustainability Hackathon with final presentations, judging, and awards!
Over the past 24 hours, student teams from the Five Colleges and beyond have been hard at work designing AI-driven solutions to make campus life more sustainable. Now it’s time to see what they’ve created!
Come watch the teams pitch their projects, vote for the Audience Choice Award, and celebrate innovation in action.
Challenge areas include:
🌱 Food Waste & Sustainable Dining
🚲 Sustainable Transportation & Campus Mobility
♻️ Waste Management & Recycling
☀️ Climate Resilience & Carbon Footprint Tracking
Don’t miss this exciting showcase of creativity, collaboration, and technology for a greener future!
November Book Club!
📅 November 16th @ 2 pm
Pemberton Lounge in Chapin Hall
Amherst College
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!
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!
Events Recap
The Rise of AI Search: Is Google Obsolete?
AILA x i2i Venture Accelerator Event | October 30, 2025
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.
Facilitated by Liam and Ryan from i2i.
Discussions touched on how AI impacts fields differently: STEM students often use LLMs for conceptual clarification, while humanities students worry about losing depth in primary-text engagement. A recurring theme was the balance between efficiency and understanding—how to harness AI as a starting point for inquiry without undermining the cognitive work that makes research meaningful.
As one attendee summarized: learning to use AI well is “less about what it can do for us and more about how we think while using it.” The session closed with reflections on self-control, digital literacy, and the evolving role of curiosity in the age of intelligent search.
Alumni Speaker Series: Ahmed Aly ’24 on Liberal Arts and Bold Innovation
November 6, 2025
AILA’s 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 industry.
For Aly, entrepreneurship is “applied liberal arts”: a way of engaging directly with the world’s problems rather than studying them from a distance. He shared that his experience building Vship revealed how often workers are exploited for their labor, and how technology can instead be used to support and uplift communities.
Encouraging students to take the less-traveled road, Aly reminded the audience that innovation is rooted in human values and in building things that make people’s lives easier, not just coding for big tech companies. “The true liberal arts student,” he said, “sees all of this and chooses passivity or activity. Find a problem, fix it, and make the world a little bit better.”
Facing the Algorithm: AI in Police Reports and Its Impact on the Criminal Justice System
AILA x LJST department | November 11, 2025
AILA and the LJST department welcomed Robert Thies, Investigator with the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, for a thought-provoking virtual talk on the growing role of generative AI in criminal justice.
Thies explored how police departments are beginning to use AI tools like Axon’s Draft One to generate first drafts of police reports directly from body camera transcripts. This introduces a new layer of complexity to questions of authorship, accuracy, and accountability. In many jurisdictions, these drafts are deleted once edited by officers, leaving no record of the AI’s contribution to the narrative.
Looking ahead, Thies introduced Rule 707, a proposed addition to the Federal Rules of Evidence that aims to establish a clear framework for validating AI-generated materials before they are introduced in court. His proposed standards emphasize validation, operation, and transparency to ensure that AI systems can be trusted, that their outputs are explainable, and that they can be examined by all parties.
The discussion, moderated by Department Chair of LJST, Adam Sitze, raised broader questions about trust, expertise, and the future of evidence—from predictive policing to the challenge of deepfakes and the erosion of human memory in the face of machine-generated narratives.
The event left participants reflecting on how essential human judgment remains in ensuring fairness, transparency, and truth.
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!
First AI-powered Artist Debuts on a Billboard Airplay Chart
AI Artist Xania Monet recently became the first AI singer to make the Billboard. Since the release of Monet’s first song this summer, the AI’s smooth voice and R&B style have quickly captured listeners. Monet is created by Telisha Nikki Jones, a poet and lyric writer from Mississippi, who is behind Monet’s lyrics. Its voice is generated using Suno, an AI music tool.
The recent rise of AI artists has troubled many human singers who find their art irreplaceable by artificial intelligence. This is just the beginning of AI artists and actors as multimillion-dollar deals begin to occur amidst the fight amongst agencies for an upper hand in this new phenomenon. How will AI reshape the future of entertainment?
Recommended Listen
Podcast: Me and My Shadow
This American Life Ep.870 — My Other Self, Act I
Reporter Evan Ratliff creates an AI version of himself and then sets it loose on the world. This story was adapted from Evan’s podcast, Shell Game. (43 minutes)
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.