Artificial intelligence is changing how students learn, how researchers make discoveries and how businesses operate. Beginning in Spring 2027, USC students will have a new way to understand those changes from three very different perspectives.
A new collaboration among the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, USC Marshall School of Business and USC Viterbi School of Engineering brings together a suite of complementary, two-unit undergraduate courses called AI Essentials.
Each approaches artificial intelligence from a different direction: Viterbi explores how AI works (TAC 298), Marshall focuses on using it successfully in professional settings (BUAD 298), and USC Dornsife examines what AI means for people, society and the future (MDA 298).
All three courses are open to students from any major and require no technical background.
“AI literacy means more than how the technology works and what its professional benefits might be,” said Emily Hodgson Anderson, college dean of undergraduate education and professor of English at USC Dornsife. “To be truly AI literate, students need to consider what AI might be changing about the way we think, create and make decisions. We want our students to know how AI can make our lives better — and how and when we should be cautious about its use. Those are questions every student should consider, whatever their major or career ambition.”
What does AI mean for you?
USC Dornsife’s course, “AI Essentials: Risks, Rewards, and the Human Future” (MDA 298), takes those questions head-on.
Hosted by Anderson, the credit/no credit course brings together faculty from across USC Dornsife for a semester of lectures and discussions examining AI from perspectives that include:
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Classics
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Economics
- Political science
- History
- Writing
- Biology
- Mathematics
- Environmental studies
Dean James Bullock will open the course and return later in the semester for a lecture exploring AI in the context of energy, Earth and the universe.
Students will consider questions ranging from existential risk and autonomous weapons to consciousness, public services, synthetic biology, writing and creativity. They’ll also examine AI’s energy and environmental costs, its political and economic implications, and the human judgments embedded in the systems themselves.
The course is divided into three sections: AI Risks, AI Rewards, and AI and the Human Future.
Among the scheduled speakers are Professor of Philosophy John Hawthorne on existential risks from AI; Professor (Teaching) of Writing Mark Marino on lessons from the earliest chatbots; University Professor and Professor of Psychology, Philosophy and Neurology Antonio Damasio on consciousness and thought; Assistant Professor of Economics David Schönholzer on using computer vision to improve public services; and Professor of Psychology and Computer Science Morteza Dehghani on the homogenizing effect of AI on human language as well as discussions of machine cognition and alignment.
Later sessions will explore AI and synthetic biology, the human decisions underlying artificial intelligence, AI and problem-solving, machine learning and fiction, and the technology’s implications for energy, Earth and the universe.
Anderson said the range of perspectives is intentional.
“As a form of technology currently embedded in our lives, AI raises scientific questions, but also philosophical, political, environmental, economic and deeply human ones,” she said. “Dornsife is uniquely suited to showcase all those perspectives and let students see how they connect.”
The class will combine lectures with discussion and reflection rather than traditional exams. Students will respond to speakers throughout the semester and complete a final project considering how their thinking about AI has changed and how they intend to use the technology in their own lives.
The semester concludes with a moderated conversation that brings together all participating faculty with students to consider collectively the questions that remain.
Three perspectives, one goal
Students may take any of the AI Essentials courses individually. Taken together, however, the three offer a deliberately broad foundation: the technical understanding of engineering, the applied perspective of business and the critical examination of human society at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences.