Artificial Intelligence is taking over our lives. From internet ads to taxi cabs, machine learning (a better term for AI) is affecting us daily—and rarely for good. Machine learning is too important to be left to the engineers and data scientists, so this class will help visual artists and designers understand the medium and make some weird images and videos along the way.

Each week we’ll cover a different aspect of machine learning. A short lecture covering theories and practices will be followed by demoes using open source web tools and a web-browser tool called Google Colab. The last 3 weeks of class you’ll be given the chance to create your own project using the skills you’ve learned. Topics will include selecting the right model for your use case, gathering and manipulating datasets, and connecting your models to data sources such as audio, text, or numerical data. We’ll also talk a little ethics, because we can’t teach machine learning without a little ethics.

This course is for designers who have heard a lot about machine learning but aren’t sure how it applies to their own practice. You might have seen images generated using “AI” and you’re intrigued to learn how they’re made and why they work they way they do. By the end of this course you should have a sense of cutting image and video creation techniques, and the understanding of why machine learning works that will allow you to leverage future processes.