Resources
The protocol
The one-page analytic tool the whole course runs on. Side A interrogates any technology; Side B interrogates its successes. Fill it in with the online worksheet and copy the result.
Case bank
Documented harm cases and success cases for the Ethics Case Analysis and class discussion, each with an entry-point source.
Tools
Every tool used in the labs, all free, with honest notes about what the free tiers actually do.
Kinds of AI systems
Why “AI” covers several different machines. Predictive risk modeling, NLP and computer vision, and generative AI, sorted by the kind of data and the kind of task, and why the difference changes how each one fails.
Language models in depth
The mechanism behind Week 4 in more detail: deep learning, scale, retrieval and agents, and the argument over whether any of it resembles human intelligence.
The ecosystem
Organizations, free courses, volunteering pipelines, job boards, and funding programs in public interest technology.
Interactive activities
Built for this course
Small in-browser tools we made for specific sessions. Each runs entirely in your browser; nothing you do in them is saved or sent anywhere.
Reflection coach
Talk through the weekly memo’s questions one at a time, then do a timed practice run that never leaves your device. Pairs with the audio reflection journal, every week.
Fairness explorer
Pick a real predictive-risk case and move a risk-score cutoff across two groups; a live confusion matrix shows Type I and Type II error and why equal flag rate, false-positive rate, and predictive value cannot all hold at once. Pairs with Week 3.
Ask AI or ask a person
Sort practice tasks by who to ask, then see where the AI-literacy guidance leans and why. Pairs with Week 5.
Adopt, defer, or refuse
Answer structured questions about a technology decision and get a reasoned adopt, defer, or refuse with its conditions attached; when adoption is mandated by a funder or law, it returns a negotiation agenda instead. Pairs with Week 6.
Tech-org role map
Click through the roles on a technology team to see what each does and where a social-work graduate fits. Pairs with Week 8.
Total cost of ownership
Add up one-time and recurring costs over a planning horizon and see the headline subscription as a fraction of the real total. For the strategy pitch.
Tools we use in class
Week 1, Defining technology
Teachable Machine trains an image classifier from examples you pick, so a lopsided set produces a biased model in minutes. Also Survival of the Best Fit, a short game where a hiring algorithm learns your own bias.
Week 2, History
Mapping Inequality shows the 1930s redlining maps with the original appraisers’ notes. Also the Hull-House 1895 maps and the Eviction Lab national map from the lab.
Week 4, Language models
Transformer Explainer runs a real model live so you can watch next-token prediction and temperature. Also Tiktokenizer for how text splits into tokens and Bycroft’s 3D LLM view.
Week 5, AI literacy
Our Ask AI or ask a person sorter is the lead. Also Which Face Is Real, Spot the Troll, and Bad News for calibrating trust in what you see.
Week 6, AI adoption
Our Adopt, defer, or refuse aid is the lead. Also the AI Incident Database, a searchable record of documented AI failures in real deployments.
Week 3, Bias and fairness
Our Fairness explorer is the lead. Also Google PAIR’s Measuring Fairness and Hidden Bias explorables, and Parable of the Polygons on how small biases compound.
Week 7, Data sovereignty
Blacklight scans any site and lists the trackers running on it. Also Terms of Service Didn’t Read, which grades a service’s data practices, and Have I Been Pwned for breach exposure.
Week 8, The tech industry
Our tech-org role map is the lead. Also the AI Incident Database, read for which role on a team could have caught each failure before it shipped.
Week 9, Needs assessment
Census Reporter builds a plain-language demographic profile of any place. Also the CDC Social Vulnerability Index map and Draw on a Map for asset mapping.
Week 10, Digital storytelling
VidStudio is a browser video editor with no signup, for cutting a rough assembly. The heavier production tools you use later live on the Tools page.
Week 11, Accessibility
WebAIM Contrast Checker gives an instant WCAG pass or fail on any color pair. Also WhoCanUse, which previews a design under color-blindness and low vision, and WAVE, which scans a page for access errors.
Week 12, Design justice and ICT4D
Our World in Data maps mobile-money adoption over time. The Design Justice Network Principles are the seminar handout.
Week 13, Environmental costs
Track Policy maps real data centers, xAI’s Colossus in Memphis among them, with each site’s power and water use. Hannah Ritchie’s comparison tool sets a chatbot query beside a shower, a mile driven, and an hour of streaming.
A note on link rot
Every link on this site was verified in July 2026. Technology writing ages fast, and some of it will break. If you hit a dead link, say so on Canvas; there is usually a mirror, and finding it counts as participation.