COMP 440: Collective Intelligence

Date	Topic	Class materials	Due (8:00am Central)
Foundations
Tue, Sep 8	Course introduction: collective intelligence in the GenAI era	Week 1 slides Course syllabus Working with AI (course AI policy) Beginning-of-semester survey Wisdom of Crowds experiment
Thu, Sep 10	Ways of knowing; working with Claude; reading and evidence	Week 1 slides Ways of knowing: scenario worksheet AI norms activity TBD Launch: HW0 — Working With Data and Claude	Read Keshav et al, "How to Read a Paper" [paper \| reflection] Beginning-of-semester survey
Collective Traces
Tue, Sep 15	Ratings, aggregation, and prediction baselines	Collective Traces slides Carbonated Beverages ratings sheet Class AI agreements — ratify or amend Launch: HW1 — Collective Prediction	Read New York Times on OpenAI and the Navier-Stokes problem (Sep 10, 2026) [article \| reflection]
Thu, Sep 17	Similarity, neighborhoods, and latent factors	Sep 17 slides: similarity, neighborhoods, latent factors latent factors: closing segment, picked up Oct 1 TBD	HW0 due
Tue, Sep 22	Cultural markets, social influence, and feedback simulation	in-class cultural-market simulation TBD	Read Salganik, Dodds & Watts, "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market" [paper \| reflection]
Thu, Sep 24	Guest speaker sessionGuest speaker: Logan Stapleton	Logan Stapleton — personal site Logan Stapleton — Vassar faculty page	Read Cheng, Stapleton, Kawakami et al, "How Child Welfare Workers Reduce Racial Disparities in Algorithmic Decisions" (CHI 2022) [paper \| reflection] Speaker questions due
Retrieval
Tue, Sep 29	TF-IDF, BM25, and lexical retrieval	lexical retrieval activity TBD Launch: HW2 — Representing and Retrieving Knowledge	HW1 due
Thu, Oct 1	Embeddings and semantic similarity	embeddings activity TBD
Tue, Oct 6	Hybrid retrieval, RAG, evaluation, and data provenance	RAG activity TBD evaluation activity TBD
Thu, Oct 8	Guest speaker sessionGuest speaker: Frank Schilder (tentative)	background reading (to be set with speaker) TBD	Speaker questions due
Foundation Models
Tue, Oct 13	From representations and prediction to language models	language-model overview TBD	HW2 due Final project introduced
Thu, Oct 15	Fall Break
Tue, Oct 20	Transformers, pretraining, and generation	foundation-model materials TBD
Thu, Oct 22	Training data, labor, authorship, and limitations	data / labor reading TBD
Alignment
Tue, Oct 27	Guest speaker sessionGuest speaker: Nick Vincent (tentative)	background reading (to be set with speaker) TBD	Speaker questions due
Thu, Oct 29	Instruction tuning and supervised fine-tuning; preference data, constitutions, and disagreement	SFT lab TBD preference-labeling activity TBD Class AI agreements — reread alongside HW3 Launch: HW3 — Whose Preferences Count?
Tue, Nov 3	Direct Preference Optimization and model alignment	DPO lab TBD
Thu, Nov 5	Blind evaluation and pluralistic alignment	blind evaluation TBD
Agents
Tue, Nov 10	RAG, tools, and agent workflows	agent introduction TBD Launch: HW4 — Building and Evaluating an Agent	HW3 due
Thu, Nov 12	Guest speaker sessionGuest speaker: President Rivera	background reading (to be set with speaker) TBD	Final project proposal due Speaker questions due
Tue, Nov 17	Memory, planning, control, and agent evaluation	agent evaluation activity TBD
Thu, Nov 19	Human–AI collaboration, delegation, and agents in organizations	comparative experiment TBD organizational case TBD	HW4 due
Collective Systems
Tue, Nov 24	Social networks and multi-agent systems	network analysis activity TBD	Final project update
Thu, Nov 26	Thanksgiving Break
Tue, Dec 1	Diffusion, feedback, and simulation; governance, law, and institutions	in-class simulation activity TBD governance reading TBD
Thu, Dec 3	Guest speaker sessionGuest speaker: Yuren (Rock) Pang	background reading (to be set with speaker) TBD	Project rehearsal Speaker questions due
Synthesis
Tue, Dec 8	Final presentations, day 1		Final presentation materials
Thu, Dec 10	Final presentations, day 2; course synthesis	Class AI agreements — final reread Day 1 shared doc — final reread TBD	Final presentation materials

Last updated 2026-09-15. Items marked TBD are not yet finalized.