Tue, Sep 15
From Rules to Examples: What Changes When a System Learns?
Please complete the tasks and readings listed below before class on Tue, Sep 15.
Required Readings
Optional Readings
Topic / Focus
Connect explicit procedures to the representations introduced in lessons 7–8. Identify where labels, training examples, and objectives bring human judgment into supervised learning.
Slides and Activities
- Slides
- Spam Detection - Explicit programming
- Spam CodePen
In This Class
Write spam rules, then test cases that break them. Compare hand-coded rules with learning from labeled examples.
Familiar Systems
Email spam filters.
Societal / Ethical Questions
- Who defines the categories?
- When is it better to use learned patterns instead of explicit rules?
- Who is accountable for mistakes?
Connections to Course Lenses
Social / political and moral lenses help distinguish who defines a category from whether that category and its consequences are justified. Distinguish descriptive, normative, and political / institutional claims, and identify what remains uncertain.
Closing Reflection
If humans are no longer writing every decision rule explicitly, where does human judgment move?
What to Submit
complete the paired career-module homework. Open the homework
Before next class
| Class prep | 2 readings to complete | View |