The Year of Curiosity Podcast

Our guest for this episode is Mira Xenia Schwerda, Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History and a historian of photography, print culture, and Modern Middle Eastern Art. We discuss tMira’s Spring 2025 class, Teaching the Coded Gaze - AI and Art History and the ways that AI technology fits into the ongoing conversations around technology and reproduction in Art History.

We talk to Chad Ellsworth, Associate Director of the Career Center, about the ways AI is affecting the job market and the ways students can prepare for it.

Jennifer and George talk to Sunny Sun ‘26 and Justin Rodriguez ‘27, the student representatives on the AI Coordinating Committee, about their experiences with AI and what their peers are telling them.

Jennifer and George talk to Lauren Back ‘27 and her dad Greg Back, the co-founder of CatchLight Capital Partners, about the ways AI is changing the landscape in academic and Silicon Valley.

Jennifer and George interview the two directors of the Carleton Writing Center as well as two student writing consultants. We discuss the ways that they work with student writers, the ways students are using (and not using) AI in their writing, and why in-person writing feedback still matters, even in the age of ChatGPT.

We talk to Sara Hooker ‘13, the Vice President for Research at Cohere, who Time Magazine named one of the 100 Most Influential People in AI. We discuss how the machine learning community has evolved since the rise of ChatGPT and generative AI technology, the ways that AI can be used to empower not-for-profit organizations, and how to get chatbots to accuse each other of cultural bias.

George and Jennifer welcome two of Carleton’s reference librarians, Sean Leahy and Sarah Calhoun. We talk about the ways AI is changing the ways students read and conduct research. We also touch on the origins of April Fools’ Day and the nature of reality and truth.

In this episode, we talk to Melissa Scott, the Robert A. Oden, Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow for Innovation in the Liberal Arts and Music, and two current Computer Science majors, John Hurtubise and Henry Burkhart. The three of them worked together this year to train a generative AI model to imitate Jordanian Oud music. They’ll talk about the origins of the project, the results they’ve achieved so far,...

Jay McKinney, our newly-hired Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science, joins Jenn and George to share their perspective on how AI generative thinks, the likelihood that this technology will lead us to the singularity, and the coolness of giant robots. (The answers are, in order, it doesn’t, it won’t, and they’re very cool. It’s a fun conversation, though, so you should listen!)

Sam Thayer, Director of the Office of Accessibility Resources (and our second alum from the Class of 2010) talks with us about the ways that AI technology is providing new options for meeting student accommodations, but why she tends to take a slow and skeptical approach when assessing new AI tools.

George and Jennifer chat with Quoc Nguyen, a recent alum and current PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota. Quoc tells us about his experiences as a CS major and Educational Associate in the age of generative AI and why he’s been reluctant to integrate AI tools into his own work.

Jennifer and George chat with Anastasia Salter, Carleton’s Benedict Distinguished Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities and the co-author of the upcoming book, Critical Making in the Age of AI. Anastasia talks about the ways that AI changes our relationships with writing, from literature to code. Meanwhile, George talks about the limitations of AI powered sunglasses and Jenn discusses how to fr...

Janet Scannell, Carleton’s Chief Technology Officer, talks with Jennifer and George about defining Carleton’s Year of Curiosity around AI and the benefits and challenges that this technology holds for Carleton. Also, George wonders what defines a Minnesota winter and Jennifer plugs the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Jennifer and George chat with Bill North (History/Medieval Studies) and Sindy Fleming (Sophomore Class Dean) about their first-year seminar course, Civil Discourse in a Troubled Age, and the ways that AI might change our students' ability to connect and engage with other people. Also, Jennifer gets curious about aptonyms.

Jennifer and George talk with Ross Elfline, Professor of Art History, about how the conversation around AI today echoes the artistic movements of the 1930s and 1960s and why he finds “AI slop” fascinating.  We also learn what one AI tool thinks about the podcast and speculate about how AI might affect airline safety.

We talk to Kendall George, the Cybersecurity Officer for Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges, about how AI is affecting the cybersecurity industry, how AI might make email scams harder to spot, and how to successfully argue with ChatGPT about the definition of a horror movie.

Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Professor of Physics joins us to talk about the ways she’s been using AI to help students learn Physics and quantitative reasoning skills, and we also discuss mushroom-robot hybrids.

Jennifer and George talk with Eric Alexander, Associate Professor of Computer Science.

Jennifer and George talk with Nathan Grawe, Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of Economics and the Liberal Arts about the ways that AI might affect the labor market and how he thinks students and colleges should respond to it.

Jennifer and George talk with Don Vosburg, Carleton's Academic Technologist of Learning Innovation and former head of the Language Center, about the ways AI is changing the way we learn languages and the options for making courses accessible to all students.

For the first episode, Jennifer and George talk with Alison Byerly, President of Carleton College, about the Year of Curiosity initiative and the ways she sees AI impacting teaching, learning, and working at Carleton.