Thinking about artificial intelligence this summer? Join our AI Summer Discussion Club in person at the FAMRI Library in Mission Bay! Each month, we will discuss 2-3 articles, videos, or news pieces about different AI topics.

We will have tea and light snacks. Feel free to sign up for single sessions or all of them!

• June 10 @ 3pm: Should AI mimic humans (or should machines stay machines)?

• July 8 @ 3pm: Keeping the human in the loop (Register)

• August 12 @ 3pm: Are we heading for AI dystopia? (Register)

The reading/watching commitment for this series is relatively light (15-30 min of content), and discussion questions will be shared with registrants before the session. Reading/watching assigned content in advance and taking some notes is recommended, but not required for participation.

For our inaugural session, "Should AI mimic humans (or should machines stay machines)?", we will be discussing the following:

• Article: Jobs of the future: Teaching empathy to artificial intelligence. Microsoft News Centre Europe. (2019, June 13). https://news.microsoft.com/europe/features/more-than-a-feeling-teaching-empathy-to-artificial-intelligence/

• Article: Meyer, M. (2025, December 26). We seriously need to stop anthropomorphizing AI. Here’s why it’s harmful. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/stop-talking-about-ai-as-if-its-human-anthropomorphizing-commentary/

• Video (2 min): YouTube. (2025, May 8). Yann LeCun: AI’s future: Will it have emotions? (short). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JX_od4uIltU

• Optional: full length video (1 hour) of the Yann LeCun interview featured in the short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUnFgu8kH-4

We look forward to seeing you in our newly refreshed library!

Accessibility

UCSF welcomes all participants to our events. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this event because of a disability, please contact Eileen Chen at eileen.chen@ucsf.edu as soon as possible.

People

•  
• Eileen Chen is an Education and Research Librarian. She supports literature searching, AI, and open access publishing.
• Geoff Boushey is a Data Science Specialist. He teaches with Python, SQL, machine learning, and AI, with an emphasis on document, text, and media analysis.
• Yea-Hung Chen is a Data Science Specialist. He provides support on R, data science, and AI to the UCSF community.