Ah, the memories of my first programming assignment at Yale. It was CS 201, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a warm summer day, and I had just arrived on campus full of hopes and dreams.

My first assignment was literally an essay about why liberal arts are important. Reading my response still cracks me up:

a) The rise in computing power has created a complexity that inevitably spills into other subject areas. The author argues that Computer Science as a discipline has been increasingly entangled with numerous disciplines and “social and psychological domains”. The broader implications of its technologies and applications present increasingly complex ethical, social, and other dilemmas.

As an example, one could argue that Artificial Intelligence ethics is a field in Computer Science which may draw from the humanities. The potential of creating an AGI or sentient AI is an accessible topic that poses interesting ethical questions (monism vs. dualism, utilitarianism, etc.). As the author adds that bold claims from the discipline that computation can better understand the social world are baseless without an understanding of social theory, economic models, psychological concepts, etc.

b) The author recommends that the Computer Science field embrace its increasing overlap with other social science fields, or to quote, “move away from engineering-inspired curricular models and integrate the analytic lenses supplied by social science theories and methodologies.” Broadly speaking, he argues to:

1. Replace some computing courses with social science ones
2. Embrace other disciplines’ insight
3. Embrace multidisciplinarity through faculty hiring

Essentially, the author advocates for an integration of computer science with more social science disciplines.

This assignment did have a purpose: it helped acquaint us with submitting to the Zoo for future assignments. This was one of the most on-brand moments in Yale CS history for me.