Schedule and Assignments (Winter 2026)

This schedule is subject to change.

Week Date Topics Readings and Assignments
1 Monday 1/5 INTRODUCTION
Course Overview; Engineering Respectful Computer Systems [slides]
respect and intentionality in designing computer systems
  • Assignment 1 due Thursday, 1/8
Wednesday 1/7 PRIVACY FOUNDATIONS UNIT
Defining and Legislating Privacy [slides]
privacy philosophy, law, and regulation
2 Monday 1/12 PRIVACY FOUNDATIONS UNIT
Anonymity [slides]
defining personal data, the difficulty of de-identifying data, redaction tools, deanonymization attacks
  • Reading Response 1 due Monday, 1/12
  • Assignment 2 due Thursday, 1/15
Wednesday 1/14 PRIVACY ENGINEERING UNIT
Statistical Privacy [slides]
k-anonymity, differential privacy in theory/practice
3 Monday 1/19 No class in observance of MLK Day
  • Reading Response 2 due Tuesday, 1/20
  • Assignment 3 due Thursday, 1/22
Wednesday 1/21 PRIVACY ENGINEERING UNIT
Data Lifecycles, Privacy Engineering Tools, and Private Computation [slides]
data access/portability, erasure rights, hash functions, Bloom filters, engineering systems for detecting CSAM, secure multi-party computation
4 Monday 1/26 MACHINE LEARNING UNIT
Supervised Learning in Practice [slides]
generalization, training and test data, common ML models, metrics, algorithmic decision making
  • Reading Response 3 due Monday, 1/26
  • Assignment 4 due Thursday, 1/29
Wednesday 1/28 MACHINE LEARNING UNIT
Unfair and Biased Algorithms [slides]
biases of models, biases of data
5 Monday 2/2 MACHINE LEARNING UNIT
Auditing and Explaining ML Models [slides]
algorithmic audits, processes and systems for documenting models, explainable ML, regulating AI
  • Reading Response 4 due Monday, 2/2
  • Assignment 5 due Thursday, 2/5
Wednesday 2/4 LLM UNIT
The Promise and Peril of Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI Agents [slides]
the technical design of large language models, the use of LLMs to generate prose/code, ChatGPT, the ethics of outsourcing tasks to AI agents, the future of work
6 Monday 2/9 LLM UNIT
Can Algorithms Be Creative? [slides (continued from last lecture)]
the use of language modeling in creative contexts (writing, music, image generation), algorithmic curation, generative AI's impact on artists
  • Project proposal due Monday, 2/9
Wednesday 2/11 IN-CLASS MIDTERM
7 Monday 2/16 PRIVACY APPLICATIONS UNIT
Tracking, Surveillance, and Inference [slides]
web tracking, inference algorithms, facial recognition, DNA data, ubiquitous cameras and microphones, biomedical data, privacy by design, privacy impact assessments, privacy threat modeling, age-verification techniques
  • Reading Response 5 due Monday, 2/16
  • Assignment 6 due Thursday, 2/19
Wednesday 2/18 WORLD UNIT
Designing Computer Systems Outside of Western Contexts [slides]
internationalization, computer systems in under-resourced environments, engineering for contexts other than your own
8 Monday 2/23 WORLD UNIT
Waste Caused by Computing
energy usage of systems, proofs of work, machines that waste humans' time, disposal of devices, environmental impacts
  • Reading Response 6 due Monday, 2/23
  • Assignment 7 due Thursday, 2/26
Wednesday 2/25 PEOPLE UNIT
Ethical Experiments
a/b testing, designing reliable and ethical experiments, protection of human subjects
9 Monday 3/2 PEOPLE UNIT
Values: Discussion Between Blase and Brian Coyne (Advanced Lecturer in Political Science, Stanford University)
philosophical perspectives on ethics/justice, human rights, aligning values and code/systems, technological exploitation of labor, automation's impact on society
  • Reading Response 7 due Monday, 3/2
  • Project Presentations Will Be Scheduled During Exam Week (3/10 - 3/13)
  • Project Report due Friday, 3/13
Wednesday 3/4 PEOPLE UNIT
Values: Discussion Between Blase and Kathryn Hymes (Director of Product and Innovation, Médecins Sans Frontières)
technical perspectives on ethics, internationalization, and societal impact