[UG] CORE 499: Artificial Intelligence and the Culture of Simulation for Free Elective Credit

OPEN TO All MAJORS!

“It’s my favorite class I’ve taken so far at USC.”

“[This class] was totally mind bending!”

“CORE-499 has got to be one of my favorite classes at USC.”

“This was the most fun learning experience I’ve had at USC so far!”

_____________________

Throughout four sections, this course will examine how the rise of simulation is redefining cultural values, human relationships, and the nature of experience. In the first section, The Evolution of Simulated Realities, we will investigate how humans have recreated the world through visual and computational simulations, from stereoscopes to generative AI. In the second section, The Philosophies of Simulated Lives, we’ll investigate how simulation technologies reshape ideas about consciousness and existence, from mind uploading to the Simulation Hypothesis. In the third section, The Politics of Simulated Knowledge, we’ll investigate how generative AI blurs truth and reality by fueling disinformation and by turning the world and its people into predictive data models. In the final section, The World of Simulated Agency, we’ll investigate how AI alters ideas of autonomy and intimacy through simulated relationships, deceptive systems, and debates over artificial consciousness.

_____________________

This class is based on the premise that we are currently living in a new era—an era of simulation. In just the last few years, the world itself has become increasingly simulate-able. Digital replicas of the world that once demanded years of research and massive datasets can now be achieved in seconds with very little training data. Today it’s possible to generate a convincing replica of a specific person’s voice using only a few minutes of recorded audio when five years ago it would have required ten hours of high-quality recordings and ten years ago it would have been impossible. Similar breakthroughs are unfolding across all domains: the physical world is now simulate-able through AI-generated hyper-realistic images, video, and interactive 3D environments; human agency is simulate-able through increasingly expressive and personality-rich avatars, virtual influencers, and chatbot companions; and complex social systems are simulate-able via agentic AI, bot-based social simulators, and behavioral forecasting.

As a result, we now inhabit a moment in which AI-generated text, media, environments, and interactions are becoming indistinguishable from the real and, in some cases, even preferred. At the same time, data models used to capture and predict concrete aspects of the world are increasingly treated not merely as stand-ins for reality, but as epistemologically equivalent to the things they represent. This shift marks a profound cultural transformation in which the boundaries between the simulated and the authentic are increasingly blurred and where digital representations and/or data models are increasingly mistaken for, or privileged over, the more complex and messy real-world equivalents for which they were once meant to be proxies. This blurring of the simulated and the real, along with a growing affinity for the former, is already shaping how people relate, feel, and navigate the world.

Against this backdrop, this course invites students to critically examine simulation as both a technological practice and a cultural condition. It will provide students with the opportunity to use AI-powered simulation as a lens through which to explore the shifting nature of human values, interactions, and attitudes in the early 21st century. In doing so, it will engage them in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of simulated realities, preparing them to navigate our increasingly synthetic digital spaces in critical and informed ways.