AN6819 – BEYOND ALGORITHMS: THE FUTURE OF AI AND GENAI INNOVATIONS

2024/2025 Trimester 3
Your Mission: This capstone project challenges you to critically explore and analyze key
aspects of Generative AI from a theoretical, ethical, or strategic perspective. You will conduct
in-depth research to develop a significant analytical contribution, demonstrating your
understanding of the field, its potential, and its implications without hands-on model building.
Project Journey (Key Milestones):
1. Define Your Inquiry
○ Focus: Pinpoint a critical question, emerging trend, ethical challenge, strategic
application, or theoretical comparison within Generative AI that you wish to
investigate deeply.
○ Scope Your Research:
■ Identify specific GenAI models/technologies (e.g., GANs, VAEs,
Transformers, Diffusion Models) as the subject of your analysis.
■ Define the application areas or societal contexts you will examine.
○ Outline Your Approach: Describe your research methodology (e.g., extensive
literature review, comparative analysis of published works, case study
deconstruction from public information, ethical framework development) and the
main arguments or analyses you anticipate presenting.
2. Conduct In-Depth Research & Synthesis
○ Investigate: Dive deep into academic papers, peer-reviewed journals, technical
reports from leading AI labs, industry analyses, ethical guidelines, and policy
documents.
○ Analyze Critically: Go beyond summarizing. Evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of arguments, synthesize diverse information and perspectives,
identify key insights, current challenges, or unexplored gaps in understanding.
3. Formulate Your Contribution & Develop Your Thesis
○ Develop: Based on your research, construct your core thesis, in-depth
comparative analysis, strategic application proposal (purely conceptual), ethical
impact assessment, or theoretical framework.
○ Articulate Clearly: Structure your arguments logically and support them
comprehensively with evidence and citations from your research.
4. Present Findings, Implications & Recommendations
○ Discuss: The broader societal, ethical, technical, or future research implications
stemming from your analysis.
○ Recommend (if applicable): Potential best practices, policy considerations,
avenues for future theoretical exploration, or strategic considerations based on
your findings.
Possible Areas of Investigation (Choose one, adapt, or propose your own with approval):
● In-Depth Ethical Impact Analysis: (e.g., a deep dive into the ethics of deepfakes in
media, AI-generated art and copyright, or bias amplification in LLMs, based on existing
literature and case studies).
● Comparative Theoretical Analysis of Generative Models: (e.g., A research paper
comparing the theoretical underpinnings, reported capabilities, and limitations of GANs
vs. VAEs vs. Diffusion Models for a specific type of data generation, based solely on
published papers and technical documentation).
● Strategic Application Proposal (Conceptual Design & Impact Study): (e.g., A
detailed proposal on how specific GenAI models could theoretically be applied to
address a major societal challenge – outline potential benefits, risks, theoretical data
requirements, and necessary ethical safeguards, all based on research).
● State-of-the-Art Survey & Future Outlook: (e.g., A comprehensive literature review on
a cutting-edge GenAI subfield like multimodal generation, controllable AI creativity, or the
future of large language models, synthesizing recent research to predict future trends
and challenges).
● Developing a Framework for Responsible GenAI Governance or Development:
(e.g., Proposing a novel conceptual framework based on existing research and ethical
principles).
Final Deliverables:
1. Substantial Research Paper or Analytical Report: (10 pages, thoroughly researched
and cited).
2. (Appendix may include: Annotated bibliography, detailed analysis of key case
studies/papers cited).

AN6819 – BEYOND ALGORITHMS Indiv. Assignment(1)