The Art of Problem Solving in the Age of Superintelligence
Identify, formulate and solve consequential problems shaped by increasingly powerful AI.
- For
- Practitioners and problem solvers.
- Prerequisites
- None formal. Each session explains its terms as it goes; if you can read a short paper and a simple chart, you can follow it.
- You will be able to
- Explain the capabilities, mental models and design patterns of modern AI
- Diagnose problems in enterprises, societies and institutions: their actors, constraints and feedback loops
- Design solutions across systems, engineering and behaviour
- Go in depth on one problem space at a time and draw inferences that carry over
- Say what AI brings to an application domain, and what a field of maths, science or engineering lends back to AI
- Carry one problem end to end through a case study
- Learn from what leading organisations have built and published
The framing half of a pair: this course asks whether a problem, and an intervention, are the right ones. Its partner, Research Engineering Alchemy, tests the answers by experiment.
The path
- Session 1 · Perspectives on Problems11 Oct 2026 · slides published
- Session 2 · Applied problemsnamed at the end of Session 1 · no date yet
The course grows a session at a time. Modules are added once the sessions that fill them exist, so nothing here is planned ahead of the work.
Questions about this course, or a case that argues with it? Write to mepc3197@columbia.edu · the title goes in the subject line
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