Design Project Ai In Society

The design project is a group-based project undertaken by Year 3 undergraduates in the Artificial Intelligence and Society programme. This project is practice-oriented in nature and focuses on the design, development, integration, and evaluation of an end-to-end AI system that addresses a well defined real-world problem with social and technical dimensions. It requires the integration of multiple software and design components developed by different team members and provides an opportunity for students to acquire practical knowledge of AI engineering, Responsible AI design, and evaluation methodologies through a substantial team project.

Students will work in teams to develop a functioning prototype that combines a user-facing interface, backend orchestration, domain knowledge resources, and evaluation mechanisms. The course emphasizes not only technical implementation, but also the responsible design, governance, and communication of AI systems deployed in high-impact or policy-constrained settings. Students are expected to design systems that are useful, well-scoped, transparent, robust, and safe. This includes mechanisms such as grounding, refusal handling, uncertainty communication, escalation to human oversight when needed, logging or audit support, and testing against both ordinary and adversarial use cases.

The course project will vary from year to year to remain relevant. In each offering, students will be supported through short expert briefings on the application domain, technical architecture, and Responsible AI considerations, followed by supervised laboratory development, milestone reviews, and structured evaluation activities. The project is intended to allow students to bring together concepts and knowledge acquired in earlier modules and apply them to an integrated team project.