Assignment #11 - due by 10:00pm Monday, December 9
Read the final Chapter and Epilogue of The Singularity is Near (pages 427-487) and post a written response on our class discussion board. In this chapter, Kurzweil responds to some of the criticisms raised by others about his ideas. I am not interested in a summary of the chapter, nor am I interested in your views about Kurzweil as a person. Rather, I am looking for your thoughts and reactions to the arguments raised in the chapter.
More broadly, now that you have spent a semester thinking about the Singularity in detail, and have finished the book, what is your own "verdict" on the plausibility, likelihood, and/or desirability, of something like Kurzweil's vision occurring over the next few decades? Have your views evolved over the course of the semester, one way or the other? What, if anything, have you concluded from our examination of Kurzweil's ideas, and why? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Assignment #10 - due by 10:00pm Monday, December 2
Read Chapters 7 and 8 of The Singularity is Near (pages 369-426) and post a written response on our class discussion board. I am not interested in a summary of the chapters, rather I am looking for your own thoughts and reactions to the reading. What did you find particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What was particularly confusing? Did you make any connections to other ideas that have come up in earlier readings or class discussions? Any other reactions? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Assignment #9 - due by 10:00pm Monday, November 18 (deadline extended)
Read Chapter 6 of The Singularity is Near (pages 299-367) and post a written response on our class discussion board. I am not interested in a summary of the chapter, rather I am looking for your own thoughts and reactions to the reading. What did you find particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What was particularly confusing? Did you make any connections to other ideas that have come up in earlier readings or class discussions? Any other reactions? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Paper #2 - due in class Friday, November 15
Write a short paper about the AI research project you presented in class this week, 3-4 pages in length (about 900-1200 words), not including the blbliography. Your paper should discuss the project in greater detail and depth than you presented in your oral summary, and should reflect some additional research on your part beyond your original source article or website. If you wish, you may include a discussion of other similar projects or research efforts that are related to your original project, but this is not required.
I am looking for a well-written, formal, polished paper free of grammatical problems or spelling mistakes. Your paper should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins and 11 point font, and should include a title, and a bibliography listing the sources you consulted. If you have questions about the format or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask!
Assignment #8 - due by class time Tuesday, November 5
Find information about a recent AI research project (preferably no more than about 15-20 years old), and give a 5-minute presentation about it to the class. You should briefly explain the project's goal, the AI methodologies used (e.g. did the research involve physical robots, simulated robots, genetic algorithms, neural networks, computer vision, game playing, natural language, speech recognition, etc.), and summarize the project results. If you wish to use a relevant article or website as visual support for your presentation, that's fine, but you must email me a link no later than 10:00am on Tuesday.
Important: Please note that your presentation should be about a specific AI project, not about a particular news article you've found. If you find a news-in-brief style article on a project, you should do some follow-up research to learn more about the project in greater detail. In fact, I would suggest finding at least three or four different sources of information if possible, as a basis for your presentation.
In order to avoid duplication of project topics, I'll need to OK your chosen project first, so you should send me a quick email before Tuesday telling me which project you intend to talk about. Project topics are first-come-first-served, so the sooner you email me, the less likely that someone else will have already picked your topic!
There are thousands of interesting AI projects out there to choose from. You can find many good ones mentioned in Chapter 5 of The Singularity is Near, particularly on pages 279-289 ("A Narrow AI Sampler") and in the footnotes, but these are by no means the only possibilities. The following links may also provide useful information:
Assignment #7 - deadline extended to 9:00pm Monday, October 28
Finish reading Chapter 5 of The Singularity is Near (pages 259-298) and post a written response to the reading on our class discussion board on MySLC. What did you find particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What was particularly confusing? Any other reactions? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Assignment #6 - due by 11:00pm Monday, October 14
Read the two handouts that I passed out in class: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, by Richard Feynman, and On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures, by Douglas Hofstadter.
Read pages 205-258 of Chapter 5 of The Singularity Is Near, which covers advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
Post a written response to the readings on our class discussion board on MySLC. What did you find particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What was particularly confusing? Any other reactions? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Assignment #5 - due by 11:00pm Monday, October 7
Finish reading Chapter 4 of The Singularity Is Near (pages 157-203) and post a short written response to the reading on our class discussion board on MySLC. A few paragraphs is fine. What sections were particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What sections were particularly confusing? Any other reactions? Please include one or two questions for discussion in class.
Assignment #4 - due by class time Tuesday, October 1
Read pages 143-157 of Chapter 4 of The Singularity Is Near.
Assignment #3 - due by 10:00pm Monday, September 23
Read Chapter 3 of The Singularity Is Near (pages 111-142) and post a short written response to the reading on our class discussion board on MySLC. A few paragraphs is fine. What did you find particularly interesting, surprising, or enlightening? What did you find particularly confusing? Any other thoughts? Include one or two questions for discussion in class.
How to post a response:
Please let me know if you have any problems with this procedure (it seemed to work for me when I tried it).
Paper #1 - due in class Tuesday, October 1.
The goal of this exercise is to get you to think about how much the world has changed over the past hundred years, and to give you some practice doing research. Google and Wikipedia are fine to use as a starting point (Wikipedia in particular can often be a source of good references and pointers to more in-depth information), but you should rely mainly on published books, journal articles, magazine articles, or newspaper stories for your sources, rather than random websites.
Your paper should be around 1200-1500 words in length (about 4-5 double-spaced pages with 11 point font and "normal" margins), not including the bibliography.
I am looking for quality, not quantity. A short paper does not mean that it should take you a short time to write; it means that it should take me a short time to read! You may want to write more first, then trim your paper down. The process of editing, rewriting, and shortening sections is an effective way to make your paper more focused and succinct. Also please do not forget to carefully proofread your paper—which means more than just running it through a spellchecker. I will pay particular attention to your paper's grammar and spelling, as well as its content.
Your paper should be submitted in hardcopy, double-spaced, printed in black ink, single-sided on otherwise blank, white paper. If you have questions about anything, please don't hesitate to ask!
Assignment #2 - due by class time Tuesday, Sept. 17
Read Chapter 2 (pages 35-110) of The Singularity Is Near
Using the number conversion techniques we discussed in class, see if you can figure out approximate answers to the following questions (for the first three, you should be able to get exact answers). Express very large or small answers in scientific notation.
For each question, write out a brief step-by-step explanation of your reasoning on paper (neatly and legibly!) and be ready to explain your reasoning on Tuesday. We'll go through some of your answers together in class, but don't worry too much if you can't figure everything out, or if you get the "wrong" answer. Obviously, your answers will depend in part on the assumptions you make about each question, so you should state these assumptions up front. For example, you'll need to decide on appropriate values to use for the population of New York and how much garbage a typical New Yorker produces on average each week.
After you've made your estimates (but not before!), do some library or web research to see if you can find out the true answers for comparison. Exception: you're allowed to look up basic unit equivalents beforehand if you need to, such as the number of feet in a mile, pounds in a ton, number of bytes in a petabyte, etc. Merry numbers!
Assignment #1 - due by class time Friday, Sept. 13