Artificial Intelligence

Stuff that students in my DEAR AI class might find useful and/or fun. I’ll modify these materials for each class session as we go. The course is mostly at Penfield Rec, Wednesdays from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM, starting on May 24, 2023, with the last session meeting in the Dolomite Lodge.

Session 1: History & Hype (May 24)
  • Turing Test Paper – Alan Turing’s original paper on the Imitation Game from 1950, which I referred to in the lecture. Turing’s original formulation of what became the Turing Test was a bit convoluted, but it’s still a fun party game!
  • I. J. “Jack” Good – Fascinating and largely forgotten figure who worked with Turing at Bletchley Park, advised on 2001: A Space Odyssey, and predicted an “intelligence explosion” in 1965. This 2015 remembrance is from Virginia Tech, where he landed in 1967 as a Distinguished Professor.
  • Dartmouth Conference Proposal – Original proposal for the Dartmouth “Summer of AI” Conference in 1956. This is where the term Artificial Intelligence first appeared.
  • The Thinking Machine – 1961 TV show from CBS/MIT that I actually remember seeing as a kid (I must have been 10). Features some of the Dartmouth Conference attendees, with actor David Wayne as the host. Really dated in a fun way.
  • Google Data Centers – Talk about fast forward… The Google company line on their data centers, which are mind-blowing in their scale, complexity and computing power.
  • Melanie Mitchell’s website – The author of AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans, which I highly recommend as the best recent book on AI for general audiences. She is knowledgable, lucid, and hype-resistant: you can’t ask for more! The book is in the Monroe County Library system, but last time I looked, Penfield didn’t have a copy. She has links to several places you can buy it.
Session 2: Games (May 31)
  • AlphaGo – The Movie (2017) – Excellent 90-minute documentary on DeepMind’s development of AlphaGo, culminating in the match with 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in 2016.
  • Deep Thinking (39 minutes) – Engaging interview of Garry Kasparov by DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis in 2017 during Kasparov’s tour for his book, Deep Thinking. Nice perspective on the Deep Blue match 20 years later.
  • How Checkers Was Solved – Atlantic article on checkers program Chinook and Marion “Two Ton” Tinsdale, the greatest checkers player who ever lived. No real AI involved, but a rather poignant bookend on machine efforts to play checkers. Since I initially posted this, it went behind a pay wall…
Session 3: Vision & Neural Networks (June 7)
Session 4: Natural Language Processing (June 14)
  • Oxford English Dictionary: Official site of the cathedral of English
  • Google Translate: Open this in 2 different browser windows so that you can translate English to some target language and then back to English to see if it mangled anything. Try poetry or song lyrics, and/or use an obscure target language.
  • Chat-GPT: Create and account and start playing with OpenAI’s Chat-GPT. The free version uses GPT version 3.0, which is pretty impressive.
Session 5: Creativity (June 21)
  • Illiac Suite: All 4 movements/experiments of the first substantial computer composition
  • EMI: David Cope’s website for his Experiments in Musical Intelligence
  • Aaron: Harold Cohen’s website for his pioneering drawing/coloring program
  • The Painting Fool: Website for this “computer program and aspiring painter” maintained by its “teacher,” Simon Colton
  • Electric Sheep: Scott Draves’s website for his evolutionary screensaver
  • Eden: Interactive installation from Jon McCormack that uses artificial life techniques. Eden found a permanent home at the Instituto Itaú Cultural in São Paulo, Brazil in 2018.
  • Galápagos: One of many interactive installations from Karl Sims, who pioneered using interactive genetic algorithms.
  • Refik Anadol: Ubiquitous and highly successful media artist who uses cutting-edge AI techniques in his one-off installations and performances, which can be experienced in high-end venues all around the world. Check out his TED Talk in 2020, and his Keynote at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2023.
  • Sougwen Chung: Painter & creator of D.O.U.G._1-5 (Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1-5), a series of AI robotic systems that interact in real time to generate collaborative paintings.
  • AIArtists.org: Interesting group of artists who use AI techniques in very creative ways. Check out: Joy Buolamwini, Scott Eaton, Mario Klingemann, Gene Kogan, Lauren McCarthy, Wayne McGregor, Mike Tyka, among others…
  • Sotheby’s Metaverse: The venerable auction house’s Digital Art division, which handles their catalog of works in the “secondary market.” This is an interesting look at how digital arts can be bought and sold.
Session 6: Implications, Speculations & Trepidations (June 28)
  • Statement on AI Risk from the Center for AI Safety, which has been signed by hundreds of AI scientists and other notable figures.
  • AI Cause Area from the Future of Life Institute, which also has an open letter signed by over 30,000 people, some of whom are AI scientists and other notables
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation: The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation for 30 years and counting.
  • Facebook face recognition settings: Facebook’s policy on use of face recognition and your ability to control it.
  • Deep Fake Full House opening: Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson from Parks & Rec IS Full House (video I showed).
  • One Useful Thing: Blog maintained by Ethan Mollick, a professor in U Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He has a very down-to-earth and accessible perspective on Chat-GPT and other recent AI advances, and I find his blog the pick of a rather large litter of likeminded websites.

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