Artificial Intelligence

Stuff that students in my DEAR AI class might find useful and/or fun. I’ll add more materials for each class session as we go. The course is on Zoom, Wednesdays from 9:45-10:45 AM, starting on October 28, with no class on Veteran’s Day, November 11.

Session 1: History & Hype (10/28)
  • 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 (11/4)
  • 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.
Session 3: Vision & Neural Networks (11/18)
Session 4: Natural Language Processing (11/25)
  • 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.
Session 5: Creativity (12/2)
  • 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
  • Galápagos: One of many interactive installations from Karl Sims, who pioneered using interactive genetic algorithms.
  • 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…
Session 6: Implications, Speculations & Trepidations (12/9)

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