Here I’ll put random ideas and thoughts related to the “beyond the text” reports you’ll be doing for this course.
You will, in consultation with me, choose some topic or idea about artificial intelligence that is, well “beyond the text”.
This could be something very closely related to what we’ve discussed in class – a side of some little topic that we just didn’t address, say.
It can also be an interesting bit about the development of the study of artificial intelligence within the academic discipline of computer science. For example, as a CS student who has studied AI, you really ought to know that something very, very important happened during the summer of 1956. What was that? Who was involved? Why does anyone care, seventy years later?
You needn’t confine yourself to modern CS, and perhaps investigate something about ideas of mechanizing thought or logic, or of automatons, from the 19th century or before.
You can discuss some work of fiction. How does it reflect its cultural, psychological, technological mileu? How does its depiction of AI relate to the actual AI we are studying?
Armed with a topic, find out more! You will need to do some nontrivial academic work here, studying your particular topic or idea, finding a few sources, and developing some ideas in relation to our course.
You will very likely submit at least one draft to me (and, possibly, peer reviewers).
Your first deliverable will be some kind of written artifact documenting your work. You could call it a “report” or “paper” if you like, but I do want to grant you some freedom here; this needn’t be just another college paper you’re cranking out.
You may opt to present this to the class. Observe that the syllabus incentivizes this – you must do this to earn an A for this component of the course.
Some of the ideas below are deliberately vague, ill-formed, perhaps even not that fruitful. Part of my motivation here is to get you to demonstrate some intellectual Independence: in many courses, you’re kinda like a baby bird. You sit patiently, passively, in the nest, and wait for the mother bird – your professor – to return and feed you some worms – to declare what you will study and do.
Here, you’ll strike out on your own into the intellectual forest of AI, so to speak. Leave the nest. Explore some of the other nearby trees. Find something tasty to eat. Return to the nest and tell us about your adventure.
So, do not confine yourself to what I’ve written here.
As you saw in the “my assumptions about you” section of the syllabus, I assume that this semester, while you are taking a course on AI, you will be always thinking about AI (even more so than seemingly everybody is, these days…), looking for and learning about interesting related topics. If so, you will certainly stumble into something interesting that you’d love to share with the rest of us.
I assume this because it’s what I do!
That said, here’s a brain dump of things that might get you started. I will be updating this as we go along, as a I stumble onto things that I would love to share with the class – but I will hold back and grant you the delight of discovery.
As promised, this is an unorganized, vague, stream-of-consciousness list. Have fun!