Thanks Ian. Hopefully without sidetracking Deborah's original inquiry do sigcis members have a sense of how a.i. courses (that are consumable by majors in the humanities) are trending in higher education?  Does anyone have some full fledged syllabi to share?

Luke
lfernandez.org

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 10:17 AM Ian S. King <isking@uw.edu> wrote:
Luke, 

If you want to stretch their minds, I would suggest you screen "Colossus: The Forbin Project", one of the earliest cinematic examples of the genre.  -- Ian 

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 9:11 AM, Luke Fernandez <luke.fernandez@gmail.com> wrote:
I have also found that students like playing with Eliza.  And actually attempting to emulate Turing tests in the classroom can be fun as well.  

No social history of the ethics of a.i. would be complete without also examining how these ethical anxieties have been treated by Hollywood.  Students usually already come in with some of their own cultural referents (I Robot is popular).  But few are familiar with 2001, the original Blade Runner, HER or Ex Machina.  They are all provacative forums for examining a.i. ethical anxieties as well as and the larger social forces that shape these worries.

Luke

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018, 8:54 AM Yosem Companys <companys@stanford.edu> wrote:
I would add the seminal text by AI and HCI pioneer Terry Winograd and his colleague Fernando Flores:


And of course the seminal paper below:


On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 7:34 AM, Jamie Cohen-Cole <jcohencole@gwu.edu> wrote:
Hi Kevin, Debbie

I also pair the two Weizenbaum texts.  For the book I use chapters 1,6 (on computer models of the mind), and the last (on dangers of instrumental reason).  When I have seniors then the chapter on programmers as gambling addicts has worked well to stimulate discussion especially after they have read Dreyfus’ Rand paper.

Which chapters do you use, Kevin?  

Jamie Cohen-Cole
Associate Professor
Department of American Studies
George Washington University
2108 G Street
Washington, DC 20052
ph: 202-994-7244
fax: 202-994-8651

On Apr 23, 2018, at 9:05 AM, Kevin Driscoll <kdriscoll@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

Dear Debbie,

I've found that some familiarity with the ELIZA chatbot is helpful for students learning about the history of AI. ELIZA appears often in later literature and provides a generative starting point for thinking about the social and political consequences of AI in society.

In a media studies course about programming, I ask students to compare passages from Weizenbaum's 1966 paper and 1976 follow-up book:
- Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA: A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine. Commun. ACM, 9(1), 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168
- Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1st edition). San Francisco: W H Freeman & Co.

There are also lots of ELIZAs living on the web for them to play with, e.g.:
- http://www.masswerk.at/elizabot/
- https://www.smallsurething.com/implementing-the-famous-eliza-chatbot-in-python/

Plus, the racist meltdown of Microsoft's Tay in 2016 offers an extension into the present:
- https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist

Best of luck to you and your student!

Kevin Driscoll
University of Virginia



On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 3:55 AM, Alberts, Gerard <g.alberts@uva.nl> wrote:
Dear Deborah,
The crucial book is Hubert L. Dreyfus, What computers still can't do. A critique of artificial reason (MIT, 1972. 1992). The original What computers can't do, is basically a philosophical argumentation. The revised edition has an ample introduction offering a most readible historical view of the debate as it evolved.
AI from its very inception in the 1950s has been accompanied with debates. These debates may have been different in Europe from the US; just like the automation debate in the 1950s was predominantly a socio-economic debate in the US, and when it landed in Europe it had turned into a cultural debate.
Our colleague Dick van Lente (University of Rotterdam) published on these issues.

I do read Dreyfus with graduate students. For undergraduates I find J. David Bolter, Turing's man (from 1984!) still very readible. To students in CS or AI it will always serve as an eye-opener to the worldviews implicit in their discipline - which to me is the key element of an ethical reflection course.
Kind regards,
Gerard Alberts, University of Amsterdam


Van: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] namens Deborah Douglas [ddouglas@mit.edu]
Verzonden: maandag 23 april 2018 3:21
Aan: members
Onderwerp: [SIGCIS-Members] Some suggestions on the early history of the ethics of AI

I am appealing to the collective for some quick recommendations to help one of my undergraduates interested in the early history of ethics and artificial intelligence.  What sorts of articles or books have others used in their classes with undergraduates to help them understand the key issues and concerns?

Many thanks,

Debbie Douglas

Deborah G. Douglas, PhD • Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology, MIT Museum, Room N51-209 • 265 Massachusetts Avenue • Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 • http://web.mit.edu/museum  •  http://museum.mit.edu/150 • ddouglas@mit.edu •  617-253-1766 phone  •  617-253-8994 fax


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--
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens

Principal Investigator, "Reflections on Early Computing and Social Change", UW IRB #42619


University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."