Week 2 - Self Reflective Journal

1. What are the most interesting ideas I learned this week from read and surfing? (Please list at least 3 precise points)

This week, we basically continued where we left off from the first week. We continued with the history of A.I. and we were presented with case studies of different A.I. artists. There were quite a few interesting points I discovered while reading and surfing. I wrote about equation art in my case study and I found one interesting point when compared with fractal art. Fractal art is more complex and chaotic using recursive amount of functions in a program. Whereas, equation art uses only one-time function to create its art. Therefore, fractal art stands out more when compared with equation art.

After Weizenbaum created ‘Eliza’, which was an interactive dialog with humans, people started to believe that computer/robot could do more than it really could which is kind of funny. Since this was newly introduced, some people thought that it wasn’t a computer talking but a human. One example is given in the notes, that Weizenbaum’s secretary asked Weizenbaun to leave the room for some privacy.

I searched more about Hubert Dreyfus and the books that he wrote, “What computers cant do” and “What computers still cant do”. I have read some reviews of the book and it got me interested. He criticizes four assumptions of A.I. research (biological, psychological, epistemological, and ontological assumptions) So it was pretty interesting to read more about his books on various sites and wikipedia.org

2. What are the muddiest points from your reading? (Please list at least 3 precise points)

As mentioned before, we continued where we left in week 1, there are really not many muddy points from my reading. I didn’t get how von Neumann architecture is related to A.I.? Shouldn’t it be related to computer system and architecture? How did it really contribute towards A.I.?

Even though I have this point in my interesting points, this still is quite muddy to me that how people could make assumptions about Eliza when they new that it was just a computer program. Even though it was new and had human like conversations, it is still hard to digest that people could be so easily fooled even after Weizenbaum published a book on it.

3. What do I want to read and learn more about? (Please list at least 3 precise points)

As we have gone briefly through the early stages of A.I., I would like to learn more about what lies ahead for A.I. and for its development (concerning art), say 50 years from now. Since A.I. may not be everyone-cup-of-tea, I would like to see and study about the various trends and future development of A.I. and Art.

I would like to learn more about A.I. programming and how we can apply that when making art. As we will be studying some basic A.I. programming concepts, I would like to further my knowledge on these concepts in the near future.

I would like to read more on people who have dedicated their lives into A.I. and art. This will be done in our case study reviews every week. I would like to research more on this topic so that I can really understand the current progress and the further trends in this field.


4. If I was a teacher, what questions would I ask my students on this week's reading material to see if he/she really understands? (Please list at least 3 precise questions)

- What is the difference between Neat A.I. and Scruffy A.I.?
- How was ELIZA different than Parry? What made Parry so special during the 1960’s?
- What was the A.I. programming language between 1960’s-1990’s and who invented it?