Exploration into AI - Annotated Bibliography for Project 3

Being a computer science major, I often gain the enjoyment of playing with the code that makes these machines tick. Wanting to both bolster my resume and continue to enhance my knowledge of this field, I made it a goal to participate in research as early as possible. I managed to land a position working on a project with Dr. Arthur Charlesworth on artificial intelligence research which produced predicate logic games that were not only fundamentally correct, but also appealed to and were interesting to the human mind. Through my education while preparing for the research and also through a paper I wrote for my other FYS last semester exploring P vs. NP, I learned just how hard, and perhaps truly impossible it is, to create a machine with true "intelligence".


This is why I was so struck with the literature that this course provided. Repeatedly, especially in novels like Gibson’s Neuromancer, AI is not only prevalent, but highly advanced enough to an almost truly sentient state. The ease at which this seemed to be achieved conflicts with most of what I have personally learned about the subject, and it begs a few questions. Just how possible is it to create an artificial intelligence? Just how close are we? Are the machines and programs created now dubbed AI truly "intelligent"? Also, assuming that this technology is possible, what are the social, political, military, and cultural ramifications of AI? How accepting will society be of this technology? And, if an AI is deleted, are we actually killing something? These are just some of the areas of the topic that I may explore.


Going forward in this project, there may be some difficulties. Mainly, the reports and technical reasoning behind the possibility of AI will undoubtedly be filled with complex concepts and ideas which at times may even be hard for me to understand. I will face the challenge of being able to present this data to the target audience, a reader who probably doesn’t have this level of technical expertise, in an accessible and also interesting way. Also, because this topic will focus more on future events rather than past, I will have to rely heavily on academic conjecture rather than history. Because of the controversy surrounding the topic, I may have to wade through many confliction opinions before I can form my own.


Annotated Bibliography


Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking, 1999. Print.


This novel by Kurzweil examines his predictions about the future of artificial intelligence and how computers as a whole will be used in the future to benefit humankind. However, Kurzweil will also touch on the possible dangers that AI could bring. Rather than make conjectures in a fictional way like Gibson did, Kurzweil examines patters of past events that could point to this future being a reality, including the prediction of a computer beating a human in chess, an idea that, at the time, nobody believed.


Christopher Ariza. "The Interrogator as Critic: The Turing Test and the Evaluation of Generative Music Systems." Computer Music Journal 33.2 (2009): 48-70. Project MUSE. Web. 22 Jan. 2011. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

The articile gives a history of the Turing test and how it is being applied. It also gives informatino about how artificial intelligences have actually been creating music and have been competing with human musicians. This is interesting as music, much like art, has always been viewed as something that only a human could do. How true really is this statement?

Carlos M. Fernandes. "Pherographia: Drawing by Ants." Leonardo 43.2 (2010): 107-112. Project MUSE. Web. 22 Jan. 2011. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Much like the above article, this article shows how artificial intelligences today have indeed managed to create art. This shows the ever blurring lines between arts and sciences, and shows how our future may have a merging of the two, just like the mind and the machine.

Cook, Stephen. "The P versus NP Problem." The Clay Mathematics Institute. Web. 16 Mar. 2011. <http://www.claymath.org/millennium/P_vs_NP/Official_Problem_Description.pdf>.

Provides a very thorough and official explanation of the P vs. NP problem. This will be my main artificly when referencing this problem, as it not only provides technical terms but also provides examples which will be friendly to the reader. It also touches on the implementations and ramifications that this problem has upon artificial intelligence as a whole.Horvitz, Eric, and Bart Selman.

 "AAAI Presidential Panel on Long-Term AI Futures." Web. 16 Mar. 2011. <http://research.microsoft.com/en-s/um/people/horvitz/note_from_AAAI_panel_chairs.pdf>.

This is a report given by lead AI researches on a Presidential panels about the possible dangers that AI could pose in the future. Instead of the utopian future that scientists are striving for today, this illustrates the harm that could come instead. This will help in painting the true future of AI.

"AITopics / BriefHistory." Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.

<http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AITopics/BriefHistory>.

Provides a timeline of the advancements of AI through history, all the way back to 5^{th century B.C. This will show not only the advancements made in the technology, but having them ordered this way chronologically presents a clear picture of the rapid development of computing and the exponential technology power idea.}