ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology” » April 2nd: Artificial Intelligence Discussion, machine (super)learning

April 2nd: Artificial Intelligence Discussion, machine (super)learning

Plan for the Day

  • Highlight Thursday’s (4/4) Social Construction of Technology Essay discussion
  • Technology Project
  • Discuss the Charles Jennings’s False Prophecy
  • Discuss some other material you might want

Charles Jennings and the “Future” of AI, ASI, & ABS

I’m not going to post quotations, but I assure you this is going to be on your Final Exam, which is on May 2nd, a month from today…let that sink in. Although you can agree with Jennings and embrace his futurist assumptions, I want you to, at least, understand how this fits the “rhetoric of technology.” Notice the following in Jennings’s work:

  • Entrepreneurial experience
  • Big name schools–Caltech, University of Chicago, Cambridge, and Oxford
  • Futurist predictions

I do like his definitions, so let’s excerpt them here:

  • “Narrow AI (a.k.a., weak AI). AI today. Idiot savant systems that are highly efficient in narrow pursuits” (p. 25)
  • General AI (a.k.a., artificial general intelligence; AGI). Closer to the intelligence we humans have. The ability to apply lessons learned in one field to another field. The ability to solve problems independent of any human supervision or training….At this stage, Homo sapiens and Machina sapiens will be two separate intelligent species, like orangutans and dolphins.
  • Super AI (a.k.a., artificial super intelligence; ASI). Woo-woo territory. The zone of spiritual machines, to use Ray Kurzweil’s term. A space beyond the event horizon into the unknown. A majority of working AI professionals agree that the earliest we could reach this stage is the late twenty-first century. Many believe we are still centuries away.

Some Articles to Fit Into the Conversation

I found some articles that might contribute to our discussion. They won’t be on the Final Exam, but they’ll help solidify the concepts in the class, which WILL help you on the Final Exam.

Next Class

I’ll have your Social Construction of Technology essays commented on before class on Thursday (4/4), and we’ll push back the revision due date…to when? Also, we’re going to forge ahead on the Technology Project, so be thinking about that.

Make sure to do the Weekly Discussion Post that asks you to formulate a tentative plan for your Technology Project.