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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  4544 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Help building a curriculum on Narrative and Artificial Intelligence

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a must read (even though Blade Runner is being shown; BR is awesome, but it lacks a lot of the subtlety of the orig). Also, is AI too obvious of a film? I thought it was great, as it explores android emotion a lot more than some of the other material. Also, I would have to throw in Short Circuit (c'mon, its a classic, and even though it's a comedy, it explores the desire to survive above all else). I would drop Star Wars. I love it to death as a movie, but besides C3PO, AI isn't really a theme. And even he is just a human in many ways, as they don't really consider or care about what it is to be an android.

As for non-AI material that might be interesting, I would look into the writings of VS Ramachandran. He is a famous neuroscientist who does a lot of popular writing about the brain-body interface, and how one's perception of the world is altered by specific injuries (breaks in the "wiring", if you will).





mk  ·  4544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Short Circuit is a great choice. It also made me think of Kit from Knight Rider, but they are painful to watch. The computer in War Games was borderline AI.

For reading, I thought of a collection of essays put together by Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofstadter called "The Mind's I". Some of those dealt with interesting ideas and paradox of AI. Perhaps a chapter or two from Godel, Escher, Bach. I'm thinking of one that concerns the intelligence of an ant colony.

edit: Star Wars has the potentially interesting issue of how droids are intelligent, but treated like property. Luke is a slave owner. I also had the thought that the Turing test would be a good topic, and it even might be worth watching Watson school Ken Jennings on Jeopardy.

ecib  ·  4544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I thought it was the last (or near last) chapter of GEB that dealt with the paradox of AI...maybe I am remembering wrong. Could not agree more with The Minds I. There are a ton of digestible essays on topic in that collection.