| SES # | Technical Topic | Communication Assignment | Discussion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Winston reflects on the first 65 years | ||
| 2 | Turing suggests test for success | Paper decoding | Paper decoding |
| 3 | Minsky provides a problem set | Recommendation | V-S-N-C; Broken glass |
| 4 | Davis and friends affirm value of representations; Brooks denies value of representations | Broken glass; For and against | Red teams |
| 5 | Marr speaks to what constitutes good work | Talking points; Contributions | Talking points |
| 6 | Tenenbaum and friends salute the Reverend Bayes; Glymour salutes Kepler | Panel preparation | How to run a panel |
| 7 | Hinton launches third wave | White paper | Improvement through knowledge engineering |
| 8 | Borchardt focuses on transitions | Update letter | Details sell; Winston’s star |
| 9 | Jackendoff grounds out in trajectories | Trip report | Interviews |
| 10 | Ullman explains visual routines | Study report | How to run a study |
| 11 | Larson grounds symbols in perception | Press release | How to write a press release |
| 12 | Spelke explains how to turn MIT students into rats; Fedorenko explains we don’t need language to think | Speaker evaluation | How to make decisions |
| 13 | Berwick & Chomsky explain how we are different | Interview | Mimicry |
| 14 | Tattersall finds symbolic species; Lettvin finds bug detector | Amnesty assignment | Applied ethics |
| 15 | Minsky predicts important role for perception | Review | How to write a review; How to write a nomination letter |
| 16 | Merge revisited | ||
| 17 | McIntyre builds contortionist | Nomination letter | How to do slides |
| 18 | Gergely learns from an infant | Quad chart | Selling it; Product introductions |
| 19 | Minsky gets emotional | Op ed | How to construct posters |
| 20 | Winston & Holmes tell a story | Poster | |
| 21 | Ajemian detangles neural nets | Curriculum design | |
| 22 and 23 | Presentations | Recommendation/Presentation/Suggestions |
Schedule of Activities
Paper
None. However, as an aid to memory, we offer notes taken by Dylan during lecture. We hope that they add useful perspective to your own notes, and make no claim that our notes are especially authoritative.
Edit: Prof. Ajemian’s slides (PDF), however, are especially authoritative.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Much to your surprise, you have just received a call from your old friend Alyssa P. Hacker, now a high-ranking member of the Schwartzman College of Computing. Alyssa would like your help designing a bold new curriculum in which Brain and Cognitive Science students would all get basic training in machine learning and artificial neural nets. “After all,” she explains. “Artifical neural nets reveal much about human learning and the hierarchical cortical structures in the brain.” Having just heard Robert Ajemian speak, you have some doubts. However, teaching a computationally-grounded approach seems exactly right, and 6.803 luminaries (such as Minsky, Winston, and Marr) have given you a wealth of ideas about the right way forward. You readily agree to help out.
You decide to respond to Alyssa by letter, articulating the ideas you think the cognitive science curriculum of the future should include.
- Write a letter in response, explaining Ajemian’s view on the limits of artificial nets, and—
- Argue, instead, for a few key ideas from 6.803 readings you think everyone studying mental processes should know.
Naturally, you should focus your argument on conveying fundamental ideas in detail rather than, for example, minutiae about which courses should be taught and how.
Paper
Chapter 1 of 
Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, reprint edition, Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky. MIT Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780262533492.
Estimated reading time: 1.75 hrs
For guidance on interviews, you might look at a 2050 interview with Sarah Winston, former President of the United States.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
You have a nightmare in which you have just landed a job as a reporter for Popular Linguistics. Your boss has commanded that you interview Berwick for the next issue, but inasmuch as Berwick is travelling to promote his book, your interview will be via Skype. Unfortunately, when you connect, the line in Berwick’s hotel is terrible, so Berwick suggests you draft up how you think he would respond to your questions. He will use your draft as a starting point for framing his own answers.
You decide to focus your questions and draft answers on the first chapter of Why Only Us, the only chapter you have time to read.
- Produce the requested interview.
- In your interview, try to extract from Berwick a few words explaining in what way humans are different from other animals.
- In your interview, try to extract from Berwick a few words explaining in what way humans are the same as other animals.
When you think you are finished, go back over your report to be sure that you have provided a few interesting, specific details.
Paper
“Causal Reconstruction” (PDF) by Gary Borchardt
Estimated reading time: 2.0 hours
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
You have just had another academic dream. In your dream, you are Gary Borchardt, Patrick Winston’s graduate student. For your entire graduate career, you have thought from time to time about making an appointment to see him, but you somehow never got around to it.
Nevertheless, you have just finished your PhD thesis, the night before the actual deadline (not the official deadline), so you are worried that he may not have time to read it and might be sore because he doesn’t know who you are. You decide to write a summary, in the form of a letter of introduction, introducing yourself and outlining what you have done. You also suggest that you would be pleased to be a post-doc in Winston’s Genesis Group.
Write the required letter, making full use of what you have learned so far in 6.803.
Papers
“Intelligence without Representation” (PDF) by Rodney A. Brooks
Estimated reading time: 45 min
“What Is a Knowledge Representation?” by Randall Davis, Howard Shrobe, and Peter Szolovits.
Estimated reading time: 50 min
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Part I
On second thought, we want you to use both sides of your sheet of paper. On one side, construct a broken glass diagram for one of the papers. You need only cover the main points, and you can be quite telegraphic. We are looking at structure, not fine-grain detail.
Part II
- You have a nightmare. You have become Professor Winston’s graduate student! He is busy, so he asks you to read the assigned papers and let him know if he should read them. Construct an email message directed at Professor Winston starting with “I liked the Brooks paper because….” Be sure to include a bulletized list of contributions; use sanctioned verbs.
- Repeat for the Davis, Shrobe, Szolovits paper.
- Construct an email message starting with “I disliked the Brooks paper because….”
- Repeat for the Davis, Shrobe, Szolovits paper.
Paper
“What should a robot learn from an infant? Mechanisms of action interpretation and observational learning in infancy” by György Gergely.
Estimated reading time: 50 minutes
Background
A quad chart consists of a quadrant with
- A logo labeled with a slogan
together with three other quadrants with the following titles:
- Impact
- New ideas
- Milestones
The more elaborate quint chart retains the Impact and New Ideas elements, replaces Milestones with End of Phase Goal, adds Status Quo, and Achievements, arranged as follows:
- Status quo
- New insights
- Project achievements
- Impact
- End-of-phase goals
Quad and quint charts may optionally contain a so-called bumper sticker.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Suspending disbelief, imagine that Patrick Winston has become Director of DARPA. He has announced that robots are too stupid, and he invites potential “performers” to submit suggestions on what could be done in the form of a quad or quint chart.
You decide to suggest a program of research base on Gergely’s work. Construct a quad or quint chart. Use your imagination to concoct milestones or end-of-phase goals; try to include combinations of the ideas in the paper with other salient ideas in the subject.
Be sure your goals are detailed and quantified. Also, be sure you do not use the word continue or any synonym of continue, in your goals.
You may prepare your chart with or without presentation software. To assist you if you do use presentation sofware, we provide templates for
Quad: Open Office Impress and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Quint: Open Office Impress and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Papers
[Note: Read the assignment before you read the papers.]
“ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks” (PDF) by Alex Krizhevsky, Illya Sutskever, and Geoffrey E. Hinton.
Estimated reading time: 20 min
“Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled: High Confidence Predictions for Unrecognizable Images” (PDF) by Anh Nguyen, Jason Yosinsky, and Jeff Clune
Estimated reading time: 30 min
“Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search” by David Silver et al.
Estimated reading time: 30 min (not including optional Methods section)
Note that Prof. Winston read these in big picture mode, not problem set mode. Note that you are only expected to read the first and skim the others.
Note also that much of the Hinton paper, in particular, is unintelligible.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Imagine that Prof. Winston, having grown tired of teaching, has left MIT and started an international consulting firm, The Concord Group, specializing in giving advice about AI. He has hired you as an intern because you took 6.803.
On your first day, he says,
“Good news. We’ve just been hired by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, also known as MITI. The MITI people view current trends as the third wave of AI.
- First wave: symbolic programing, as in Slagle’s integration program
- Second wave: rule-based systems, as in the MYCIN program for diagnosing disease
- Third wave: deep neural nets
They wonder if deep neural nets are The Answer and whether they should start a big research program in Japan to do research on deep neural nets. They need a white paper to help them decide, and you get to write it!”
First, you figure out what a white paper is.
Then, at Winston’s suggestion, you decide to base your white paper on Hinton’s paper, so you read that. Then, you skim the paper by Nguyen et al., looking only at the pictures and reading the captions. Finally you skim the AlphaGo paper, hoping you can learn why success in image classification contributes to success in playing Go.
Paper
“Semantics of Spatial Expressions” (Chapter 9 of Semantics and Cognition) by Ray Jackendoff
Estimated reading time: 1 hour
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Sveti Stefan. (Image courtesy of Michael Jackson on Flickr. License: CC BY-NC-SA.)
Imagine that you are a graduate student working in Artificial Intelligence at MIT. Your research supervisor, Patrick Winston, says, roughly, “I would like you to go to this conference to see what this stuff is all about and whether it is relevant to my work on story understanding. Put together a little trip report for me when you get back.” Because the conference is to be held in Sveti Stefan, a beautiful medieval town, converted into a resort, on the Adriatic Sea, you instantly agree.
Unfortunately, you end up partying a lot and sleep through the talks, all of which are presented in the morning so attendees can get to the beach unimpeded. Fortunately, a friend tells you that you didn’t miss much, because the talks were all incredible pistareens, except for the talk given by Jackendoff, which closely followed the material in the assigned paper.
Produce the requested trip report. Start with something like “The conference involved little of interest, except for the talks by Jackendoff.” Use what you have learned about presentation in the way you structure your report.
Papers
“Intrinsic Representation: Bootstrapping Symbols From Experience” (PDF) by Stephen Larson
“Hippocampal Place Cells Recorded in the Wilson Lab at MIT” (video) by Matt Wilson
Optional Supplement
Larson’s paper is a shorter version of his MEng thesis. The following link is only for those who are eager to learn more about self-organizing maps or who want to see an example of a premium MEng thesis. The thesis includes very clear descriptions of the algorithms used in map adjustment, growing, clustering, and cross-domain cluster association:
“Intrinsic Representation: Bootstrapping Symbols From Experience” (PDF) by Stephen Larson.
The rat video is illustrative of a great deal of work, of which the following is an example:
“Biasing the content of hippocampal replay during sleep” by David J. Foster and Matthew A Wilson
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
You are to write an MIT press release as if the work reported by Larson had just been completed at MIT in CSAIL. You are absolutely not to describe what you would say if you wrote a press release; you are to write a press release.
Your press release should have the elements suggested in the sample, including the usual journalistic requirement for who, what, where, when, and how, all of which are illustrated in the first paragraph.
Include in your press release, and label for our easy identification, the following:
- Your choices for the vision, steps, news, and contributions.
- Your choices for slogan, salient, and surprise.
This assignment seems to invite humor, and if you feel like writing something funny, do so. But also be sure to take the paper seriously, and interdigitate a serious assessment with your jokes.
Paper
“Artificial Intelligence—a personal view” (PDF) by David Marr
Estimated reading time: 30 min
Work holiday
Because Tuesday is Monday this week, there is no written assignment for the Marr paper. You need only prepare yourself for discussion. We recommend you prepare by making a broken glass diagram.
Here is what we will discuss:
You are scheduled to have breakfast with MIT President Rafael Reif. You have heard he is interested in Marr and his legacy. Prepare yourself for the meeting by constructing talking points on what Marr might have included in a final section labeled “Contributions” in his paper.
Remember that a contribution can be a better-framed problem, a problem solution, a methodology, a point of view, a conclusion—anything that plainly constitutes an advancement of knowledge.
Further prepare yourself for your breakfast with Reif by constructing talking points on what you would say should Reif ask the following questions:
- Reif says: “I understand Marr is critical of AI research. Why?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Minsky would think of Marr’s paper?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Marr would think of Minsky’s paper?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Marr would think of Watson?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Marr would think of deep neural nets?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Noam Chomsky would think of Marr’s paper?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Patrick Winston would think of Marr’s paper?”
- Reif says: “What do you think Marr thought about Winston’s arch-learning thesis?”
- Reif says: “What do you think of Marr’s paper?”
Paper
“Recognizing actions using embodiment and empathy” by Robert McIntyre
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
It is March, 2014. Winston has been thinking about how a program could recognize human actions, but he is getting nowhere, so he decides to waste some time reading his email. He receives a draft of McIntyre’s thesis. He reads chapter 1, skims chapter 2, and reads 3 and 4.
“This is it!” he says. “This isn’t just any MEng thesis, it has changed the way I think! It’s definitely a candidate for the EECS MEng thesis prize; too bad I don’t have time to do something about it before the nomination deadline.”
You volunteer to help and agree to supply Professor Winston with some talking points in the form of a draft nomination letter.
Paper
Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine Part IV
Estimated reading time: 55 min
Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine Part V
Estimated reading time: 45 min
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
The editors of Mind, a philosophy journal, have noted the recent interest in AI. Having published Turing’s paper 69 years ago, they have decided their readers could use an update, so they have started running a series of op ed articles reviewing the work of Minsky, McCarthy, and Newell and Simon, all widely considered to be the founders of AI.
They have asked you to write the article dedicated to Minsky’s work.
With finals coming up, you decide to focus your piece on Part IV and Part V of Minsky’s The Emotion Machine.
Arranged according to your own choice, you will:
- Include a VSN-C treatment of the the ideas.
- Offer your own view on the work and its importance in 2019, mentioning connections to deep learning, if any, and/or connection to ideas in the Berwick-Chomsky book, if any.
Title your article Minsky and X, where X is a single word, but not emotion.
In your article, attribute to Minsky at least one memorable slogan, at least one memorable salient, and at least one memorable surprise.
Paper
“K-Lines: A Theory of Memory” by Marvin Minsky.
Estimated reading time: 50 min
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
There is too much to read, particularly if you are interested in multiple fields. Accordingly, you decide to start a new journal named The MIT Alumni Reader’s Electronic Digest, which you expect to go by The Reader’s Digest. The idea is to produce each month, in electronic form, in a section titled Steps toward Visions, a half-dozen or so one-page reviews of articles appearing in Science, Nature, and other top-drawer scientific journals.
There is also to be a section titled Hero of the Month, in which a randomly chosen MIT professor identifies his/her favorite classic paper for the one-page treatment. Curiously, Winston is the first professor randomly selected. He selects the K-lines paper. Being busy, he asks you to write the review, duly attending to whatever parts of the the V-S-N-C (Vision-Steps-News-Contributions) mantra you think work but certainly including the V and the C. Also, remember that detail sells (no numbers here, so detail in some other form).
According to journal policy, you are also to offer your views on who should read the unabridged article and what they would get out of it beyond what they get from your summary.
Paper
“Steps toward Artificial Intelligence” by Marvin Minsky
Estimated reading time: 2.0 hours
This paper is a slog in parts, as Minsky is often telegraphic or vague or both in his explanations, because this is, after all, a survey of nascent ideas. Do not get bogged down in the occasional mathematics and obscure examples. Be sure to read the first few and the last few pages when you are fresh.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
There has been a disturbance in the force. Suddenly, you are transported into the body of a distinguished professor at a prestigious university.
The year is 1961, just after Minsky’s paper appeared. Minsky has been on the Mathematic’s Department’s faculty as an Assistant Professor since 1957. Evidently, he wants to move to Electrical Engineering because that is where the action is with computers. Evidently, the department chair contemplates a promotion with tenure.
You receive the following letter:
Dear Professor You:
We are considering Professor Marvin Minsky for appointment as an Associate Professor, with tenure, in the Electrical Engineering Department here at MIT. To help us in this process, we would like to have your critical evaluation of Professor Minsky’s qualifications. In particular, we would appreciate any comments you can provide concerning:
- His major contributions, their significance, and how they have influenced others;
- His standing in his field (an indication of the worldwide leaders in the field, together with your assessment of his relative position in that group, would be especially helpful);
- His abilities as a teacher;
- The quality and stature of his former graduate students;
- His qualities as an intellectual leader;
- His potential for further professional growth and leadership.
The more specific you can be in your comments, the more helpful your evaluation will be. For your reference, we are enclosing Professor Minsky’s CV and some of his recent papers.
An essential component of the evaluation process at MIT is the solicitation of written assessments from persons familiar with the individual’s character, research and teaching capabilities, and academic qualifications. In order to assure the most candid and useful evaluations, we have traditionally accorded such assessments the highest degree of confidentiality.
In order to meet our deadlines, we will need your reply by Wednesday, February 13. I very much appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
K. L. O’Watt Head, Electrical Engineering Department
You are to respond to this letter as best you can, having lost the CV and all the papers except for “Steps toward Artificial Intelligence.”
Following your usual practice, you totally ignore requests for information you cannot supply, so you will not say anything, for example, about teaching or former graduate students.
Based on your reading of his paper, however, you do have an opinion on the merits of the appointment. You know that your opinion will not count much unless you demonstrate a genuine familiarity with the candidate’s work. Accordingly, you decide you will include at least the following (after looking up the definition of seminal):
- A discussion that starts with: “‘Steps toward Artificial Intelligence’ is a seminal paper because…”
- A discussion of similarities or differences or both in the views expressed by Turing and Minsky.
Also, during your reading, in preparation for classroom discussion if you have taken 6.034 Artificial Intelligence or 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning, note what topics in those subjects are anticipated in the paper.
Reading
Please familiarize yourself with the project descriptions for your section [Note: Not available to OCW users], so that you will be better prepared to provide feedback in the coming week.
Once you have read the recommendation letter assignment below, read “A Message to Garcia.”
Assignment
For those doing a project
To fit everything in, you will have only 10 minutes for your presentation. We will bring a computer that speaks PowerPoint and Impress. You can either plug in your machine or loan us your memory stick. If you need an adapter for a Mac, please bring one or let us know what you need.
You are also to provide us with your annotated slides. You can prepare this after your presentation; we will not be looking for it until Friday, or some other negotiated date.
We prefer to receive the slides via an emailed pdf file, but we will live with whatever is easy for you to produce.
For everyone
Part I
There are two required parts to this assignment. Part I has two options.
Option I: Attend the classes devoted to project presentations and provide constructive advice to the presenters, using forms to be provided. Please be punctual; we start at 9:30 sharp and 11:05 sharp.
Option II: If you are unable to come to class, you are to prepare a comprehensive review of western thought, in not less than 100 pages or more than 200, starting with Aristotle, clearly identifying the slogan and symbol best associated with each significant thinker, as well as a synopsis of that thinker’s most salient ideas. Identify all surprises and comment on whether the thinker used stories to covey his ideas.
Here are some helpful references:
A Brief History of Western Philosophy by Anthony John Patrick Kenny. Wiley-Blackwell, 1998. ISBN: 9780631187912.
The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant. Pocket Books, 1991. ISBN: 9780671739164.
Part II
This part of the assignment is due at the final class; however, we will not be looking for it until Friday, or some other negotiated date.
You have just decided to apply for something that requires you to submit recommendations. You know you can rely on your UROP supervisor to help out, and your advisor, once prompted with your name, will scribble out something pro forma and pretty much useless, as all s/he can do is recite your transcript and say that s/he has never observed you do drugs in her/his presence. Alas, the application asks for three recommendations.
Fortunately, you took 6.803, so you know Winston maintains a dossier of your 6.803 work. Also, the dossier is augmented from time to time as you send him notes describing how you are progressing through life and how 6.803 has been of use. Accordingly, you send Winston the following note:
Professor Winston:
I am applying for graduate school/law school/medical school/a faculty job/etc. Do you think you know me well enough, from my 6.803 work, to write a favorable recommendation for such a position? If so, I append a few talking points, in the form of a draft letter, which I think will save you some time and strengthen what you can say. Also, if you can help, I will, of course, arrange to come by for a chat and drop off copies of all the material I am submitting.
Your job is to supply the draft letter, written as if by Winston. Mention your GPA along with any explanation you would like to have delivered if it is not high. Explain UROP work, if any, with special emphasis on what was fun. Describe extracurricular activities and achievements, if any. Explain passions and goals, if any. Detail reasons for wanting the position applied for and how having you will enhance the reputation of the place that takes you on.
In all sections, remember to use the press release style:
- Most important things first
- Write in a way that chunks can be used with minimal rephrasing
But wait!—you may say—I don’t know the first thing about writing about myself. Do you have any advice? Read “A Message to Garcia,” is the reply. Your mission, in effect, is to get the message to Garcia.
Note: When you do get around to needing a recommendation, send a copy of your letter, along with the following:
An explanation of characteristics the deciding organization is known to look for, how you fit the profile, and how that fit might be expressed or emphasized.
A few bulletized items that will be useful to Winston in understanding you, even if the bulletized material would be unlikely to be used explicitly in Winston’s letter. In this category, you might mention heroes (possibly in multiple categories), how you plan to change the world, most influential book, most enjoyable book, most influential subject (other than 6.803, of course), most enjoyable subject (other than 6.803, of course), favorite music, high-impact experiences, and so on.
Also, explain why it will be fun to have the position you are seeking and why you will be a better person for having got it, why the world will be better off if you get it.
Paper
Core of the assignment:
“Sources of flexibility in human cognition: dual-task studies of space and language” by Linda Hermer-Vazquez, Elizabeth S. Spelke, and Alla S. Katsnelson.
Estimated reading time: 1.5 hours
“Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients” by Evelina Fedorenko and Rosemary Varley
Estimated reading time: 1.0 hours
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Planning ahead for fall, Winston has decided to continue the tradition of “Right Now” speakers who talk about their recent work. One of those speakers will be either Spelke (you are to imagine she just finished her paper) or Fedorenko.
He supposes that the best way to decide would be to read through the two papers. Unfortunately, he is too busy. He asks you to send a recommendation via email using the following template:
Professor Winston,
I compared Spelke’s work with Fedorenko’s along several dimensions that seemed particularly relevant to me.
…
Accordingly, I think you should invite …
Papers
“An Evolutionary Framework for the Acquisition of Symbolic Cognition by Homo sapiens” (PDF) by Ian Tattersall
“What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain” (PDF) by J. Y. Lettvin, H. R. Maturana, W. S. McCulloch, and W. H. Pitts
Just read I.A and VIII, about 2 pages, to get the flavor of what Lettvin discovered about frogs.
If you wish, you may use these papers as an amnesty substitution for some prior assignment you have not yet done. Identify that assignment, do the work indicated, but use these papers rather than the ones originally assigned.
Otherwise, you do not have to write anything in any form. Just think about the following:
Over spring break, you have two nightmares. In one, you are Jerry Lettvin, and you have forgotten to prepare for a 6.803 guest lecture on your frog paper. You have only 15 minutes left to put something together. It occurs to you to structure your talk according to the V-S-N-C (Vision-Steps-News-Contributions) mantra, decorated with a slogan, symbol, salient, and surprise.
In the other, you are Ian Tattersall, having dinner with President Reif. He asks you how AI research should be informed by paleoanthropology.
Paper
“How to Grow a Mind: Statistics, Structure, and Abstraction” by Joshua Tenenbaum, Charles Kemp, Thomas Griffiths, and Noah Goodman
Estimated reading time: 1.0 hours
“Bayesian Ptolemaic Psychology” (PDF) by Clark Glymour
Estimated reading time: 45 min, without following the probabilistic calculations step by step
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
Winston has grown tired of the “Right Now” lectures in 6.034 and decides to try panel discussions instead. The first of these panel discussions, an experiment, will pit Joshua Tenenbaum against Clark Glymour.
There will be no opening statements and no slides. Instead, the panelists will just respond to questions put to them by Winston, who will moderate.
You are a 6.034 teaching assistant. The night before the panel discussion, Winston sends you a note explaining that one of the two panelists has backed out. Winston asks you to fill in, defending the panelist’s position on Bayesian models of behavior. To make it easier for you, he says you can suggest to him questions you would like to be asked. He also says he wants to see your proposed answers.
Unfortunately, he forgot to tell you which panelist has backed out, so you have to prepare questions, and answers, for both sides.
Time is short, so you will work up your questions and answers using “How to Grow a Mind: Statistics, Structure, and Abstraction” and “Bayesian Ptolemaic Psychology,” which Winston had you read in this course.
Note that you will not be taking a quiz on the probabilistic calculations, so you need not follow them step by step.
Rules of Engagement
Note that the Rules of Engagement in 6.803 are the same as those in 6.034: show up, pay attention, leave your laptop shut, and put away your cell phone.
Paper
“Computing Machinery and Intelligence” by A. M. Turing
(Note: Turing’s paper was originally published in 1950.)
Estimated reading time: 1.5 hours
Usually, we limit you to one side of one sheet of paper. This time, you get two sides of one sheet of paper.
Preparation
Part A
Read the Syllabus if you have not already, so you will know as much as possible about what 6.803 will be like. If the syllabus or this assignment give you second thoughts, send me an email immediately so we can give your slot to someone else.
Part B
Read the Style Guide carefully.
Turing, Side 1
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
Part A
You are to complete this part of the assignment on one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with reasonable interline spacing and margins.
Note that, for various reasons, we insist on strict adherence to the stipulated page limits.
- We want you to learn to be concise.
- We sometimes scan your papers for posterity. Our scanner does not handle staples, nor does it handle two sides.
Part A1—Decoding a Paper
You have a nightmare. You have partied all weekend, 6.803 is to meet in fifteen minutes, you have not read the assigned paper yet. You have lost all your electonic devices, but have a paper copy of the assigned paper. You are afraid Winston will call on you at random to summarize the important ideas. Explain how you would use your fifteen minutes to prepare for that possibility. Do not limit yourself to techniques suggested by the Turing paper.
Part A2—The Turing Paper
Suppose that you are Alan Turing. You have been asked to participate in a panel discussion on the possibility of intelligent computers at a meetng of the Royal Society. You prepare some talking points by completing the following:
- In retrospect, the most important part of my paper is …, because…
- I think the strongest of my various arguments is…, because…
- I think the weakest of my various arguments is…, because…
- I hope that people pursue research focused on…, because…don’t seem particularly important to me.
Part A3—Go back over your paper
Check your paper carefully for style infringements as defined by the Style Guide, especially quote misuse. Do this as if such an infringement would expose you to public ridicule or an F in the subject.
Part A4—Go back over your paper again
This time make absolutely sure you have not committed the quotation crime identified in the Style Guide.
Part A5—For discussion preparation, not part of written assignment
Be prepared to explain the arguments against the possibility of computer intelligence along with Turing’s response.
Miscellaneous, Side 2
Part A
Read the Style Guide carefully. Then, on the other side of your sheet of paper, criticize the following:
The author believed “Patrick and Karen drank wine and beer in Miami and Montreal. The former was too cool and the latter was too warm. Since the food was good, however, neither wanted to leave.”
We are very picky about the points listed in the Style Guide, so you should review every paper you write to be sure that you have adhered to the commandments. Otherwise, you will drive us crazy with rage and have to resubmit your paper to get a grade.
Part B
Alan Turing has returned to life for the current academic year and has decided he wants to take 6.803 to catch up on what has happened after he died in 1952. He has asked you to draft an entry to the “Why do you want to take 6.803?” question that will make Winston hope he will be a lottery winner. Provide the draft.
Part C
Then, draft an entry to the “Why do you want to take 6.803?” question that will make Winston indifferent about whether he will be a lottery winner.
Paper
“Visual Cognition and Visual Routines” (Chapter 9 in High Level Vision) by Shimon Ullman
Estimated reading time: 1.5 hours
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
Of course, you need not limit yourself to one side of one sheet of paper for this assignment.
Part A
Some advisory committees write reports that consist of an executive summary accompanied by something like 30 slides, which are supplemented by explanatory legends that supply useful detail beyond what is captured in the slides. If the slides are prepared according to 6.803 maxims, the legends are essential, because the slides will be too telegraphic to be understood on their own. The legends range in length from a sentence to a page, tending to peak at a half page. This sample slide (PDF), taken from a report of the Naval Research Advisory Committee, illustrates.
This format is the one to be used for the project report for those of you doing projects.
In this exercise, you are to try your hand at an abbreviated version of this format. In particular, you are to provide a slide show report on the thoughts of Ullman, except that:
- You are not to provide an executive summary.
- You are not to produce more than a half dozen slides.
- Your legends should be closer to a sentence than a page.
Include in your slides, or legends, or both, a demonstration that you have read and understood the paper.
You may borrow freely from illustrations that appear in the paper. If you use PowerPoint or Impress regularly, great, but you need not fight with slidemaking software or fret about not having such software. You may cut and paste or roughly trace material from the paper or provide your own rough sketches of what you have in mind.
Part B
With a big red pencil, or equivalent, identify salient, slogan, symbol, and surprise (if any), in your slides or legends.
Paper
“The Genesis Enterprise: Taking Artificial Intelligence to another Level via a Computational Account of Human Story Understanding” by Patrick Henry Winston and Dylan Holmes
But read the assignment first.
Assignment
[Note: If you discuss the paper or the assignment with another student—which we encourage—indicate whom you have talked with in your submitted composition. Of course your submitted composition must be written entirely by you.]
On a total of one side of one sheet of paper, using 10 pt type or larger, with standard interline spacing and margins, respond to all the following:
The Dean of the new Schwartzman College of Computing has decided to have a roadshow that will run in Paris, Moscow, Mumbai, Singapore, Beijing, and other places with a high density of investors and philanthropists. You are Dylan Holmes, one of 100 students asked to prepare a poster for a poster session.
Alas, you, Holmes, are helping Professor Winston with 6.803, and you do not have time. He asks you for help.
You decide to prepare a poster for Holmes based on the paper cited. You only have time to read Sections 1, 2, and 8, skimming the rest.
Course Info
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Spring
2019
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assignment
Written Assignments
