Special Assignment: Dr. Celine Latulipe's Lecture

Reference

Title: Building and Evaluating Creative Interaction
Authors: Fabian Hemmert, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Berlin, Germany
Date: January 27, 2011
Location: Georgia Tech University, Georgia, USA.

Summary

Dr Latulipe started off by providing a brief introduction and a precise description about her work area. Initially, Dr Latulipe talked about the how pointing devices limit the input to just one hand. For example, we can use only one mouse on a computer at a time. Two pointing devices will confuse the computer. She stresses on the need of having multiple pointing devices and demonstrates how it can be very helpful. She briefly explained about her PhD work in which she designed a photo editing software that supports multiple pointing devices. Two separate pointers were used to control hue and saturation and the curve plotted using these two variable was used to control the contrast and brightness.

Next, she talks about her project Dance Draw that has received some media attention. The project involves the dancers to carry a wireless gyroscopic mouse, which serves as an input device for the software that runs on the computer. The software uses this input to create drawings. This the actions of the dancers is used to create pictures.

Lastly, Dr. Latulipe talks about NASA Task Load Index (TLX) which is widely used in the field of human computer interaction. She has created a Creativity Support Index on the similar lines. In one of the user studies, she studied an audience's reaction while they were watching a creative performance. The data collected can establish a relation between the performance and audience engagement.

Discussion

I thought the talk were extremely interesting, not like the traditional computer science talks that are full of programming jargon and talk about improving the performance improvement. The talk was very easy to understand and focussed on creativity. I believe creativity is extremely important to create intelligent software. Since the final user of any software is human, it's very important to focus on the human side of the software.

Book Reading #3: On Computers (Adopted from the Complete works of Aristotle)

Reference Information
Title: The Complete Works of Aristotle
Author: Aristotle
Editor: Jonathan Barnes

Summary
In this chapter, Aristotle describes plants in minute detail. He addresses the question - whether or not plants have a soul and intelligence. To find the answer to this question, he compares the characteristics of plants to human characteristics. The first characteristic he mentions is sleep. Plants do not sleep as humans and animals do. However, as he moves on to other characteristics like reproduction and needs for survival, he tries to imply that the plants do have a soul. He mentions that like we humans needs nutrition to grow, plants also need suitable climatic conditions, temperature and sunshine to live a healthy life. Towards the end of the chapter he also mentions various types of plants and trees.

Discussion
In this discussion, we can relate plants and computers. Computers, like plants don't evidently show any characteristics that prove that they have a soul. It can be argued that computers do need electricity for their operation like plants needs air, water and sunshine. However, computers do not grow or reproduce like plants do. I do not believe that computers have a soul. Firstly, computers are machines that simply process data and produce logical output. They are not biological, unlike any living organism. A plant, after it dies decomposes, but that's not the case with a computer. Computers are just tools designed for human use and to increase efficiency.

Article: The Chinese Room Experiment

John Searle
Reference Information
Title: Minds, Brains and Programs
Names of authors: John R. Searle
Publication: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417-457

Summary

In this experiment, John Searle tried to prove that no matter how intelligent computer systems become, they can never really have a mind. He claims that the idea of mind is different from the brain. Mind is where emotions and intension are generated which can not be recreated by a machine.
In this experiment, John Searle, who is an English speaker is in a closed room. All he has with him is a book with English version of computer program, paper, pencils, erasers and filing cabinets. He receives Chinese character written on a sheet of paper as input and manually follows the computer program to generate a meaningful output. Thus, he works like a computer which follows Von Neumann architecture (input-CPU-memory-output) that's proved to be touring complete.
In this experiment, he does not literally understand Chinese which made him conclude that computers do not really understand and learn, instead they just simulate the process of learning. Thus, the main difference is between simulating a human mind and actually having a mind. Searle concludes that "A machine could be built that acts more intelligent than a person, but does not have a mind orintentionality in the same way that brains do". Thus, computers exhibit weak AI as opposed to strong AI.

Discussion
I completely agree with John Seale's conclusion. It is true that the computers will keep getting smarter. Eventually, they sure will be able to perform most of our everyday work, but they will never surpass human intelligence. Machines can perform actions as they are programmed to do. After all, machine learning or AI is also a program that runs on its CPU. A computer will never be able to recreate human emotions, intension and ability to take initiative in performing tasks. This is because emotions are a result of biological changes like changes in hormonal levels and enzymes in the human body. This can never be recreated using a bunch of hard drives, a CPU and cables.