Week 6: Quadrants of Optimism
Paper Draft
Your First Paper Drafts are due tomorrow (Wednesday). Please submit your paper first drafts by sending an email with a PDF file attached to me, with a subject line [AI Pavilion] <your paper title>. I’ll send a quick ack message so you know I received it. You don’t need to post your paper draft publicly (on the class reddit) unless you want to, but are welcome do to so also if you want
to share it with the class/world at this stage.
If you would like to get quick feedback on your paper at my office hours Thursday morning (9-10:30am), include a note in your email saying this and I’ll prioritize reading your paper.
Assignment for Next Class
For the next class, we’ll focus on “Black Mirror”, a British TV series whose episodes explore (usually dystopian) outcomes of possible future technologies.
Our two “Black Mirror” experts have suggested three episodes (thanks Erich and Emily!), and everyone will be expected to watch at least one of them and read a short paper related to it from the Recoding Black Mirror Workshop that was held at WWW 2018 (for two of the episodes, there are closely related papers).
To ensure coverage across the three selected episodes, I have arbitrarily (* not completely arbitrarily - if there was an obvious connection between your paper topic and one of the episodes you should be in the right group for that topic) put you in three groups - but, the groups should be considered “default” choices; if you want to switch to a different episode from the one you’ve been assigned, that’s fine. The episodes are all available through Netflix - I believe most of you have access to this, but if you need help let me know. Its fine if you watch the episode alone, but probably more fun if you can get together with others in your group to watch it together. I’ll leave it up to you to try and coordinate this (feel free to post on the class subreddit if that’s helpful).
Everyone should (either individually, or in coordination with others in your episode group):
-
Come to class Monday prepared to give a summary of your episode to the class; if you want to include showing a few short scenes from it, that’s fine and encouraged!.
-
Think about these questions (and use the reading to help):
- how realistic is the technology that is the basis for the episode?
- if the technology imagined is developed, should it be allowed?
- what could we do to increase the likelihood the imagined technology is used for the greater good of humanity, not to create a dystopian future?
Group 1: Cal, Emily, Lauren A., Olivia, Nathanael, Stella
Episode: “Be Right Back”, Series 2, Episode 1
Paper: Tabea Tietz, Francesca Pichierri, Maria Koutraki, Dara Hallinan, Franziska Boehm, and Harald Sack. Digital Zombies - the Reanimation of our Digital Selves
Optional second paper: Martino Mensio, Giuseppe Rizzo, Maurizio Morisio. The Rise of Emotion-aware Conversational Agents: Threats in Digital Emotions
Group 2: Jacob, Kavya, Lauren H., Maria, Rohit
Episode: “Nosedive”, Series 3 Episode 1
Paper: Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Dave Lewis. Ease and Ethics of User Profiling in Black Mirror
Group 3: Erich, Fiona, Megan, Mira
Episode: “Hang the DJ”, Series 4 Episode 4
Paper: (couldn’t find one closely related; if you can, please read that instead, otherwise read this one) Diego Sempreboni, Luca Vigano. MMM: May I Mine Your Mind?
Paper Draft
Your First Paper Drafts are due tomorrow (Wednesday). Please submit your paper first drafts by sending an email with a PDF file attached to me, with a subject line [AI Pavilion] <your paper title>. I’ll send a quick ack message so you know I received it. You don’t need to post your paper draft publicly (on the class reddit) unless you want to, but are welcome do to so also if you want
to share it with the class/world at this stage.
If you would like to get quick feedback on your paper at my office hours Thursday morning (9-10:30am), include a note in your email saying this and I’ll prioritize reading your paper.
Assignment for Next Class
For the next class, we’ll focus on “Black Mirror”, a British TV series whose episodes explore (usually dystopian) outcomes of possible future technologies.
Our two “Black Mirror” experts have suggested three episodes (thanks Erich and Emily!), and everyone will be expected to watch at least one of them and read a short paper related to it from the Recoding Black Mirror Workshop that was held at WWW 2018 (for two of the episodes, there are closely related papers).
To ensure coverage across the three selected episodes, I have arbitrarily (* not completely arbitrarily - if there was an obvious connection between your paper topic and one of the episodes you should be in the right group for that topic) put you in three groups - but, the groups should be considered “default” choices; if you want to switch to a different episode from the one you’ve been assigned, that’s fine. The episodes are all available through Netflix - I believe most of you have access to this, but if you need help let me know. Its fine if you watch the episode alone, but probably more fun if you can get together with others in your group to watch it together. I’ll leave it up to you to try and coordinate this (feel free to post on the class subreddit if that’s helpful).
Everyone should (either individually, or in coordination with others in your episode group):
-
Come to class Monday prepared to give a summary of your episode to the class; if you want to include showing a few short scenes from it, that’s fine and encouraged!.
-
Think about these questions (and use the reading to help):
- how realistic is the technology that is the basis for the episode?
- if the technology imagined is developed, should it be allowed?
- what could we do to increase the likelihood the imagined technology is used for the greater good of humanity, not to create a dystopian future?
Group 1: Cal, Emily, Lauren A., Olivia, Nathanael, Stella
Episode: “Be Right Back”, Series 2, Episode 1
Paper: Tabea Tietz, Francesca Pichierri, Maria Koutraki, Dara Hallinan, Franziska Boehm, and Harald Sack. Digital Zombies - the Reanimation of our Digital Selves
Optional second paper: Martino Mensio, Giuseppe Rizzo, Maurizio Morisio. The Rise of Emotion-aware Conversational Agents: Threats in Digital Emotions
Group 2: Jacob, Kavya, Lauren H., Maria, Rohit
Episode: “Nosedive”, Series 3 Episode 1
Paper: Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Dave Lewis. Ease and Ethics of User Profiling in Black Mirror
Group 3: Erich, Fiona, Megan, Mira
Episode: “Hang the DJ”, Series 4 Episode 4
Paper: (couldn’t find one closely related; if you can, please read that instead, otherwise read this one) Diego Sempreboni, Luca Vigano. MMM: May I Mine Your Mind?