CSC 190A/290A Course Description

This course explores the possibility of consciousness in machines, both in the sense of perceptual awareness and self-awareness. Readings are from the AI literature as well as from philosophy and cognitive science. The course will begin with some general philosophical and cognitive science readings, and then shift emphasis to representational and computational aspects. Homework will include written answers to questions, essays, and -- for 290A students only -- a project that involves Lisp programming. The course will be suitable for writing credit. (4 hours, Spring).
190A Prerequisites: junior or higher standing;
290A Prerequisites: CSC 173 and one or more of 240, 242, 280 , or 282. (See comments below.)

Lectures:   Tuesday and Thursday, 11:05a.m. to 12:20 p.m., in CSB 632.

Comments on Prerequisites

Students should meet the prerequisite requirements (junior standing for 190A, and at least one previous course in AI or theory of computation for 290A) and should not undertake this course lightly. It is expected to be a significant amount of work. The course has an extensive reading list, and requires getting a broad grasp of philosophical, cognitive, and AI issues pertaining to machine consciousness and self-awareness. For 290A students, homeworks and the programming project will be evaluated on the assumption that these students have previously attained some programming maturity, and have previously been exposed to basic AI topics such as computer vision, knowledge representation, problem solving, language understanding, etc. However, students who have taken a theory course such as CSC 280 or CSC 282 probably have sufficient maturity in the more formal aspects of computer science to be able to make up for lack of a prior AI course. The projects will typically require the use of multiple source files and libraries, so experience with programming utilities such as make and rcs/cvs/bitkeeper is an asset.

Readings, Homework, and Grading

For 190A students, approximately 75% of the grade will be based on 5-6 homework assignments; 15% on about 3-5 quizzes (mostly very brief pop quizzes, but the last one, on materials near the end of the course for which no homework can be assigned, somewhat longer ~~ 20 minutes); and 10% for participation.

For 290A students, the 5 or 6 homeworks will count as approximately 42% of the grade, the project as approximately 33%, the 3 or 4 quizzes as 15%, and participation as 10%.

The homework assignments will ask you to answer questions and write essays about the readings. These readings include several required books and a number of technical articles. (In addition, 290A students will probably be looking at some further scientific literature to help with your consciousness project -- see below.)

Required books

One of the key questions we want to consider is whether consciousness and self-awareness are dependent on having an organic, human-like (or mammalian) brain, or whether they can instead be characterized more abstractly, and realized in machines -- whose physical and functional makeup might be very different. However, few books concerned with this question have been written, so our sampling is somewhat biased towards philosophy and cognitive science. At least the following 4 books will be required reading:

Additional readings may be chosen from the further books list (see link below). This is likely to include some chapters of Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (Amazon.com 2006), and possibly from Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (Basic Books 2007). (Fitting in the latter would require omitting some currently scheduled chapters from Fellous & Arbib.)

Links to further books and to articles

The following are links to some further books from which some readings may be selected (for you or by you) and many of the articles you will be asked to read.

Writing guidelines

For specific homework assignments, see Assignments.

You will be asked to answer questions in writing, and to write essays of various lengths.

One kind of place to look for examples of the kind of writing to strive for is in book reviews, in refereed journals, of some of the readings for this course.

Typically, essays will be graded on 3 dimensions, roughly as follows:

Project: Implementing a limited example of (self)awareness

As noted, approximately 33% of the work in 290A will be devoted to a semester-long project, carried out in teams of about 1-3, developing systems that show or simulate some degree of perceptual awareness, emotional response, and self-awareness. All systems should have some simple model of themselves in relation to their world, and should show some limited ability to express themselves in language or logic, since this is the most natural way to provide overt evidence of consciousness.

Examples of such systems might be:

or some other topic you might suggest yourself (and obtain approval for). Some basic startup code may be provided for some of the above projects.

The 290A class will organize into teams of 1-3 students, and each team will attempt to go as far as possible in demonstrating the above sorts of capabilities. Team members will present one brief status report to the rest of the class, with opportunities for feedback. Final project presentations will be given near the end of the semester, and reports on the projects will be submitted.

Attendance

Attendance is mandatory. Gaining an oversight of the various facets of consciousness and the many perspectives on it are an essential part of the course experience. The pop quizzes will likely be on material covered in the previous class, as a means of documenting attendance and attention. They could also refer to the content of previous unscheduled discussions.

Essays and reports must be handed in in time. Exceptions will be made only under the most dire of circumstances.

Academic Honesty

Student conduct in CSC 190A/290A is governed by the College Academic Honesty Policy, the Undergraduate Laboratory Policies of the Computer Science Department, and the Acceptable Use Policy of Academic Technology Services (see especially sec. III of the full pdf document).

As in all intellectual endeavors, proper attribution of work is crucial in the essays and project reports you submit. 290A students also need to be sure to provide proper references to the software and documentation they acquire for the project (naturally, describing any additions or modifications they made). In your homework answers, essays and reports, provide citations in standard form for any text and ideas taken from other sources. Use of unattributed material is plagiarism.


Last Change: 16 January 2008 / Len Schubert