Curriculum descant: pre-disciplinary AI

Abstract

emphasize writing and critical-thinking skills. For instance, at Bryn Mawr college, we require all our incoming students to take two such courses, designated as College Seminars. I quote from the college's prospectus about a description of these courses: " The College Seminars are discussion-oriented , reading-and writing-intensive courses for first-and second-year students. Topics (of these courses) vary from year to year, but all seminars are designed and taught by faculty from several different fields and are intended to engage broad, fundamental issues and questions. These courses have a predisciplinary rather than an interdisci-plinary intent: their aim is to revisit and revitalize questions that tend to be taken as settled by existing disciplines. Course materials include books and essays but also films, material objects, social practices, scientific observations and experiments. " For more information on this program, and specific course description visit Inspired by sentiments expressed in the two pieces above, I would like to propose the creation of a pre-disciplinary writing intensive course that centers around the issues of artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind. Such a course can use a combination of materials taken from a selection of classic papers, videos of AI systems, movies (AI documentaries as well as Hollywood-style productions), and articles on AI as reported in the popular press. When team-taught by faculty from other disciplines , one quickly discovers an exciting array of readings that could be used to formulate the course content. I am also thinking of I n an earlier issue of this column, (" Interdisciplinary AI, " intelligence, Volume 11, Number 1, 2000) Richard Wyatt wrote: " Artificial intelligence, as a course offered within computer science programs, should be an interdisciplinary course. Stated more carefully , the correct design for an undergraduate artificial intelligence course for a computer science department is such that it should be able to be taken by any student possessing good analytic skills but lacking programming skills. The interdisciplinary nature of a well-designed artificial intelligence course is not itself a goal of the preferred course design, but is a consequence of it. " Computer science programs are not the ideal training grounds for artificial intelligence. There are of course exceptions, but in general, computer science students lack an understanding of philosophical issues. " In short, artificial intelligence should be an interdisciplinary course and we, as instructors , should consciously conceive of it as such. " If we ourselves …