CSci 4511 - Writing 1

Writing 1 -- due Thursday January 25

The writing will be graded out of 10 points. It will count 2% of the class grade.

There has been a lot of discussion recently in the news and on the web on the dangers of AI and what should be done to make AI ethical. This writing will ask you to understand the issues at stake and to present your own ideas on some of them.

Here is what you need to do:

Understand what some of the issues are. To do this, you can find sources of information yourself, or look at some of these links:
- The Future of Life Institute http://futureoflife.org/ posts a collection on AI (and other) news. Read "Benefit and Risks of AI".
- The Stanford 100 years study on AI has produced their first result, the 2016 report. The report includes a list of AI topics and issues and a short history of AI.
- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has issued a report Preparing for the future of AI
Write a 2-3 page essay (approximatively 800 to 1,000 words) addressing the following questions:
1. Do you believe there are reasons to be concerned about advances of AI? What specific advances are concerning you? Why?
2. What steps you believe governments, industries, or academics should take to address these issues?
In the writing you are free to express your own opinions, but you need to to provide supporting evidence. Please make sure you cite the references you have read and used to support the points you want to make. I expect to see at least 4-5 references.
Please submit your writing as a pdf file.

For all the writings for the class we will use Latex. Here are many ways of learning latex. Look at the Latex notes.

Grading criteria: 30% for the soundness of the arguments you make; 20% for the support you use for the arguments you make; 20% for using latex for your essay; 30% for the writing (spelling, grammar, clarity of expression, structure).