SEP Session 1, Day 7

This week in "Shakespeare's Tragedies," students are reading King Lear. In the play, King Leer steps down from his throne and decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters. In order to determine who will get the largest portion of the land, the King asks each daughter to prove their love for him. Instability and tragedy overtake the kingdom with changes in power. Today students began class by reflecting upon the meaning of a passage they read from the beginning of the play yesterday. After discussing their ideas, students picked up where they left off yesterday with Act 1, Scene 4. Students chose roles and acted out their parts in front of the class.

In "History of Music" students learned about popular music genres from the late 19th century to the the 1940s. The class began by discussing Tin Pan Alley, a name originally given to a specific section of New York City where composers and publishers congregated. Students listened to the first mega-hit in the United States, "After the Ball" by Charles K Harris, which was part of the Tin Pan Alley genre. Next, they moved into the interwar period which was characterized by the rise of jazz. In addition to discussing the origins and characteristics of jazz, students listened to music from Louis Armstrong and King Oliver. Swing was the next movement that swept the country. Swing music offered Americans an escape from the Great Depression and World War II. During the war, swing music motivated workers in war effort industries and gave soldiers abroad a taste of home.

In "Do You Live in a Computer? Current and Future Realities" students are discussing the potential for Artificial Intelligence and the philosophical ideas backing the science. Students began by reviewing the difference between the Voight-Kampff Test and a Turing Test. The students focused on the Turing Test which is where the subjects are both a human and a machine to compare the two and determine if the machine has a consciousness and a mental life similar to that of a human's. The Turing Test is used to show human interaction with computers with the goal being to create computers with artificial intelligence that can be perceived as human interactions by a human. The students debriefed their viewing of Blade Runner and the artificial intelligence technologies present in the movie and what the downfalls of it were. They then watched clips from the movie Ex_Machina as an example of a different kind of Turing Test where the human knows it is interacting with a computer to determine if it can pass off as having human consciousness. This led to a discussion of the difference between artificial intelligence and super intelligence (singularity) and which form is more ideal.

See below of a different explanation of the Turing Test