Artificial Intelligence Class Psychology 303 Guidelines for the Critical Paper - Due one week before the end of the semester (see the syllabus) -

Artificial Intelligence Class

Psychology 303

Guidelines for the Critical Paper

- Due one week before the end of the semester (see the syllabus)

- Counts for 40% of the course grade (40 points)

- 8 to 12 pages in length not including the title and reference pages

- Must include sources of information outside assigned readings with a minimum of five

  references

1)​  In one, choose an AI subfield of interest to you (e.g, expert system applications) and attempt to define the state of the art in that subfield and explain why it is intelligent. Using human capabilities as a reference, compare the capabilities of this state of the art processing and determine whether it falls short of human capabilities and try to isolate reasons why it falls short. Find bottlenecks or inadequacies in representation or processing and sketch out what AI processing will have to be able to accomplish before human-like performance is attained.

For example, robotic movement used to be limited by the lack of a real-time vision system and the difficulties of representing spatial information. You could explain these problems and show what has been done to try to solve them and then go on to describe what a robot will need to be able to do before it can be said that human-like capabilities have been achieved.

Your paper must reflect your own judgment and original thinking. Turnitin, a plagiarism detecting program, will determine how much of your paper is really yours.

You will use the APA Style Guidelines for your paper. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this format, it is the standard format established by the American Psychological Association for all journal reports. A free hardcopy of these guidelines is available from the Psychology Laboratory in L202 Main or online from various sources.

For those of you who would benefit from coaching on your writing skills, I direct you to the Center for Academic Excellence - call (651) 793-1460.  Better writing will translate into a higher grade.

2)​ that you would design and explain what it would do and why it is intelligent. What problems does it solve and what are its potential pitfalls? Would it approach or exceed human capabilities for that type of processing? If it would not, explain generally why it would fall short. Would human-like capabilities be the ultimate goal for this type of AI application, or would such a development be unnecessary and why?

For example, intelligent agents may be incorporated into data base applications to spot data entry errors or omissions made during human data entry. You could explain what they could and couldn't do and what additional capabilities would be necessary before the intelligent agents could be said to be demonstrating human-like intelligence.

Your papers will be turned in electronically. Click on "Assessments" at the top of the page and then click on "Assignments."  Find the folder "Submissions - Term Paper"and upload your paper there.

See the instructor if you have any questions about your topic. By all means, don't make this a mere report of what the literature says but an analysis that employs your own thinking.

Examples of Good Papers from Past Students

To give you a better idea of what a decent paper looks like, I am including two examples, "Term Paper 1" and "Term Paper 2," following this set of instructions. The first one did a good job of following the APA Guidelines format, while the second one was especially thoughtful and well-written (but was not written in APA format as it should have been).

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