This semester I have been blessed to teach a 4-credit first-year seminar. My students were amazing! The title of the class is “Building Ideas & Solving Problems”. We have been working with Professor Swartz’s “Science Fiction” first-year seminar class. It has been an adventure! 

The semester was broken into two parts. In part one, we did a whole manner of math problems and science experiments. In part two, we meet up with Professor Swartz’s class to write a 22-page science fiction story that the students had do in groups of four. I learned so much from process, I feel that I need to write a blog post to keep everything straight.

1. In future versions of this class, we need do add a project management component to part 1 of the course. Writing a 22-page short story with people you do not know is difficult, even for professors. Knowing how to effectively manage a group project beforehand would be helpful. 
2. Like it or not, learning how to work in a group is one of the most important skills you can develop in college. And it is something that businesses, medical schools, and graduate students want their new employees to be good at. And it is hard to do. 
3. Students hated this assignment at first. When I say hated, I mean they HATED IT. But this project was given ample class time, out-of-class meetings, and some additional scaffolding by the faculty. The comments at the end of the project, were very positive. While not everyone was happy, most of the students were. I even heard that the students were “proud of their work”. It was a 180 degree turn for most students!
4. Students! I am literally the worst language person ever! If I am catching your grammar mistakes, there is a problem. ”cuz” and “u” are not acceptable words to use unless you are writing dialog.
5. English Professors! How do you read so many papers all the time and not go nuts!?!?! I mean you talk to the students about their projects, you read the drafts, and then the final papers. Its so much! I have a new appreciation for what you do!
6. I have learned a lot from Professor Swartz. She is amazing and one of Adelphi’s best professors. 

Now onto the fun things / AI

One of the things I saw in the stories generated by students was that they created stories where AI/robots were equals to humans. Their AI/robots were cute and had human qualities. This echoed in the movie The Creator, which I watched this weekend. The robots in the movie are completely equals to humans. In the movie the humans and robots have fist fights; that just doesn’t seem right. Robots beat humans in fist fight, every time. If they don’t they will the next time it happens.

The stories that the students wrote had some cool robots on them. There was a robot dog named Ben in one of the stories. Another story had a cute advanced Roomba. Robot captains. Robot friends. Robot villains. Robot taxi drivers.

One of the groups did a really job of hinting at what I feel is most scary about robots/AI, the pace at which the technology is developing. One of the leaders of a dystopian future basically took over the world by building advanced AIs in his basement, because he was depressed. Talk about living 2023.

Consider Moore’s law which states (Wikipedia) – “Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore’s law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.” Basically the growth of computers has been exponentially increasing. Its like digital technology is evolving from an Amoeba (1940s) to an Ape (present day) in front of our eyes. Why would it stop or level off once AI gets to human capabilities? Why would it not keep evolving? Why would AIs/Robots want to act like humans? 

And will quantum computing be even faster? better?

Consider the following, it took me less than 10 minutes to generate all of these images related to my students’ stories with Firefly. And most of that time was talking to a student about another matter. Would a graphic designer do a better job? Absolutely. But remember the capability is doubling like every two years. We can’t keep up. We live in a brave new world!

Interesting thoughts: 

• This was the most fun to put into the search, “Last person on an alien world lives in a cave with a hungry Roomba”
• The following “Bus driver punches a disheveled passenger for not giving up his seat for a pregnant woman” and “College Student smokes some weed that allows them to see the future” were not allowed by the algorithm.
• Oh Yeah, that alien monster is eating some worms!