Computer Science | Grinnell College

Since the early days of computing, people have debated the value of artificial intelligence (AI). Many scholars and authors have considered the ramifications of AI and have shared their considerations in media that surrounds us all. We decided there are so many good examples of AI in media (from Ultron to Wall-E), we couldn't pick just one, so please come to CS Table with an example of your favorite AI representation in media!

Suggested readings:

• Robert Hart. When Artificial Intelligence Gets Too Clever by Half. Undark. 24 May 2017.
• Allan Dafoe and Stuart Russell. Yes, We Are Worried About the Existential Risk of Artificial Intelligence. MIT Technology Review. 2 Nov 2016.
• John Bohannon. Fears of an AI Pioneer. Science Magazine. Vol. 349, Issue 6245, pp. 252. 17 Jul 2005.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:45pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

On Thursday, February 10, Jerod Weinman will discuss some aspects of his recent work on text recognition:

Is your smart phone smarter than a fifth grader? Not yet. Accurately translating a photograph of text into an intrinsically textual representation has been confounding computational scientists for over a century. Humans (even fifth graders) still outperform computers at reading. In this talk, I review why the problem is difficult and present a model for robustly recognizing small amounts of text in images.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Mr. Weinman's talk, “Robust text recognition,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

At noon on Friday, April 9, in Noyce 3821, Dr. Dan Garcia of the University of California - Berkeley will describe the work of the GamesCrafters research group there:

The UC Berkeley GamesCrafters undergraduate research and development group was formed in 2001 as a watering hole to gather and engage top students as they explore the fertile area of computational game theory. At the core of the project is Gamesman, a system developed for strongly solving, playing and analyzing two-person, abstract strategy games (e.g., Tic-Tac-Toe or Connect 4) and puzzles (e.g., Rubik's Cube). Over the past nine years, more than seventy games and puzzles have been integrated into the system by over two hundred seventy-four undergraduates.

Pizza and soda will be served shortly before noon. Dr. Garcia's talk, 274 students can't be wrong!: GamesCrafters, a computational game theory undergraduate research and development group at UC Berkeley, will begin promptly thereafter. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, December 3, Charles Frantz 2011 and Jeff Leep 2011 will present the results of their summer research on automatic classification of objects, conducted here under the direction of Professor Jerod Weinman.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Combining hierarchy and feature sharing for object categorization, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.