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• What is the viewpoint of the mass on creating artificial life?

  • Humans have always fantasized of creating sentient creatures themselves
  • Golems, Frankenstein’s monster, Pinocchio are archetypical
  • The thing-that-lives generates high arousal, either positive (enthusiasm) or negative (anxiety)

• What is a possible reason that the uncanny valley exists?

  • Humans have a natural tendency to avoid disease.
    
  • when robots approach human-likeness, they resemble sick or disabled people more than healthy people.
  • when robots are not human-like at all, we don't view them through the same goggles we view humans through.
  • this could be the reason why people avoid robots that are almost indistinguishable.

• Human beings have a very strong tendency to anthropomorphize, what does this mean?

  • they assign human qualities to anything that behaves like a human
    
  • when the robot got bullied you couldn't help to think how sad it must've felt.

• What is the very essence of what computers do?

  • Computers can be used to "outsource" psychological processes. 
    
  • they perform mental processes for the user.
  • As such, we extend our mind and make it more powerful
  • Our species has gradually extended its mind to a level that was unimaginable for most of history...
    

• What was the first idea of a machine being able to do intellectual work?

  • The mechanical turk; An 18th century apparatus that could play a strong game of chess
    
  • Howeverthis was an illusion: the mechanical clockwork inside hid a dwarf who was actually playing
  • But this was the first time anybody had the idea for a machine that could think.
    

• What was the product of the collaboration of Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace?

  • Charles Babbage was the first person to create an analytical engine that allowed the user to make calculations.
    
  • Ada Lovelace is the first person to write a specification for this machine to cause it to generate Bernouilli numbers: an algorithm.
    
  • These specifications constitute the first software program, and Lady Lovelace is therefore the first programmer
    

  however, this construction remained a thought experiment, it was never built.

• Parallel, but independently, to the fantasy of a digital computer is the rise of the idea of a robot. How did this idea evolve?

  • The industrial revolution makes the machine mainstream
  • In factories, machines start to take over human tasks•The idea that one could rebuild a human mechanically takes hold
  • The idea of a robot (after the Slavic Robota, which means “forced labourer”) is born

  However this is not yet linked to the computer

• Describe the contributions of Alan Turing to the development of the computer.

  • he was an english mathematician who cracks the Enigma code of the Nazis
  • Turing shows how to make a very generic “machine” to do calculations: the Turing Machine
  • he never built it, it was only the blueprint for it.
  • Proves that such a machine can handle all computable functions
  • these computable functions also includes all standard logic: the Turing machine thus can “think” a bit
    

  his idea was revolutionary because he showed how a machine can make logical implications, and thus showed how we can think.

• How does the turing machine work?

  • It is a machine with a piece of tape.
    
  • the machine reads the tape, can erase what is writen on the tape, or write something on the tape.
  • it's a digital machine; it only writes 0's and 1's
  • The computer runs a programme, and the programme instructs the machine what to do when a particular piece of tape is read.

• Describe how the ability of a computer to use logic through boolean algebra is an analogy to human thought.

  • Logic can be used within thoughts.
    
  • logic can also be translated into a computation. Our thoughts can therefor be seen as computational processes.
  • the computations logic is translated to are implemented in/performed by a computer.
  • our thoughts being computational processes are performed by our brain.
  • so our brain functioning is analogous to a computer functioning.

  the line of reasoning; we can use logic because we think --> the turing machine can use logic through boolean algebra, therefor the machine can think.