Blog Task
Artifical Intelligence is going through a particularly exciting period
right now and everyday there are new stories of research
breakthroughs and new technology based on AI
techniques. Students in this course are required to complete
a blog task to show that they are able to keep up with the
recent trends in the field.
To complete the blog task you need to do the following:
- Sign up for a timeslot with the scheduling
system. The deadline for signing up will be announced in
class and on Learn.
- Sometime during your timeslot, you will write a blog
post about a recent developement, trend, news item, etc
related to artificial intelligence. Ideally the topic will
be very recent (i.e. within the last year) but if you
find a topic that is slightly older that you are really
interested in, then consult with the instructor and get
her approval.
- Your blog post must be posted on Learn, in the
Discussion Forum provided for that purpose. You are
required to post during your timeslot.
- Your post and the discussion should answer a number
of questions
about the topic or issue being discussed. For example, if
you are reporting on a breakthrough in research or
technology then
- Describe the breakthrough/advance in research or
technology
- Describe how this relates to ideas we have
discussed in class
- Can the research/technology discussed be used in
other settings or applications?
- Are there any social implications to the work
(positive or negative)? What are they?
There is also a lot of discussion about ethics and social
implications of artificial intelligence. You can post
about an article addressing these issues explicitly also.
Remember to provide references to all sources you use. You
are not allowed to directly copy text from your sources.
- No article or topic should can be posted by more than
one student. For example, if one student posts about
collision avoidance in autonomous vehicles, then no other
student can post on the same topic. However, another
student could post on localization and mapping, or legal
and ethical concerns relating to autonomous vehicles. With
respect to topics, it is first come, first served.
- You are required to participate in the discussion of
other students' blog posts thoughout the term.
Some starting sources for topics (you can, of course, use your own sources):
There are also numerous blogs which discuss AI, and you can
certainly use them. For example, both
Facebook
and
Google
have blogs that report on their AI research. Many
AI researchers also have blogs. See for example,
Marking Scheme
- Your post (70%)
- Relevance to course material (5%)
- Recency of the topic (5%)
- Detailed description, with technical details as
appropriate (20%)
- Presentation and originality of the text (Note, the
post must be written in standard English. This means that
you must use proper spelling and capitalization, complete
sentences, proper grammar, etc). (20%)
- Citations (10%)
- Quality of the discussion you lead (10%)
- Your comments on others' posts (30%)
- Each week (other than your own), your comments on
others' posts will be marked out of 5%
- Your best six weeks will count towards this part of
your mark
Blog Task Scheduling Instructions
We now have our Blog Task Scheduling System up for you to use. The
blog task will run from the week of January 25th to the week of March
28th.
- Visit the scheduler
at
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~j3doucet/blogtask-scheduling/. You will
need your uwaterloo login name and password to sign in. (That is, the
same information that you use for Learn).
- Sign up for a week. The process is first-come first-served. If
there are no spots remaining in your preferred week, then you need to
chose a different week. If you later want to change your time spot,
then this is possible as long as there are openings in the week to
which you want to switch.
- During your week, you are expected to do your blog post, and run
a discussion related to it. Information as to what is involved can be
found below.
- Each week you are expected to read the blog posts and participate
in the discussion.