HW4a - Panel discussions (please submit here and in Peergrade; note change of deadline)

Homework 4 Panel discussions

A panel discussion is a public debate in front of an audience. The panel consists of experts, chosen to reflect different opinions. The moderator keeps the discussion going by asking the panelists questions, moderating the discussion, and ensuring that each panel member has an equal opportunity to speak.

This is an example of a panel discussion:

You are invited to participate in two panel discussions in the next seminar.

You should prepare for the following three roles:

• moderator
• panelist
• audience

You will not know beforehand which of two discussions you will participate in, so you must prepare for both.

1. The first panel discussion will be on the subject ''Is Computer Science Science?"

1. Read the paper Is Computer Science Science?Links to an external site. [Peter Denning. 2005, Communications of the ACM Vol.48(4), pp. 27-31]. Other optional reading is listed below.
2. Write an introduction (no more than 10 sentences) to this panel discussion.
3. Formulate three questions a moderator could ask the panel. Try to formulate them so that they provoke intense discussion.
4. Write down three arguments against calling computer science a science,  and for each of them your strongest counterargument.

2. The second panel discussion will be on the subject ''Software Bots?''

1. Read the article  Software BotsLinks to an external site. [Carlene Lebeuf, Margaret-Anne Storey, and Alexey Zagalsky. 2018. IEEE Software Vol 35(1), pp. 18-23]. Additional reading will be listed below. 
2. Write an introduction (no more than 10 sentences) to this panel discussion.
3. Write down three questions a moderator could ask the panel. Try to formulate them so that they provoke intense discussion.
4. Choose a standpoint (for example: "Software bots are the user interfaces of the future" or "Software bots are a danger to society") and write down three arguments for your standpoint.

You can of course also use other material you find on these subjects. 

Optional reading:

1. What is computer science? Selected opinions by some of the founders of the field.

Vinton G. Cerf, Where Is the Science in Computer Science? (Links to an external site.) Communications of the ACM, October 2012, Vol. 55 No. 10, Page 5.

Vinton Cerf (1943-) is an American Internet pioneer and one of the fathers of the Internet, together with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. They received the Turing Award (Links to an external site.) in 2004.

Newell, Allen; Perlis, Alan J.; & Simon, Herbert A. (1967), What is Computer Science? (Links to an external site.), Science 157(3795), 1373–1374.

Allen Newell and Herb Simon were pioneers in AI research during the 1950s, and received the Turing Award together in 1975. Herb Simon is also known for his contributions to other fields, includníng cognitive psychology and economics (for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1978). Alan Perlis did important work on early programming languages and compilers, and was awarded the first Turing Award in 1966.

Knuth, Donald (1974), “Computer Science and Its Relation to Mathematics (Links to an external site.)”, American Mathematical Monthly 81(4) (April): 323–343.

Donald Knuth is known, e.g.,  for his contributions to algorithm analysis and computational complexity, for his books The Art of Computer Programming, and for the creation of TeX. He received the Turing Award in 1974.

Brooks, Frederick P., Jr. (1996), “The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith II”,  (Links to an external site.)Communications of the ACM 39(3) (March): 61–68,

Fred Brooks is an American computer scientist who has done fundamental work in computer architecture, operating systems, software engineering, and human-computer interaction. He received the Turing Award in 1999.

And for those interested in reading further, there is an online draft of an excellent book by William Rapaport, a computer scientist and philosopher at SUNY Buffalo, called Philosophy of Computer Science  (Links to an external site.)(938 pages, but very readable). Rapaport is also known for pointing out that Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo  (Links to an external site.)is a grammatically correct sentence in English.

2. Software bots

The origins of chatbots:

Weizenbaum, J. ELIZA--A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine (Links to an external site.), Communications of the ACM, Volume 9, Number 1 (January 1966): 36-45.

Kenneth Colby's Parry (1972)
Colby, K. M. (1981). Modeling a paranoid mind.  (Links to an external site.)Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4(4), 515–560.

A conversation between PARRY and ELIZA (Links to an external site.) (arranged by Vint Cerf in 1973).

Examples of controversies:

Examples of chatbot failures (Links to an external site.) and successes (Links to an external site.).

Microsoft’s Racist Chatbot Revealed the Dangers of Online Conversation (Links to an external site.)

Gina Neff and Peter Nagy, Talking to Bots: Symbiotic Agency and the Case of Tay (Links to an external site.), International Journal of Communication 10(2016), 4915–4931