Labs

Lab 9.1: Natural Intelligence

Since the programs in this module attempt to simulate two particularly human tasks (creating poetry, and making logical decisions), we begin these exercises by asking you to do some things on your own - without the aid of a computer. Essentially, we are asking you to collect some data that will allow us to apply the Turing test to our artificially endowed programs in subsequent exercises.

  1. Classically, a haiku verse consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Modern haiku poets (particularly those not writing in Japanese) rarely restrict themselves to the classic pattern, since the Japanese concept of syllable is not equivalent to that in many other languages, including English. Still, this relatively rigid form, coupled with a tendency to use natural images as the bases for metaphor, makes haiku amenable to computer simulation.

    For now, record on a sheet of paper three haiku verses that you find interesting. You can select poems from any available source (there are plenty available on the Web), or you can try writing your own.

  1. Programs that play games, like chess and checkers, are at least in part based on collections of rules that define what "move" the program will make when the board is in a certain configuration, or "state". Each rule says something to the effect of, "If the board is in this state, make this move." To play a game of tic-tac-toe, for example, you might (assuming you are playing 'O') write a rule like: If there is an X in the top-left corner of the board, and there is an X in the middle square, move to the lower-right square.

On a sheet of paper, record a few rules for playing tic-tac-toe using this basic format.

Labs

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