HIST 300 REVIEW

Question 1

What is the core argument of John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment?

Accepted Answer

Syntax alone is insufficient for semantics or understanding.

Question 2

What is the primary goal of Expert Systems as pioneered by Edward Feigenbaum?

Accepted Answer

Mimic human expert decision-making in narrow domains.

Question 3

Which of the following best captures the essence of the “Intuition Pump” technique used in philosophy of mind debates?

Accepted Answer

A device clarifying concepts via imaginative scenarios.

Question 4

How did Oliver Selfridge’s “Pandemonium” model contribute to early AI, particularly pattern recognition?

Accepted Answer

By using hierarchical layers of competing “demons” to analyze sensory input

Question 5

Which AI pioneer is credited with coining the term “Artificial Intelligence”?

Accepted Answer

John McCarthy

Question 6

Who famously predicted the technological Singularity and exponential intelligence growth?

Accepted Answer

Vernor Vinge

Question 7

What is the significance of the "Black boxed" concept in AI systems?

Accepted Answer

Systems whose internal workings are hidden or too complex to understand.

Question 8

What problem does Moravec’s Paradox highlight?

Accepted Answer

Basic tasks for humans are hard for AI, complex reasoning tasks are easier

Question 9

In which decade did the “AI Winter” take place?

Accepted Answer

1970s

Question 10

What's the primary limitation of “Expert Systems” when applied to domains known by uncertainty & incomplete information?

Accepted Answer

Rigid rules limit probabilistic reasoning and learning.

Question 11

In the context of AI ethics, what does “Differential Technological Development” propose as a strategic framework?

Accepted Answer

Prioritizing AI safety tech development to reduce risk.

Question 12

Which of the following best describes "Brittleness" in AI systems?

Accepted Answer

The inability to handle situations outside training data.

Question 13

What role does “Big Data” play in the recent success of self-supervised learning methods?

Accepted Answer

Supplies unlabeled data enabling self-supervised learning.

Question 14

Which of the following ideas is most closely associated with I.J. Good's contributions to artificial intelligence?

Accepted Answer

The intelligence explosion resulting from self-improving machines

Question 15

In natural language processing, why is “Generative AI” particularly powerful compared to earlier statistical models?

Accepted Answer

Generates coherent, context-aware content by long-range dependency models.

Question 16

When was the concept of “Big Data” widely popularized?

Accepted Answer

2010

Question 17

How does Alan Turing’s concept of a “universal machine” underpin modern notions of computation?

Accepted Answer

Machine that can simulate any computation with the right program and input.

Question 18

When was the concept of “Computational Theory of Mind” most prominently developed?

Accepted Answer

1960s

Question 19

Which AI concept involves learning from labeled input-output pairs?

Accepted Answer

Supervised Learning

Question 20

What is a key difference between Supervised and Self-Supervised Learning?

Accepted Answer

Self-supervised learning generates labels automatically from data itself.

Question 21

Which of the following ideas is most closely associated with I.J. Good's contributions to artificial intelligence?

Accepted Answer

The intelligence explosion resulting from self-improving machines

Question 22

How does the “Computational Theory of Mind” address the mind-body problem differently than dualism?

Accepted Answer

Mental processes are computational physical states, not separate substances

Question 23

According to Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, what is the role of feedback in both biological and artificial systems?

Accepted Answer

To enable systems to self-regulate & adapt to changes in environment

Question 24

Which of the following best describes the "Paperclip Maximizer" scenario?

Accepted Answer

An AI whose simple goal leads to unintended catastrophic outcomes.

Question 25

What does “black-boxing” imply for the interpretability and accountability of AI systems in critical applications?

Accepted Answer

Hidden logic complicates trust, debugging, and ethics.

Question 26

DARPA is best known in the AI world for:

Accepted Answer

Funding early and ongoing AI research for national defense

Question 27

When was the first successful implementation of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for speech recognition?

Accepted Answer

Early 1980s

Question 28

I.J. Good first introduced the concept of an "ultraintelligent machine" in which year?

Accepted Answer

1965

Question 29

How does Geoffrey Hinton’s “Backpropagation” algorithm enable deep learning models to train effectively?

Accepted Answer

Computing loss gradients & efficiently updating weights via chain rule.

Question 30

What is a key philosophical challenge raised by the possibility of mind uploading, as discussed by Ray Kurzweil?

Accepted Answer

Whether the upload retains original consciousness and identity.

Question 31

What role does Big Data play in modern AI development?

Accepted Answer

Provides vast amounts of data enabling complex model training.

HIST 300 REVIEW

Questions 31

HIST 300 REVIEW

Questions 31