Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 2/25/2026


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Canvas Quiz of the Day (need daily password)

Most days, there will be a simple canvas quiz related to the lecture. You need a password to activate the quiz, which I will provide in class. These quizzes will count toward your class participation grade. The quiz is available only during class.

Click for today's quiz.

Announcements

  • Let us know if you have an upcoming event you would like to share with the class.

  • Yale Information Society Project Free lunch. This week.

  • I, Claudius, New Yorker, February 16, 2026.

  • Today (2/25), we have a guest speaker, Phil Vachon, Head of Infrastructure, Bloomberg LLC.
    We will go out for dinner at Mory's. Below are the students who entered in the dinner lottery:
    1. Thomas Luong
    2. Andy Ma
    3. Joanne Zhao
    4. Samuel Lee
    5. Emmett Seto
    6. Helen Mao
    7. Joshua Li
    8. Yuwang Ma OK (missed Goetzmann)
    9. Emma Slagle OK (missed Lipman)
    10. Katie Brady OK (missed Goetzmann)
    11. Zeke Akinbade OK (missed Goetzmann)
    12. Bende Doernyei (Nicollai, Lipman)
    13. Alba Quintas Núñez (Lipman)
    14. Olivia Ye (Niccolai)
    Thus, there are 4 who are automatic, having missed a previous dinner, and 3 who are ineligible, having attended a previous dinner. That leaves 7 candidates for the remaining 2 slots. Let the games begin:
    
    >>> import random
    >>> x = list(range(1,8))
    >>> x
    [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
    >>> random.shuffle(x)
    >>> random.shuffle(x)
    >>> random.shuffle(x)
    >>> x
    [1, 6, 3, 7, 2, 5, 4]
    
    Thus, the new winners are 1 and 6, Thomas Luong and Helen Mao. The alternates are 3 and 7, Joanne Zhao and Joshua Li.
    1. Thomas Luong
    2. Helen Mao
    3. Yuwang Ma (not available)
    4. Emma Slagle
    5. Katie Brady
    6. Zeke Akinbade
    Alternates:
    1. Joanne Zhao (promoted)
    2. Joshua Li

    I asked Phil if he wanted me to share materials with the class. You have homework:

    My recommendation for the students would be to have a read over these papers ahead of time:

    - First: Bainbridge, 1983 “Ironies of Automation” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005109883900468)

    - Second: Leveson, 1995 “Medical Devices: Therac-25” (http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf)

    I’ll belabour Therac-25 a fair bit, and I would suggest the students to think about who is to blame in the different scenarios. Anyone who brings up human error will be brave…

    I’d also suggest that students spend some time thinking about some kind of automation they rely on heavily in their day-to-day, and make themselves really uncomfortable imagining the failure modes of that system. It could be something cyber security related, autonomous vehicles, etc. Think of themselves as the operator in that system, and how they would understand when the system might be lying to them, or where their own human nature might let them down (i.e. missing a warning light or a nagging alert that they often ignore). Tesla autopilot is my classic conversational example, but I am not sure how many of them might have that experience.

    Lecture

  • I have office hours Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30-3:30pm pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

    Assignments

    You can begin work on the paper.

    The Realm of Decisions

  • We shall explore Langer's mindlessness / mindfulness dichotomy for decision making. For the next class and the coming weeks: Give an example of an explanation you thought interesting because it was especially good or bad. It can be personal or from the news. Use the Discussions section of canvas (not Ed Discussion). You earn a quiz point by posting to Discussions. Try to analyze it along the mindless / mindful spectrum.

  • The VOTE program is available on the zoo. See explain.lisp for pandering and sarcasm code. There is also a github repository of the Common LISP code for VOTE.

    The Yale AI Project: Cognitive Modelling

    See The Yale Artificial Intelligence Project: A Brief History Stephen Slade, AI Magazine, 1987.

    See Conceptual Dependency and Its Descendants Steven Lytinen, 1992.


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