Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 3/2/2026

Logical Problem of the Day

You guys are well-educated. Explain the above cartoon.

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id.

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.

The world of finance never sleeps. Following the outbreak of hostilities over the weekend in Iran, there is new focus on oil traffic in the Persian Gulf through the Straight of Hormuz. (Winners and Losers). You can also view actual marine traffic in the Persian Gulf (and everywhere else): MarineTraffic.com.

There was today today by Bowen Baker, who studies safety at OpenAI. He referenced the following papers.

Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety July 15, 2025.
Monitoring Monitorability Dec 20, 2025.

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.

Conceptual Dependency (CD) (slides)
MARGIE: parse English into CD, infer other concepts, generate natural languge (English and German, later Chinese)
- Task Orientation
- Psychological process model
- Canonical representation of knowledge
- Translation, synonomy, paraphrase
- Inference
- Ambiguity
Scripts, plans, goals and understanding (the book Searle read)
- Scripts: SAM, FRUMP
- Plans: PAM, TALESPIN
  One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe threatened to hit Irving if he didn’t tell him where some honey was.
  One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe walked to the oak tree. He ate the beehive.
Learning, memory, and explantion
- Memory Organization Packets (MOPS)
- Bower, Black, and Turner
- CYRUS
- IPP
- Case-based systems (later topic)
The Yale AI Songbook

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