==== Short Essay ====

  * Choice of topic (see below) must be made by noon on Tuesday September 18
  * Due before midnight Nov 30

====Suggested Topics for Essays====

  * Selected recent AGI architectures: What are they lacking?
  * Is a constructivist approach necessary for realizing AGI?
  * Key limitations of constructionist AI for building AGIs
  * Critical analysis of an architecture targeting AGI
  * Consciousness as //knowledge and control of self//: Its role in AGI
  * Emergent properties in AI architectures: Opportunities, requirements, and challenges for AGI
  * The role of logic in AGI
  * Balancing implicit and explicit goals in AGI architectures
  * Self-inspection in programming languages
  * Attention: What can we learn from psychology?
  * Consciousness as self-inspection and self-control

The //title// of your essay need not be verbatim from the list above - but your essay should fit firmly within the immediate scope of these descriptions. 

Other topics may be possible - check with instructor if you have suggestions.

==== Guidelines for References ====

Your essay should use the standard reference methodology from the scientific tradition, namely, to cite relevant material where appropriate. Appropriateness includes referencing a paper when:
  * The ideas you are expressing are recounting, paraphrasing, or quoting what someone else wrote 
  * The ideas you are expressing have an obvious precursor
  * You want to indicate some relevant material for the //context// in which you are discussing some ideas. In this case you can use "see e.g." or "c.f." to indicate that you are giving that reference more as an example than a direct or ultimate reference.

You should always reference some prior work in your scientific writings, as it helps present a context for how to interpret the terms you are using -- those references become stand-ins for the research community you consider most affiliated with your writing, and present a context to the traditions of methodology, term interpretation, philosophy, etc.

I want you to use the **APA** style of references (google it!), because the reader can see which author names are being referenced without having to look in the bibliography. But if you absolutely **must** use some other style I may agree to it.