Pseudocode activity

Pseudocode is human-readable, not designed for machines/IDEs to use/convert. Usually a mix of plain English and some very simple coding concepts e.g. conditionals/loops.

Write a simple application in pseudocode for:

  • A dice-roller app
  • A guess-the-number game
  • A number sorting program
  • A to-do list manager
  • An assignment grader
  • A word/letter counter
  • Choosing a venue for drinks
  • Deciding where to go on holiday
  • Finding your location in Melbourne based on visible landmarks

DIY Machine Learning Program

Individually or in groups, complete the following. Document everything — perhaps as a pitch to develop an app? — and upload to your student blogs, or your studio SharePoint folder.

Find a problem:

  • What do you want to predict?
  • What information will you use?

Collect data:

  • List the types of information you’ll gather
  • Describe how you’ll get this information

Train the computer/write your program:

  • What/how will the program will learn from the data?
  • Describe any patters the computer might look for
  • Write out your program in simple pseudocode

Make predictions:

  • How will the computer use what it learned?
  • What will it predict?

Check how well it works:

  • How will you know if the predictions are good?
  • What would you do if the predictions aren’t accurate enough?

Use your program:

  • Describe how people might use this in real life

Grasping the everyday

The ‘everyday’ is a key concept for this studio. It comes from the work of Michel de Certeau. Read actively through the set reading from de Certeau’s book, and complete the following:

  • Go back through your notes/highlights
  • Draw out any key points – copy to a note if you haven’t already
  • What are the systems within which you/we operate? What strategies are deployed by those systems to order behaviour/use/consumption?
  • What are some of the ways you ‘resist’ on a day to day basis, i.e. your everyday tactics?

Workflows activity

Map out the following workflows — multiple samples for each.

  1. Daily workflows, e.g. morning routine, getting ready for bed, making a cup of tea/coffee
  2. Uni/study workflows, e.g. completing a class group activity, approaching an assignment, keeping track of study/learning/ideas, career development.
  3. Research workflows, e.g. studying a topic, compiling a quick précis or presentation

Creative workflows

  • 500-word narrative (/fragment)
  • 2-minute audio piece
  • 1-minute video
  • Social video (30-60sec)

Each person at the table to choose one of these – ensure you’ve covered all options.

Think about how you would approach – from concept to delivery.

Write out your procedure.

Delegating to AI
  1. Explore some of the tools listed on aggregator sites like futuretools.io, alternativeto.net or futurepedia.io
  2. On your workflow/s, where could you delegate tasks to a generative AI tool? Note this somehow – a different colour notation, or a symbol. Be thorough!
  3. Choose two tasks. Develop a testing scenario to evaluate a tool’s performance at those tasks – what procedure will you deploy? What do you need to run the test? How will you check your results?
  4. Possible methods that may inform your scenarios/tests are the scientific method and usability testing (UX method).

Testing AI tools with prompts

  • Choose three tools from the ‘web-based’ section of the resource list on Canvas
  • Develop prompts to complete/respond to the following:
    • How might you improve your collaboration skills per the earlier workflow task?
    • What are some alternative approaches to begin tackling university assignments?
    • How can you improve your research workflow?
  • Input your prompts to the three different tools and compare the results (keep prompts and all responses neatly labelled in a word doc)
Prompt tweaking/challenges
  • Choose one tool, e.g. ChatGPT. Give it a persona and try one of your prompts again (or start a new chat and give it a different persona – retry your original prompt and note differences)
  • Request that the tool present a response in a different form/format.
  • Find a prompt tweak/request that the model cannot complete or refuses to do. Why has this occurred?
  • Ask a chatbot about other tasks/scenarios where it thinks it could be of use to you. Note these down for further testing/exploration. (You might try one basic prompt for this, and then try again with some extra context about your personality/commitments/preferences, etc)
  • Combine all your notes, ideas, thoughts, etc into a single document. Choose a tool that allows you to share documents: share this mega-doc with it, and ask it to generate five possible ideas for this week’s blog post. Note these down for possible development.

Leonardo.Ai Hackathon

  • Generate an AI self-portrait. You may only use word prompts: no image guidance.
  • Generate a poster for the studio.
    • One version can be a background image incorporating elements of the studio to date/what you hope the studio will be.
    • One version should attempt to generate text within the image.
  • Consider three parts of your creative workflow from earlier. Generate three icons for those tasks or parts of your process.