In the beginning...

First edition - 1963

Part 1 -  Artificial Intelligence

Section 1 - Can a Machine Think? by A.M.Turing

 

The 1995 edition:

Currently available from MIT and Amazon

Computers and Thought showcases the work of the scientists who not only defined the field of Artificial Intelligence, but who are responsible for having developed it into what it is today. Originally published in 1963, this collection includes twenty classic papers by such pioneers as A. M. Turing and Marvin Minsky who were behind the pivotal advances in artificially simulating human thought processes with computers. Among the now hard-to-find articles are reports of computer programs that play chess and checkers, prove theorems in logic and geometry, solve problems in calculus, balance assembly lines, recognize visual temporal patterns, and communicate in natural language. The reports of simulation of cognitive processes include computer models of human behavior in logic problems, deciding on common stock portfolios, and carrying out social interaction. Models of verbal learning behavior, predictive behavior in two-choice experiments, and concept formation are also included.

Articles by : Paul Armer. Carol Chomsky. Geoffrey P. E. Clarkson. Edward A. Feigenbaum. Julian Feldman. H. Gelernter. Bert F. Green, Jr. John T. Gullahorn. Jeanne E. Gullahorn. J. R. Hansen. Carl I. Hovland. Earl B. Hunt. Kenneth Laughery. Robert K. Lindsay. D. W. Loveland. Marvin Minsky. Ulric Neisser. Allen Newell. A. L. Samuel. Oliver G. Selfridge. J. C. Shaw. Herbert A. Simon. James R. Slagle. Fred M. Tonge. A. M. Turing. Leonard Uhr. Charles Vossler. Alice K. Wolf.

Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro API for AI enabled apps

 Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro API for AI enabled apps

On 14th May 2024 at the annual Google I/O Developers Conference, the focus was entirely on AI. Google introduced the Gemini 1.5 Pro API, now available to Google developers globally.  Since then, I've been studying how to use the Gemini API by developing an app called Garden, which allows you to ask any question of a selected image of a plant. In order to create apps with the Gemini API, you need to use the latest feature drop version of Android Studio: Koala. 

More details of what's new in Android Studio (as of May 2024) here: https://youtu.be/2wOfYgIMf-A

AD 11/8/2024

The Amphibians app - an Android app written in Kotlin using Jetpack Compose

The Amphibians app:

https://developer.android.com/codelabs/basic-android-kotlin-compose-practice-amphibians-app

The Amphibians app is developed based on the MarsPhotos app architecture. The code has been copied, pasted and adapted from the MarsPhotos app to the Amphibians app. https://github.com/annedawson/Amphibians This is what the app will look like when it's finished:
Download the latest code from: https://github.com/annedawson/Amphibians
		See:
		https://developer.android.com/codelabs/basic-android-kotlin-compose-load-images
		https://developer.android.com/codelabs/basic-android-kotlin-compose-practice-amphibians-app

Mars Photos Android app written in Kotlin using Jetpack Compose

I've just finished this Mars Photos app codelab:

https://developer.android.com/courses/android-basics-compose/unit-5

to create an app that retrieves data from the internet - in this case, the app retrieves a list of URLs of NASA photographs of the surface of Mars. Each photograph is displayed in a scrollable grid on the phone display:

See the code here:

https://github.com/annedawson/MarsPhotos

After reviewing the material covered so far, I will continue on to practise projects, then tackle the next topic, apps and databases.

 

Pixel 8 Pro phone and Pixel Watch 2 - ordered today 4th October 2023 with Android 14

 

I'm looking forward to the delivery in two weeks time.

Screen navigation with Jetpack Compose

Today I started this codelab. I'm currently studying the starter code for the Cupcake app to figure out how Jetpack Compose makes it easy to code navigation between UI screens. 

Jetpack Compose and ViewModel to handle state

When using Jetpack Compose, ViewModel is the primary means of exposing screen UI state to your composables. 

ViewModel codelab

I'm currently studying how the ViewModel works in Jetpack Compose so that I can include a ViewModel in my own Android apps. I then move on to testing apps and navigation to a new screen within one activity. I've been stuck on these topics for a while and am reviewing my own documentation on this.