‘Tweet’ Assignment

For this assignment, you should submit a tweet-length string of characters (i.e., 280 characters or fewer, including whitespace and punctuation) which summarises the thesis (i.e., the main point or argument) of the Van Wynsberghe & Robbins article that was assigned for Week 5 (“Critiquing the Reasons for Making Artificial Moral Agents”, Science and Engineering Ethics, 2019). A sample submission, summarising Amodei et al. (2016), is given below.
Some additional information about (1) what thesis statements are, and (2) what tweets are, and (3) the connection between them is provided here: https://www.kibin.com/essay-writing-blog/writing-a-thesis-statement-twitter/, if you need further guidance on how to get started.
Most important is that a good thesis statement has the following properties:
It is focused and specific.
It is debatable.
It is intruiging.
This assignment is subject to the following restrictions:
You must upload the assignment through Brightspace in .pdf or .docx format.
Do NOT include your name anywhere in your submission. All assignments will be graded anonymously.
Your submission must be the length of a ‘tweet’—i.e., fewer than 280 characters.
Note : whitespace and punctuation are counted as ‘characters’.
Your submission must be a summary of the Van Wynsberghe and Robbins reading.
Your submission should not include any quotations whatsoever. Everything should be your own words (i.e., you should be paraphrasing rather than quoting).
You must include appropriate citations, and a complete works cited (which, in this case, should only include reference to Van Wynsberghe and Robbins). The works cited must be properly formatted.
Note 1 : the ‘works cited’ does not count toward the total number of characters.
Note 2 : a properly-formatted citation for this article is included in the syllabus.
Since this is a very short assignment, your submission should be completely free of typographical and grammatical mistakes—i.e., you should spend some time editing before you submit.
You do not need to include any information in the submission other than the ‘tweet’ and the works cited.
5 marks will be given for a clear, accurate, error-free, 280-or-fewer character summary of the main claim(s) of Van Wynsberghe and Robbins (2019).
0.5 marks will be deducted for minor grammatical or typographical errors.
1 mark will be deducted for major grammatical or typographical errors which detract from understanding.
1 mark will be deducted if any quotations are included in the ‘tweet’.
1 mark will be deducted if the ‘tweet’ inaccurately represents the main thesis of the paper.
1 mark will be deducted for reference to anything other than the Van Wynsberghe and Robbins article.
Summarising any paper other than Van Wynsberghe and Robbins will receive a 0.
0.5 marks will be deduced for inaccurately formatted citations.
Late submissions are subject to the policy outlined in the syllabus (i.e., -2 marks for each 24-hour period after the deadline) Recall that the deadline for submission is 11 February 2022 at 23:59 Atlantic time.
SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT
The following is one possible submission, if the assignment were on Amodei et al. (2016).
Amodei et al. (2016) discuss the possibility of accidents—i.e., unintended consequences that might arise from misspecified objective functions—in machine learning and real-world AI systems, providing concrete examples and suggestions for how we might safeguard against them.
Works Cited
Amodei, Dario, Chris Blah, Jacob Steinhardt, Paul Christiano, John Schulman, and Dan Mané. 2016. ‘Concrete Problems in AI Safety.’ arXiv pre-print 1606.06565. https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.06565.
Some things worth noting about this example, that you might consider when writing your own summary of Van Wynsberghe and Robbins’ paper:
The summary is clear and specific. It captures the main point of Amodei et al.’s article.
The summary is 274 characters, including whitespace and punctuation (i.e., it is under the limit of 280 characters).
There are no quotations. The point that Amodei et al. make is paraphrased in original wording.
There are no grammatical or typographical errors.
Amodei et al.’s paper is properly cited, and a ‘works cited’ is included after the summary (this does not count toward the 280 characters).
A technical term (‘accidents’) is introduced, and then immediately defined.
It happens that this summary of Amodei et al. is one sentence; however, there is no restriction on the number of sentences that you use to specify the thesis of the paper—the only restriction on form is that the submission is under 280 characters (including whitespace and punctuation).

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