Academic Resource Center
People + Computers = The ARC

After World War II, computer scientists were confident that they would create "artificial intelligence" in short order. Humanists, psychologists, and skeptics of various stripes were just as confident that they would not. One test of artificial intelligence is the so-called Turing Test, which is based on the notion that an artificial entity behind a screen is judged intelligent if a person cannot tell that it is not human (http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html#intro). This test has been passed and surpassed for a number of years--even college kids now send "bots" into chat rooms all the time, fooling other participants. Of course, the skeptics raised the bar by refining their definition of intelligence. Thus, the science of machine computation and the science of human cognition tend to keep pushing each other to new heights.

Since at least the days when the water-driven moving statues in the gardens at Versaille inspired Descartes, machines have inspired our models of that which is human. Each new generation of IT provides richer notions for those who wish to theorize about human information processing. And we humans, with our uncanny ability to use heuristics and other shortcuts, inspire programmers who often find that the brute force computational power of a supercomputer is insufficient to do a task that any eight-year-old can do.

Still, each side maintains its world view. There are those who maintain that humans are indispensable. Meanwhile, computer scientists insist on creating automated processes that work without a human in the loop. One such process is on view at www.wikipedia.org. From the site we read that a Wikipedia is a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". The software keeps track of everybody's contribution, and the Wiki just grows and grows without direct human management.

The model for the Wiki intrigues me since it seems to be the opposite of how we think that real knowledge is accumulated. Our journals have editors and reviewers who create gates and who guarantee quality. The Wiki just has automated software that lets anybody say practically anything about any topic at any time.

At the Academic Resource Center (ARC), my goal is to try to find a sweet spot between those two end-points of intellectual interaction. I would like to let the ARC grow according to the natural flow of the information needs of the audience, and allow ARC contributors relative autonomy in meeting those needs. But we definitely need human expertise in the loop; namely yours. As an expert on some aspect of marketing teaching or research, why not share your expertise with your fellow humans? You could take on a small aspect of the site, and claim it as your own.

Have you collected great cases for a marketing strategy course? Do you have a bibliography on a subtopic in consumer behavior? Have you just looked over a dozen textbooks in services marketing in preparation for a prep next semester? Did you take notes at any interesting sessions at Summer AMA? Do you have a favorite video on advertising? Do you have some slides that you are proud of?

Any of these things could become the basis for a page on the ARC by simply e-mailing them to me at arc@ama.org. And by contributing you could also strike a blow for we humans as we seek to stay one step ahead of the precipitous decline of the cost of computation. Get in the loop by contributing to the ARC!