A Rube Goldberg machine is designed to perform a simple task through a series of elaborate steps. These simple machines are named after Reuben "Rube" Goldberg, an American cartoonist, engineer, and inventor. Learn how these fun machines work and ignite a curiosity about STEAM topics! Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this informational text features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for makerspaces. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Ideal for school reports and projects, this STEAM book will appeal to reluctant readers and ages 6-8.

A multidisciplinary introduction to the field of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. As algorithms get smarter, what role will computers play in the creation of music, art, and other cultural artifacts? Will they be able to create such things from the ground up, and will such creations be meaningful? In Beyond the Creative Species, Oliver Bown offers a multidisciplinary examination of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, design, social theory, the psychology of creativity, and creative practice research, Bown argues that to understand computational creativity, we must not only consider what computationally creative algorithms actually do, but also examine creative artistic activity itself.

Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence in their own right all are flourishing research disciplines producing surprising and captivating results that continuously influence and change our view on where the limits of intelligent machines lie, each day pushing the boundaries a bit further. By 2014, all three fields also have left their marks on everyday life – machine-composed music has been performed in concert halls, automated theorem provers are accepted tools in enterprises’ R&D departments, and cognitive architectures are being integrated in pilot assistance systems for next generation airplanes. Still, although the corresponding aims and goals are clearly similar (as are the common methods and approaches), the developments in each of these areas have happened mostly individually within the respective community and without closer relationships to the goings-on in the other two disciplines. In order to overcome this gap and to provide a common platform for interaction and exchange between the different directions, the International Workshops on “Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence” (C3GI) have been started. At ECAI-2012 and IJCAI-2013, the first and second edition of C3GI each gathered researchers from all three fields, presenting recent developments and results from their research and in dialogue and joint debates bridging the disciplinary boundaries. The chapters contained in this book are based on expanded versions of accepted contributions to the workshops and additional selected contributions by renowned researchers in the relevant fields. Individually, they give an account of the state-of-the-art in their respective area, discussing both, theoretical approaches as well as implemented systems. When taken together and looked at from an integrative perspective, the book in its totality offers a starting point for a (re)integration of Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence, making visible common lines of work and theoretical underpinnings, and pointing at chances and opportunities arising from the interplay of the three fields.

A marble rolls down a tube. It hits a doll, which knocks over some dominoes. Anything can happen in a Rube Goldberg Machine! These Machines take simple tasks and make them complex and fun. Do you have what it takes to make one? Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this book builds students' literacy skills while fostering curiosity, creativity, and innovation through real-world examples. Features include: A hands-on STEAM challenge guides students through each step of the engineering design process and is ideal for makerspace activities; Content that highlights every component of STEAM: science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics; Dynamic images and text features enhance the reading experience and build visual literacy; Make career connections with career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. This 6-Pack includes six copies of this title and a lesson plan that addresses literacy and engineering objectives.

A marble rolls down a tube. It hits a doll, which knocks over some dominoes. Anything can happen in a Rube Goldberg Machine! These Machines take simple tasks and make them complex and fun. Do you have what it takes to make one? Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this book builds students' literacy skills while fostering curiosity, creativity, and innovation through real-world examples. Features include: A hands-on STEAM challenge guides students through each step of the engineering design process and is ideal for makerspace activities; Content that highlights every component of STEAM: science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics; Dynamic images and text features enhance the reading experience and build visual literacy; Make career connections with career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. This 6-Pack includes six copies of this title and a lesson plan that specifically supports guided reading instruction.

How would you assemble a machine that can be creative, what would its cogs be? Starting from how humans do creative problem solving, the author has developed a framework to explore whether a diverse set of creative problem-solving tasks can be solved computationally using a unified set of principles. In this book she describes the implementation of related prototype AI systems, and the computational and empirical experiments conducted. The book will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, and laypeople engaged with ideas in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and creativity.

An authority on creativity introduces us to AI-powered computers that are creating art, literature, and music that may well surpass the creations of humans. Today's computers are composing music that sounds “more Bach than Bach,” turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers? In this book, Arthur I. Miller takes us on a tour of creativity in the age of machines. Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from “the need for introspection” to “the ability to discover the key problem.” He talks to people on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, encountering computers that mimic the brain and machines that have defeated champions in chess, Jeopardy!, and Go. In the central part of the book, Miller explores the riches of computer-created art, introducing us to artists and computer scientists who have, among much else, unleashed an artificial neural network to create a nightmarish, multi-eyed dog-cat; taught AI to imagine; developed a robot that paints; created algorithms for poetry; and produced the world's first computer-composed musical, Beyond the Fence, staged by Android Lloyd Webber and friends. But, Miller writes, in order to be truly creative, machines will need to step into the world. He probes the nature of consciousness and speaks to researchers trying to develop emotions and consciousness in computers. Miller argues that computers can already be as creative as humans—and someday will surpass us. But this is not a dystopian account; Miller celebrates the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence in art, music, and literature.