This course is designed to give students an overview of many topics in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is aimed at graduate students (445) and upper level undergraduates (335). The lecture for the two course numbers will be combined, but students enrolled in 445 will be asked to complete more demanding homework assignments.
As this is a survey course, we will cover a wide range of topics, but will not have time to go into great depth for most of them. There are a number of other courses offered in the department that explore sub-fields of AI in greater depth, and students who are interested will be directed to these courses as we cover them. These courses include Declarative Methods, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Robotics.
Students will be expected to attend lecture consistently, and complete a number of homework assignments over the course of the semester. These assignments will each consist of a programming portion and a written portion. The written portions will take two forms: a set of "short answer" questions, and a conference-style scientific paper. Details of how to write a good scientific paper will be covered, but it is expected that students have read enough papers to have some understanding of the form.