CPSC 444 Schedule

Week 1: 1/22-1/25

Topics: introduction and course overview; reactive agents: boids

• course introduction

In the News:

• "How Do You Govern Machines That Can Learn? Policymakers Are Trying to Figure That Out" (NYT)

Resources:

• free NYT access

• The Nature of Code, D. Shiffman - sections 6.1-6.4 - focus on this one (focus on the ideas rather than the details of the mathematics)
• Steering Behaviors for Autonomous Characters, C. Reynolds - read for greater depth and the original source

Slides:

• reactive agents - 3-level agent architecture, boids, steering behaviors

In the News:

• "Amazon Is Pushing Facial Technology That a Study Says Could Be Biased" (NYT)

Week 2: 1/28-2/1

Topics: boids; combining behaviors; decision making

• The Nature of Code, D. Shiffman - sections 6.5-6.6, 6.8-6.13 - focus on this one (focus on the ideas rather than the details of the mathematics)
• Steering Behaviors for Autonomous Characters, C. Reynolds - read for greater depth and the original source

Slides:

• reactive agents - group steering behaviors, combining behaviors, emergent behavior

Reference:

• boids (extensive list of other resources related to boids)

• action selection - artificial life, decision trees

Reference:

• The Total Beginner's Guide to Game AI ("Basic Decision Making")

• action selection - finite state machines, behavior trees

Reference:

• The Total Beginner's Guide to Game AI ("Advanced Decision Making")
• implementing a hardcoded FSM

In the News:

• "A.I. Could Worsen Health Disparities" (NYT)

Week 3: 2/4-2/8

Topics: decision making; pathfinding

• action selection - comparing mechanisms
• pathfinding - pathfinding as search

• pathfinding - heuristics, desirable properties for a pathfinding graph

In the News:

• "Making New Drugs With a Dose of Artificial Intelligence" (NYT)
• "The Rise of the Robot Reporter" (NYT)
• "Why I created a robot to write news stories" (The Guardian)
• a ReporterMate story (The Guardian)

• pathfinding - constructing pathfinding graphs

Week 4: 2/11-2/15

Topics: pathfinding; problem solving via search

• pathfinding - navigation meshes, path smoothing, hierarchical path finding

In the News:

• "Trump to Sign Executive Order Promoting Artificial Intelligence" (NYT)
• "A.I. Shows Promise as a Physician Assistant" (NYT)

• pathfinding - cluster subgraphs, variations

In the News:

• "IBM's fast-talking AI machine just lost to a human champion in a live debate" (CNN)

• pathfinding - variations
• problem solving - problem solving as search, representation

Week 5: 2/18-2/22

Topics: uninformed search, informed search

• problem solving - representation, uninformed search

• problem solving - uninformed search, informed search

• problem solving - informed search

Week 6: 2/25-3/1

Topics: informed search; classical planning

• problem solving - informed search (SMA* wrapup, informed search roundup, heuristics)

• classical planning - factored representation, forward search, backward search

In the News:

• "A.I. Still Needs H.I. (Human Intelligence), for Now" (NYT)

• classical planning - heuristics, planning graphs

In the News:

• "Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?" (NYT)

Week 7: 3/4-3/8

Topics: classical planning; adversarial search

• classical planning - planning graphs (heuristics, graphplan)

In the News:

• "The A.I. Diet" (NYT)

• review information

• adversarial search - adversarial search, game playing as search, minimax search, alpha-beta pruning

In the News:

• "Seeking Ground Rules for A.I." (NYT)

Week 8: 3/11-3/15

Topics: adversarial search; genetic algorithms

• minimax - move ordering, evaluation functions, cutting off the search and pruning

• adversarial search - search vs lookup, variations

Optional Reading:

• "CHESS; THE STATE OF THE ART" (NYT - 1981)
• AlphaZero
• "Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm" (technical paper about AlphaZero)

In the News:

• "India Fights Diabetic Blindness With Help From A.I." (NYT)
• "Without Humans, A.I. Can Wreak Havoc" (NYT)

• adversarial search - variations
• genetic algorithms

Reference:

• The Evolution of Code (genetic algorithms)
• Genetic Algorithms in Plain English

In the News:

• "How Artificial Intelligence Could Transform Medicine" (NYT)
• "A.I. Wants to Know How You Plan a Trip" (NYT)

Spring Break: 3/16-3/24

Week 9: 3/25-3/29

Topics: genetic algorithms

• genetic algorithms (simple genetic algorithms, variations)

In the News:

• "Warnings of a Dark Side to A.I. in Health Care" (NYT)
• "Inside Google's Rebooted Robotics Program" (NYT)
• "A.I. Is Flying Drones (Very, Very Slowly)" (NYT)
• "Three Pioneers in Artificial Intelligence Win Turing Award" (NYT)

• genetic algorithms (variations - representation, selection, crossover, mutation, generations)

Week 10: 4/1-4/5

Topics: genetic algorithms; machine learning

• genetic algorithms (strengths/limitations, applications, genetic programming, ecosystem evolution)
• eaters (example of genetic algorithms)

Other Materials:

• exam 1 reflection (on Canvas, in the Quizzes section - 3 bonus points on exam 1 for completion by Fri 4/5 11:59pm)
• exam 1 comments

Reference:

• A Field Guide to Genetic Programming
• Competition, Coevolution and the Game of Tag
• Evolution of Corridor Following Behavior in a Noisy World

In the News:

• "Eyes on the Road! (Your Car Is Watching)" (NYT)

• machine learning (introduction, neural networks)

• neural networks (network structure, representation, training via genetic algorithms)

Week 11: 4/8-4/12

Topics: machine learning

• neural networks (backpropagation, deep learning)

• deep learning, reinforcement learning (backwards induction, temporal difference)

In the News:

• "How A.I. Is Changing Insurance" (NYT)
• "A.I. and Privacy Concerns Get White House to Embrace Global Cooperation" (NYT)

• reinforcement learning (temporal difference, Q learning, SARSA)

Week 12: 4/15-4/19

Topics: machine learning; data mining

• reinforcement learning (wrapup)
• data mining (introduction, decision trees: ID3)

• review information

In the News:

• "One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority" (NYT)
• "We Built a (Legal) Facial Recognition Machine for $60" (NYT)

Slides:

• data mining (decision trees: C4.5, ID4; classification rules: 1R, PRISM)

Week 13: 4/22-4/26

Topics: data mining

• data mining (classification: k nearest neighbors, SVM, naive Bayes, AdaBoost)

• data mining (clustering, association rules)

In the News:

• "I Used to Work for Google. I Am a Conscientious Objector." (NYT)
• AI at Google: our principles
• "Business Leaders Set the A.I. Agenda" (NYT)

In the News:

• "Walmart Experiments With AI to Monitor Stores in Real Time" (NYT)
• "Technology Ethics Campaigners Offer Plan to Fight 'Human Downgrading'" (NYT)

Week 14: 4/29-5/3

Topics: machine learning; state of the art; intelligence and creativity

• The quest for AI creativity
• "From Jingles to Pop Hits, A.I. Is Music to Some Ears" (NYT)
• "How A.I. Is Creating Building Blocks to Reshape Music and Art" (NYT)
• "Computer Stories: A.I. Is Beginning to Assist Novelists" (NYT)
• "A Robot Walks Into a Bar. But Can It Do Comedy?" (NYT)

Slides:

• creativity

In the News:

• "Nils Nilsson, 86, Dies; Scientist Helped Robots Find Their Way" (NYT)
• "These Ads Think They Know You" (NYT)
• A Song of Ice and Data

• Vehicles excerpt
• "Artificial Intelligence Hits the Barrier of Meaning" (NYT)
• "A.I. Is Harder Than You Think" (NYT)
• "The Great A.I. Awakening" (NYT) - read just the epilogue at the end if you are short on time

Slides:

• intelligence

Week 15: 5/6

Topics: philosophical and ethical issues

• "The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence" (NYT)
• "Five Artificial Intelligence Insiders in Their Own Words" (NYT)
• "Managing expectations of artificial intelligence" (Nature)
• "How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence" (NYT)
• "Leave A.I. Alone" (NYT)
• Stanford 2016 Report: Executive Summary, Section III: Prospects and Recommendations for Public Policy

Slides:

• ethical considerations and the future of AI

Optional Reading:

• review the posted "In the News" articles

-- bring a device to class for completing course evaluations --

Reading Period: 5/7-4/9

Final Exams: 5/10-5/13

• review information

last updated: --Fri May 10 21:10:15 EDT 2019--
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