CSCI 315: Artificial Intelligence

General Information

Professor: Simon D. Levy Lecture: M/W/F 2:30 - 3:25 Parmly 404 Office: Parmly 407B Office Phone: 458-8419 E-mail: levys@wlu.edu   Office Hours: T/R 11:00-3:00 and by appointment

Brief Overview

This course provides an overview of Artificial Intelligence, the sub-field of computer science that deals with problems that people are generally better at solving than computers. These problems include the "hard" (or NP-complete) problems that you learn about in a theory of computation course, as well as everyday tasks like walking around, planning, and understanding language, where computers still do surprisingly poorly. As described in the University Catalog, the course combines a discussion of philosophical issues with hands-on problem solving.

Textbook

S. Russell & P. Norvig (2003) Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Second Edition. Prentice Hall. AIMA has become the most popular textbook in AI, and for good reason: it combines an encyclopedic coverage of the field with clear, concise explanations, and uses explicit pseudocode algorithms that can be translated easily into a high-level language like Python.

Here are some additional readings that you may enjoy:

• Turing, A.M. (1950) Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind 59, 433-460.

• Gibson, William (1984) Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books:   From Annie   / From Amazon
• Stephenson, Neal (1992) Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books:   From Amazon
• Vinge, Verner (1987) True Names... and Other Dangers. New York: Baen Books:   From Amazon

Assignments

• Assignment 0, due Monday 10 September
  
  
• Assignment 1, due Friday 14 September
  
  
• Assignment 2, due Wednesday 03 October
  
  
• Assignment 3, due Wednesday 10 October
  
  
• Intermezzo: Adventure in Prolog. XSB Prolog available here
  
  
• Assignment 4, due Friday 26 October
  
  
• Assignment 5, due Friday 09 November
  
  
• Assignment 6, due Monday 03 December
  
  
• Assignment 7, due Friday 14 December

Attendance and Preparation

It is very important that you attend class. There will be considerable information given in class that is not available elsewhere. Your participation is of value to your classmates and to me. In preparation for class, be sure to review the material covered in the last class meeting. See me or email me if you have questions. Also, read over the material to be covered in the next class meeting.

Grading

• Assignments (written exercises and coding): Though there is no official lab for this course, you will spend much of your time programming (50%).
• Two one-hour exams (30%)
• Final exam (20%)
• These percentages are flexible. If you have a bad day and don't do well on an exam or problem set, I will try and weight your other work more heavily.

The grading scale will be 93-100 A; 90-92 A-; 87-89 B+; 83-86 B; 80-82 B-; 77-79 C+; 73-76 C; 70-72 C-; 67-69 D+; 63-66 D; 60-62 D-; below 60 F.

Honor System

Unless stated otherwise, the exams will be done without books or notes and without assistance from other people. You may work with another person on the programming assignments, but this should be acknowledged on your paper.

Tentative Schedule of Lectures and Exams