Administrative Stuff

Lectures

• Before Class: watch pre-recorded lectures
• In Class: questions/clarifications + short quiz + problem solving

Websites

• Course Schedule and Lectures
• GitHub Classroom for Projects
• Quizizz for in class Q&A

Communications

• Piazza for all communication
• Do NOT send emails to instructor or TAs
• HW/Exam submitted via email will NOT be graded
• Install Piazza App on phone, tablet, etc.
• Turn-on notifications for Piazza
• Your responsibility to check Piazza and GitHub Classroom regularly

Piazza 2020 - 2021

Piazza 2020 - 2021

Assignments and Grading

• Four Programming Assignments: 40%
• Mid-Term Exam: 25%
• Final Exam: 25%
• Quizizz In Class: 10%

Assignments and Grading

• Programming Assignments: 10% each
• Getting an A vs mastering the material
• Build your CV
• Take advantage of extra credit when available.

Late Days

• 5 free late days total (not per assignment)
• beyond that, 10% reduction of points per late day
• use free late days wisely, save them for assignments towards the end

Book

• Not required, but for students who want to read more we recommend:
• Russell and Norvig, AI: A Modern Approach

• Warning: Not a course textbook, so our presentation does not necessarily follow the presentation in the book.

Plagiarism

• This course has adopted the Chegg and Similar Sites policy. Submission of student work (e.g. assignments and/or exam solutions) based on those found on Chegg, Brainly, Quizlet, and other similar websites will result in an Academic Dishonesty Report (ADR) and an automatic failing grade of zero (0.0) for the course. The ADR for students personally posting questions from assignments or exams to these sites will request additional sanctions.

What is AI?

News AI?

What is AI?

• Some classical definitions: The science of making machines that:

Computational Rationality

• AI as rational machines:
• Rational: maximally achieving pre-defined goals
• Rationality only concerns what decisions are made (not the thought process behind them)
• Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of outcomes
• Being rational means maximizing your expected utility

Essence of Course

Maximize Your Expected Utility

Designing Rational Agents

• An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.
• A rational agent selects actions that maximize its (expected) utility.
• Characteristics of the percepts, environment, and action space dictate techniques for selecting rational actions.
• This course is about:
• General AI techniques for a variety of problem types
• Learning to recognize when and how a new problem can be solved with an existing technique

Pacman as an Agent

Pacman as an Agent

What can AI do?

• Play a (decent) game of table tennis?
• Play a (decent) game of Jeopardy?
• Drive safely along a curving mountain road?
• Drive safely along Grand River Avenue?
• Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
• Buy a week's worth of groceries from Meijer?
• Discover and prove a mathematical theorem?
• Converse successfully with a human for an hour?
• Fold the laundry and put away the dishes?
• Write an intentionally funny story?

A (short) history of AI