Schedule (Tentative)
Week
Topic
Assignment
Readings
Week 1: 9/1 & 9/4
What is AI?
Agents and Environments
Reference: Russell & Norvig Chapter 2
Week 2: 9/8 & 9/11
Search Problems
Uninformed search
ANY: Shadow Self
Reference: Russell & Norvig Chapter 3
Week 3: 9/15 & 9/18
Informed search
Adversarial search
Reference: Russell & Norvig Chapter 5
Week 4: 9/22 & 9/25
Adversarial search
Uncertain outcomes
Week 5: 9/29 & 10/2
Reinforcement learning
Regression
Required: ANY, p. 53-70 (end of "Peace & War")
Week 6: 10/6 & 10/9
Midterm 1
Gradient Descent
Required: ANY, p. 71-101 (up to "Conundrum")
Reference: Jurafsky & Martin Chapter 4
Week 7: 10/13 & 10/16
Fall Break (Carolyn away at a conference)
Week 8: 10/20 & 10/23
Neural networks
Representing Images and Text
Homework 6 (due 11/2)
Required: ANY, p. 101-120 (end of "Science & Scrutiny")
Reference: Jurafsky & Martin Chapter 6
Week 9: 10/30
Training neural networks
Required: ANY, p. 121-169 ("Purpose & Profit")
Week 10: 11/3 & 11/6
Language models
Transformers
Required: ANY, p. 170-215 ("Trust & Terror")
Reference: Jurafsky & Martin Chapter 8
Week 11: 11/10 & 11/13
Midterm 2
Using Transformers
Homework 7 (due 11/16)
Reference: Jurafsky & Martin Chapter 9
Week 12: 11/17 & 11/20
RLHF
Evaluating AI
Homework 8 (due 11/23)
Required: ANY, p. 216-235 ("Conclusion")
Reference: Jurafsky & Martin Chapter 9
Week 13: 11/24
AI over time
Week 14: 12/1 & 12/4
Societal impacts of AI
Week 15: 12/8
Project presentations
Final project description