Welcome to CPSC 470/570 Artificial Intelligence!

This class serves as a broad introduction to artificial intelligence research. We will cover knowledge representations, decision making, probabilistic inference, temporal reasoning, and learning.

Instructors:
Prof. Tesca Fitzgerald (tesca.fitzgerald at yale.edu)
Prof. Ozan Erat (ozan.erat at yale.edu)

Graduate Teaching Fellow (TF):
Ellie Mamantov (ellie.mamantov at yale.edu)

Undergraduate Learning Assistants (ULAs):
Sarah Rodwin (sarah.rodwin at yale.edu)
Ellen Qian (ellen.qian at yale.edu)
Evan Gerritz (evan.gerritz at yale.edu)
Claire Kang (claire.kang at yale.edu)

Class Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays, 9:00am - 10:15am
Class Location: Humanities Quad L02
Canvas Link

Office Hours:
Calendar showing office hours. Prof. Erat's office hours are in AKW 010 on Tuesdays, 9-11am. Prof. Fitzgerald's office hours are in AKW 502 on Fridays, 9-11am. TF and ULA office hours are all in the AKW 2nd floor atrium. Mondays at 4-7pm. Tuesdays at 8-11pm. Wednesdays at 2:30-5:30pm. Thursdays at 2:30-5:30. Saturdays at 2-5pm.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students will have gained an understanding of:

the history and breadth of problems and topics that exist in the field of artificial intelligence;
how to implement and test algorithms for search, decision-making, statistical inference, and learning in Python; and
an introduction to the frontier of recent research in AI.

Prerequisites

Required Prerequisites: CPSC 201 and CPSC 202

Recommended: CPSC 223

Students will be expected to know how to use basic object-oriented programming concepts in Python. Project 0 will be given out to assess your prerequisite knowledge.

Topics

See the schedule for more details.

Grading

10% - Weekly Quizzes
- Each quiz is worth 1%. There will be 12 quizzes, and your 2 lowest-scoring (or skipped) quizzes will be dropped.
50% - Programming Projects
- Project 0 is worth 2%. The remaining 4 projects are worth 12% each.
40% - Problem Sets
- There will be 4 problem sets, each worth 10%.

Note on CPSC 570 vs. CPSC 470: This course is double-numbered, which means that it can be taken as either 570 (graduate-level) or 470 (undergrad-level). CPSC 570 students will also present an AI-related paper at the end of the semester. This presentation will be worth 10% of your grade, and the value of all other assignments will be scaled by 90%. For example, the programming projects will be worth a total of 45% (90% of 50%).

Policy on late days:
Each student has a total of 2 late days that can be applied to any problem set or programming project. You must notify us that you are using one of your late days but filling out this form.

After the 2 late days have been applied (or if you do not notify us that you would like them to be applied), late assignments will be penalized 10% per day.

If you have a Dean’s Extension, then this will be applied without deducting from your 2 late days.

Textbook

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. Make sure you have the 4th edition (purple cover).

Materials

Students need to have access to a computer that can run Python. We recommend using the CS Zoo computers, which can be accessed in-person (located in the 3rd floor of AKW) or remotely. We cannot guarantee support for Python installations on students’ personal computers.