University of Waterloo

Term and Year of Offering: Winter 2019

Course Number and Title: CS486, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Instructor's Name Office Location Contact Office Hours
Jesse Hoey DC3613 8884567x37744 TBD

TA's Name Office LocationContactOffice Hours
Frederic Bouchard
Amir Farrag
Eshan Ganjidoost
Camilo Andres Munoz Bravo
Atrisha Sarkar

Course Description:

The design of automated systems capable of accomplishing complicated tasks is at the heart of computer science. Abstractly, automated systems can be viewed as taking inputs and producing outputs towards the realization of some objectives. In practice, the design of systems that produce the best possible outputs can be quite challenging when the choice of outputs is constrained, the consequences of the outputs are uncertain and/or dependent on other systems, the information provided by the inputs is incomplete and/or noisy, there are multiple (possibly competing) objectives to satisfy, the system must adapt to its environment over time, etc. This course provides an introduction to Artificial Intelligence, covering some of the core topics that underly automated reasoning. The modeling techniques that will be covered are quite versatile and can be used to tackle a wide range of problems in many fields including natural language processing (e.g., topic modeling, document clustering), robotics (e.g., mobile robot navigation), automated diagnosis (e.g., medical diagnosis, fault detection), data mining (e.g., fraud detection, information retrieval), operations research (e.g., resource allocation, maintenance scheduling), assistive technologies, affective computing, social dilemmas, etc.

Course Objectives:

To give an introduction to the fundamental problems of artificial intelligence and an introduction to the basic models and algorithms used in tackling these problems. Another objective is to expose the student to frontier areas of computer science, while providing sufficient foundations to enable further study.

Course Overview:

  1. What is AI?
  2. Agents and Abstraction
  3. States and Searching
  4. Features and Constraints
  5. Propositions and Inference
  6. Reasoning under uncertainty
  7. Supervised Learning
  8. Planning under certainty
  9. Planning under uncertainty
  10. Machine Learning
  11. Neural Networks
  12. Deep Learning
  13. Affective Computing
  14. Other topics

Required text:


David Poole and Alan Mackworth "Artificial Intelligence: foundations of computational agents". Cambridge University Press, 2010. Available online at artint.info

Evaluation:

The grading scheme for the course is as follows.

CS486:

CS686 (graduate students only):

Students wishing to write a project (and all CS686 students) must submit a project proposal.

Late policy:

No late assignments.

Rules for Group Work:

small groups (at most 3 people) can work on the project together (CS486 only). Assignments must be done individually.

Indication of how late submission of assignments and missed assignments will be treated

No late assignments.

Indication of where students are to submit assignments and pick up marked assignments

Submit/pickup assignments on LEARN. The lab-based assignment will be done in the computer labs and no additional submission is necessary.

Academic Integrity: In order to maintain a culture of academic integrity, members of the University of Waterloo community are expected to promote honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. [Check www.uwaterloo.ca/academicintegrity/ for more information.]

Grievance: A student who believes that a decision affecting some aspect of his/her university life has been unfair or unreasonable may have grounds for initiating a grievance. Read Policy 70, Student Petitions and Grievances, Section 4, www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/Policies/policy70.htm. When in doubt please be certain to contact the department's administrative assistant who will provide further assistance.

Discipline: A student is expected to know what constitutes academic integrity [check www.uwaterloo.ca/academicintegrity/] to avoid committing an academic offence, and to take responsibility for his/her actions. A student who is unsure whether an action constitutes an offence, or who needs help in learning how to avoid offences (e.g., plagiarism, cheating) or about 'rules' for group work/collaboration should seek guidance from the course instructor, academic advisor, or the undergraduate Associate Dean. For information on categories of offences and types of penalties, students should refer to Policy 71, Student Discipline, www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/Policies/policy71.htm. For typical penalties check Guidelines for the Assessment of Penalties, www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/guidelines/penaltyguidelines.htm.

Appeals: A decision made or penalty imposed under Policy 70 (Student Petitions and Grievances) (other than a petition) or Policy 71 (Student Discipline) may be appealed if there is a ground. A student who believes he/she has a ground for an appeal should refer to Policy 72 (Student Appeals) www.adm.uwaterloo.ca/infosec/Policies/policy72.htm.

Note for Students with Disabilities: The AccessAbility Services Office (AAS), located in Needles Hall, Room 1401, collaborates with all academic departments to arrange appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities without compromising the academic integrity of the curriculum. If you require academic accommodations to lessen the impact of your disability, please register with the AAS at the beginning of each academic term.

Mental Health: If you or anyone you know experiences any academic stress, difficult life events, or feelings like anxiety or depression, we strongly encourage you to seek support. On-campus Resources Campus Wellness https://uwaterloo.ca/campus-wellness/ Counselling Services: counselling.services@uwaterloo.ca / 519-888-4567 ext 32655 / Needles Hall North 2nd floor, (NH 2401) MATES: one-to-one peer support program offered by Federation of Students (FEDS) and Counselling Services: mates@uwaterloo.ca Health Services service: located across the creek from Student Life Centre, 519-888-4096. Off-campus Resources Good2Talk (24/7): Free confidential help line for post-secondary students. Phone: 1-866-925-5454 Here 24/7: Mental Health and Crisis Service Team. Phone: 1-844-437-3247 OK2BME: set of support services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning teens in Waterloo. Phone: 519-884-0000 extension 213 Diversity: It is our intent that students from all diverse backgrounds and perspectives be well served by this course, and that students' learning needs be addressed both in and out of class. We recognize the immense value of the diversity in identities, perspectives, and contributions that students bring, and the benefit it has on our educational environment. Your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let us know ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or for other students or student groups. In particular: We will gladly honour your request to address you by an alternate/preferred name or gender pronoun. Please advise us of this preference early in the semester so we may make appropriate changes to our records. We will honour your religious holidays and celebrations. Please inform of us these at the start of the course. We will follow AccessAbility Services guidelines and protocols on how to best support students with different learning needs.