1. Russell, Stuart, & Norvig, Peter (1995), Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

   • required for CS 472 and CS 572

2. packet of readings on SNePS, to be made available later

   • required for CS 472 and CS 572

3. Luger, George F. (ed.) (1995), Computation and Intelligence: Collected Readings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)

   • required for CS 572; recommended for CS 472

4. Shapiro, Stuart C. (1992), Common Lisp: An Interactive Approach (New York: W. H. Freeman).

   • recommended for CS 472 and CS 572

TOPICS:
This course is a survey of artificial intelligence (AI) - the study of how to program computers to behave in ways normally attributed to ``intelligence'' when observed in humans. (For other definitions, see ``Some Definitions of Artificial Intelligence''.) Topics will include: the nature of AI, search, logic and automated reasoning, knowledge representation, natural-language understanding, and philosophical issues. In addition, you will learn to use the SNePS semantic-network knowledge-representation and reasoning system, and you will meet Cassie, a computational cognitive agent implemented in SNePS.

ATTENDANCE, HOMEWORKS, PROJECTS, AND EXAMS:

• You will be expected to attend all lectures and recitations, and to complete all readings and assignments on time. There will be regular homework assignments, approximately 4 programming projects, a mid-term exam, and a final exam (during exam week). Taking both the exams is a necessary condition for passing the course.

• Students in CS 572 will also be required to write brief (1-page) synopses of assigned chapters in Luger.

• All homeworks and projects will be announced in lecture. Therefore, be sure to get a classmate's phone number (for instance, 1 or 2 people sitting next to you in class, whoever they are!) so that you will not miss assignments in the unlikely event that you miss a class.

• There may be occasional extra assignments and quizzes in recitations.

• You should subscribe to, and regularly monitor either or both of the newsgroups sunyab.cs.472 or sunyab.cs.572. You may post questions and comments there that are of general interest to the entire class. From time to time, information about homeworks, etc., will be posted to the newsgroups.

IMPORTANT DATES:

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE:

Note to CS 572 students: You may prefer to read the Luger chapters in chronological, rather than topical, order, viz: 2, 14, 3, 16, 19, 7, 8, 9, 4, 10, 6, 5, 29, 30. In any case, there are 14 chapters from Luger, so 1 chapter synopsis will be due on Tuesday of each week.

READING:

1. I strongly urge you to read all of Russell & Norvig (not to mention all of Luger :-), including those sections that we do not cover in the course. This is especially true for students in CS 572! At the very least, you should read the introductory and summary sections of all chapters that we don't cover.

2. Not all assigned readings will be covered in lecture (in lecture, we shall only cover interesting or hard material, plus occasionally material that is not in Russell & Norvig), but you are responsible for all assigned material in Russell & Norvig and lectures.

3. See ``How to Read (a Computer Science Text)''.

HOMEWORKS:

1. Homework assignments will be of the ``paper-and-pencil'' variety, to be done at home.

2. The purposes of homeworks are:

   • to give you practice in applying the concepts covered in the course

   • to give you a chance to assess the level of your understanding

3. There will be approximately 1 HW each week.

4. Due dates will be announced in lecture when the homework is assigned. HWs will be collected at the start of lecture on the due date. If you try to hand yours in after they have been collected (e.g., at the end of lecture, in my mailbox, in the TAs' mailboxes, etc.), it will not be accepted. To repeat:
   NO LATE HOMEWORKS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

   This is so that the homework can be discussed in the class period when it is due.

5. Put your full name, date, and your recitation (R1, R2, R3) at the top right-hand side of each page, and secure all pages with a staple in the top left-hand corner.

6. Note: The lowest homework grade will be dropped; you should assume that you will fail to turn in one homework (oversleep, get stuck in traffic, etc.) - that's the one that will be dropped. If you know now that you will regularly be late, see me to make alternative arrangements for turning in your work. Your graded HW will be returned in recitation. Occasional extra assignments or quizzes from recitation can be used to replace low HW grades, at your TA's discretion.

PROJECTS:

1. Lisp and Unix: The prerequisite for this course is knowledge of programming in Common Lisp. The implementation for this course is Allegro Common Lisp (acl), which runs under the Unix operating system. If you don't have an account on one of the department's or the university's Unix machines, please get one. (To do this, first get an account on the CIT ubunix machines; then send mail to cs-accounts@cse.buffalo.edu asking for an account on Armstrong for CS 472 or CS 572.) You will be expected to learn how to use Unix and to learn the idiosyncrasies of Allegro Common Lisp on your own (the Shapiro text should be of help). For more information on Lisp, see ``An Introduction to Common Lisp''. CIT offers short courses on Unix, etc., or call 645-3542, or email consult@acsu.buffalo.edu for more information).

2. Project Policies:

   • For each project, you will be expected to hand in a paper, typed or printed from a computer file, on 8.5 by 11 inch paper (stapled in the upper left-hand corner, without sprocket holes, and with your own title page), plus a well-documented listing of your program. (Please do not use folders or covers, unless your report is too thick to be stapled.) I strongly suggest that you learn to use Latex and ispell.

     The main product of your work is the paper, not the program! In the paper, you should say what you have done, and say (in English summary, not in programming detail) how you have done it. It should also include annotated examples of your program in action. These should be well chosen to illustrate the range of performance of your program. The examples should not be redundant, nor included merely because they look complicated. Each example should illustrate a particular ability of your program. Nevertheless, the reader will assume that your program does nothing interesting that isn't illustrated!

     The listing should either be presented as figures throughout the paper, or as an appendix. In either case, the listing is included as documentation for what you say in the paper.

     Thus, each report must consist of the following components:

     • descriptive title (not: ``Project 1'')

     • your name, the course number (either CS 472 or CS 572), & date completed

     • abstract of project (a 1-paragraph summary)

     • description of the project (the body of the paper)

     • list of references (if appropriate)

     • annotated sample runs (could be part of the description of the project)

     • commented code (could be as an appendix)
     
     

   • Late policy for projects:

     • Projects must be handed in at the start of lecture on the due date.

     • Projects handed in between the start of lecture on the due date and the start of the next class are 1 day late.

     • Projects handed in between the start of class on the nth day after the due date and the start of the next class are n+1 days late.

     • Each project that is n days late loses n full letter grades. (E.g., an `A' paper that is 1 day late gets a `B'.)

     • Rule of thumb: In general, you are better off handing in an incomplete project - with a report that indicates what programming problems you had and what you left unfinished - than handing in a late project that is complete.

3. Just as you cannot expect to learn how to drive a car by reading about it or by watching other people do it, the same holds true for doing AI. Do your work on time - this is one course you simply cannot cram for at the last minute, so don't even try! I cannot stress this strongly enough. Remember that the homeworks and projects may be fairly time-consuming, so please consider your other commitments, and plan your time accordingly.

GRADING:

Incompletes:

SOME OTHER WORLD WIDE WEB SITES FOR A.I.:

• AI FAQ

• A Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies in BibTeX Format

• American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) homepage

• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence (SIGART) homepage

• Strategic Directions in Computing Research: AI Working Group

ACADEMIC HONESTY: