Schedule

Date Topic Notes Reading Assignment out/due
9/10 Introduction, Agents and Problem Domains Course Introduction
  • A brief history of AI
  • AI in today's world
  • Course Details
  • Agents and Their Problems
 Ch 1 -- 2  Look at official Python Tutorial.
9/14 Uninformed Search Search I
 Ch 3.1 -- 3.4  
9/17 Informed Search Search II
 Ch 3.5 --3.6, 4.1 Programming assignment 1 (Search) out
9/21 Informed Search (cont.) and Adversarial Search Competition in games Ch 5.1 -- 5.3, 5.5  
9/24 Adversarial Search (cont.)

Problem set 1 due
9/28 Uncertainty and Probability
Ch 12.1 -- 12.5 
10/1 Graphical Models/Bayes Nets Probabilistic modeling Ch 13.1 -- 13.2 PA1 due; Programming assignment 2 (Multi-Agent) out
10/5 Bayes Net Inference Exact inference and sampling
Ch 13.3 -- 13.4
Problem set 2 due; Project description out
10/8 Markov Models Sequential modeling
 Ch 14.1 -- 14.3
  
10/12 No class (Indigenous Peoples Day)    
10/15 Exam 1


10/19 Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) Incorporating actions
 Ch 17.1 -- 17.2 Programming assignment 3 (Reinforcement Learning) out
10/22 Planning with MDPs   Ch 5.4 (MCTS), (optional: SB 3.1--3.3, 3.5--3.6, SB 4.1--4.4) PA2 due
10/26 Reinforcement Learning Learning for MDPs
  Ch 22 Project proposal due
10/29 Reinforcement Learning (cont.) Function approximation and policy gradients  (optional: SB 6.5, SB 13.1--13.5)
Problem set 3 due
11/2 Intro to Machine Learning Supervised learning
 Ch 19.1 -- 19.2  
11/5 More Supervised Learning
Ch 19.4 -- 19.7 
 PA3 due
11/9 Deep Learning
Ch 21
  
11/12 Deep Reinforcement Learning DQN, actor-critic and PPO, robotics applications
 (optional: SB 9.1--9.4, 16.5)
 Problem set 4 due; Programming assignment 4 (Machine Learning) out
11/16
 Attention, Transformers and LLMs From sequence models to language models
 Ch 24 (plus external notes)
11/19 Exam 2


11/23 Alignment: RLHF, Reward Models and DPO Preference-based post-training
 External readings
11/26 No class (Fall break)
 
11/30
 Advanced topics: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Dec-POMDPs and multi-agent coordination
 External readings
 Programming assignment 4 due
12/3 Project Presentations


12/7 Project Presentations


12/10 Project Presentations


12/14 Advanced Topics


12/15
 Project Reports Due

Report due at 11:59 PM -- This is a hard deadline, no extensions
12/17 Open Slot




Important note: unless noted otherwise, all readings and assignments are due on the day that they appear in the schedule.

Unless noted otherwise, all readings are from Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4th Ed., Russell and Norvig.