CS63 Artificial Intelligence
Spring 2024


Course Information

Schedule

Class: Tues., Thurs., 1:15-2:30pm, SCI 183
Lab A: Monday 1:15 - 2:45pm, SCI 240
Lab B: Monday 3:00 - 4:30pm, SCI 240

Contact Information

Communication: Ed Discussion Platform
Important announcements will be posted here
You can ask questions and answer other students' questions here
Professor (Lecture, Lab A): Ben Mitchell
Email: mitchell at cs dot swarthmore.edu
Office: Science Center 252 C
Office Hours: Thur. 2:30-4:00 pm
Also by appointment, or any time my door is open
Professor (Lab B): Lisa Meeden
Email: meeden at cs dot swarthmore.edu
Office: Science Center 243
Office Hours: Fri. 2:15-3:45 pm
And any time my door is open

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the branch of computer science that is concerned with the automation of intelligent behavior. "Intelligent behavior" encompasses a wide range of abilities, and as a result AI has become a very broad field. AI includes search, game playing, reasoning, planning, natural language processing, modeling human performance (cognitive science), machine learning, and robotics. This course will focus on a subset of these topics, specifically search and machine learning, while also drawing connections to cognitive science.

In search, we will see familiar techniques such as depth-first and breadth-first, as well as new techniques such as A*, minimax, and simulated annealing applied to AI problems. In machine learning, which is concerned with programs that define their behavior in terms of previous examples, we will explore reinforcement learning and neural networks, including the popular sub-field of deep learning. The first half of the semester will focus on search, and the second half of the semester will focus on machine learning.

Goals for the course


Grading

Grade weighting
5%Class Participation
5%Reading Journal
15%Exam 1, in lab 03/04/24
15%Exam 2, in class 04/16/24
30%Labs
30%Final Project

Reading

Rather than using a single textbook, we will be using materials from a variety of sources. Many of the materials will be available online. You only need to purchace the first text listed below by Melanie Mitchell, which is required.

Our class meetings will be a combination of lecture and discussion. To be ready to participate in the discussion will require some preparation on your part. Most of this will consist of careful reading and reflection on the assigned reading through the use of a reading journal.

Preparation

You should check the class schedule and read any material that has been assigned for the week before coming to class on Monday morning. You will get the most out of the reading if you approach it as follows:

Many of the readings are fairly short, but can contain mathematics or algorithms that require a moderate amount of study. Make your best effort to understand the material and bring any questions you have to class. Then we can have a productive discussion with examples and exercises to clarify the material.

Journal

To help focus your efforts and give us a basis for discussion, you will be provided with a short list of questions to answer for each week's reading. Reflecting on your responses to the questions will help give you a deeper understanding of the most important concepts surrounding each topic.

Your responses are due by 1:00pm Monday of the week where they will be discussed.

You will clone a reading journal repo containing markdown files for each week's reading. You will write your responses in the appropriate file and submit them via git (using add, commit, and push).

While these low-stakes writing assignments are technically informal, they must reflect a certain level of engagement and evidence of thinking seriously about the material. Responses will be graded using the following scale:

My grades and comments will be pushed to your grading repo each week. I expect that most entries will receive a CHECK, thus I will primarily comment on your journal to report a PLUS or a MINUS. You should expect to discuss the issues raised in your reading journal entries during class.

Copyright 2018 Jerod Weinman


Policies

Labs

Labs will be assigned on Monday, during the scheduled lab time, and will be due by the following Sunday before midnight. Even if you do not fully complete a lab, you should submit what you have done to receive partial credit.

You should work with a partner on all labs after lab 0. We will be using Teammaker to facilitate the creation of partnerships. Note that you must select a partner from within your lab section. If you and another student would like to partner together, simply select one another via Teammaker. If you would like to be assigned a random partner, you can select this option through Teammaker as well. For each lab assignment you must re-select partners. Thus you can try out a partnership one week, and then decide to try a different partnership the following week.

You have three late days that you may use on any lab, for any reason. If you are using a late day, you must contact me by email or private message on Ed to let me know.

Your late days will be counted at the granularity of full days and will be tracked on a per-student (NOT per-partnership) basis. That is, if you turn in an assignment five minutes after the deadline, it counts as using one day. For partnered labs, using a late day counts towards the late days for each partner. In the rare cases in which only one partner has unused late days, that partner's late days may be used, barring a consistent pattern of abuse.

If you feel that you need an extension on an assignment or that you are unable to attend class for two or more meetings due to a medical condition please let me know as soon as possible.

Academic Integrity

The general ethos of this policy is that actions which shortcut or avoid the learning process are forbidden, while actions which promote learning are encouraged.

For example: studying lecture materials or discussing readings together provides an additional avenue for learning and is encouraged. Using a classmate’s solution, however, is prohibited because it avoids the process of doing the work; since doing the work is how much of the learning takes place, avoiding the work inherently means avoiding the learning as well. Note that this applies to generative AI tools (e.g. chatGPT, GitHub CoPilot) just the same way it does to any other resource.

If you have any questions about what is or is not permissible, please contact your instructor.

Academic honesty is required in all of your work. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. Your code should never be shared with anyone; you may not examine or use code belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your code. The only exception to this policy, is that you may freely share code with your lab partner.

You should not obtain solutions from students who previously took the course or copy code that can be found online. You may not share solutions after the due date of the assignment.

Failure to abide by these rules constitutes academic dishonesty and will lead to a hearing of the College Judiciary Committee. According to the Faculty Handbook: "Because plagiarism is considered to be so serious a transgression, it is the opinion of the faculty that for the first offense, failure in the course and, as appropriate, suspension for a semester or deprivation of the degree in that year is suitable; for a second offense, the penalty should normally be expulsion."

Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is fine (in fact, we encourage you to discuss general strategies with each other), but you should never read any other student's code or let another student read your code. All code you submit must be your own with the following permissible exceptions: code distributed in class and code given in the readings. Regardless of the source, you should always include comments that indicate on which parts of the assignment you received help, and what your sources were.

Any code, text, or content not created exclusively by you and used without attribution is plagiarism. This is true regardless of whether the original source was a scholarly text, another student, an online platform (e.g. StackOverflow), or a generative model (e.g. ChatGPT). Using resources such as these may be appropriate under some circumstances, and not under others, but regardless you must always properly acknowledge and cite the source of the information. When in doubt, add a statement of attribution! In addition, when using any type of generative AI, you must also describe how it was used, e.g. by giving the prompt.

Here is an example of what this might look like:

"The outline for this essay was generated by ChatGPT from the prompt, 'give me an outline for a 5-paragraph personal essay about an octopus.' The rest of the essay was written by me, then edited based on feedback from Grammarly. My roommate Ada Lovelace proofread it, and after that, a WA helped me edit the final draft."

Academic Accommodations

If you believe that you need accommodations for a disability, please contact the Office of Student Disability Services through email studentdisabilityservices@swarthmore.edu to arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, the Office will issue students with documented disabilities a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact the Office of Student Disability Services as soon as possible. For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Service Website. You are also welcome to contact me privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged through the Office of Student Disability Services.



Schedule

WEEK DAY ANNOUNCEMENTS TOPIC & READING LAB
1

Jan 23

 

Introduction to AI

Lab 0: Python Refresher/Warmup

Jan 25

 
2

Jan 30

 

State space search

Lab 1: Robot Maze

Feb 01

 
3

Feb 06

 

Local search

Lab 2: A* search

Feb 08

 
4

Feb 13

 

Game tree search

Lab 3: Local search

Feb 15

 
5

Feb 20

 

Monte Carlo Search

Lab 4: Game play with Minimax

Feb 22

 
6

Feb 27

Exam 1 Study Guide

Evaluating Classical AI

Lab 5: MCTS

Feb 29

 
7

Mar 05

Exam 1

Perceptrons and Neural Networks

  • Review pgs 24-34 on Perceptrons Mitchell Ch. 1
  • Neural Networks and the Ascent of Machine Learning Mitchell Ch. 2
  • Videos on neural networks and backpropagation
  • Journal questions

Exam 1 in lab

Mar 07

 
 

Mar 12

Spring Break

Mar 14

8

Mar 19

 

Deep Learning

Lab 6: Neural Networks

Mar 21

 
9

Mar 26

 

Reinforcement Learning

  • Rewards for Robots Mitchell Ch. 8
  • Game On Mitchell Ch. 9 (pgs. 145-152)
  • Beyond Games Mitchell Ch. 10
  • Journal questions

Lab 7: Convolutional Networks

Mar 28

 
10

Apr 02

 

Genetic Algorithms

Lab 8: Reinforcement Learning

Apr 04

 
11

Apr 09

Exam 2 Study Guide

Evaluating Machine Learning

Lab 9: Genetic Algorithms

Apr 11

 
12

Apr 16

Exam 2

Exam 2 in class

Final Project

Apr 18

 

Natural Language Processing

13

Apr 23

 

Transformers & LLMs

Project checkpoint

Apr 25

 
14

Apr 30

 

Future of AI, wrap up

  • Knowledge, Abstraction, and Analogy in AI Mitchell Ch. 15
  • Questions, Answers, and Speculations Mitchell Ch. 16
  • Journal questions

Project continued

May 02