cs415 Artificial Intelligence

Fall 2014                Tuesday Thursday 12:30-1:45         Monroe 240

instructor: Ron Zacharski    //      gmail: ron.zacharski   //  cell: 575 680-4041

Office Hours:  Mon, Wed, 2:15-3:00; Tue, Thu: 2:00-3:00; Fri: 1:00-3:00

Experience Point Spreadsheet

Link to Udacity Course

Piazza

Here is the scoop with this class.

First, the lectures for the class are are exactly at the time you want them. I am turning the class on its heels. Instead of listening to me give lectures in class, you will be watching the lectures online anytime you want–lectures given by two amazing people.

First is Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, Inc. He co-wrote (with Stuart Russell) the leading textbook in Artificial Intelligence, “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.” It is the optional textbook we are using for this class and is the 2nd most cited publication of this century. Before Google he was NASA’s senior computer scientist. His “Paradigms of AI Programming” book has been called “the best book on programming ever written.

 

The other lecturer is Sebastian Thrun, a Research Professor at Stanford. He lead the development of the robotic vehicle, Stanley, which won the DARPA challenge/race to drive a 150 mile mountainous course. He also lead the development of Google’s driverless car. He was named by Fast Company as the Fifth most creative business person.

So online lectures by two amazing people and you can watch them when you want.

So what do we do in class? First, there will be weekly brief quizzes to give you a little incentive to watch the videos. But most of the time we will be working on a series of Python projects related to the videos. So doing programming for most of the class — I hope that doesn’t sound too bad to you.

I anticipate the class to be fairly challenging, but we should have fun.