CSCI 485 --- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Fall 2023 Course Outline

Contact Information

• Huizhu Liu
• Office: 315/211
• email: Huizhu.Liu@VIU.CA
• Course web site: http://csci.viu.ca/~liuh/485/
• Office Hour:
  • 10:00 - noon, Tuesdays and Thursdays
  • By Appointment

Lectures

• 8:30 - 10:00, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 210/240

Labs

• F23N01: 15:30 - 16:30, Thursday, 315/115
• F23N02: 14:30 - 15:30, Fridays, 315/115

Evaluations

• Labs/Assignments -- 40%
• Term Report/Project and Presentation -- 10%
• Midterm Exam -- 20%
• Final Exam -- 30%

Labs/Tutorials

You must be enrolled in, and fully participate in, the weekly tutorial/lab sessions.

In order to pass the course, your weighted exam average must be a passing mark.

(Optional) Textbook

• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, by S. Russell and P. Norvig

Topics

• Uninformed and Informed Search Strategies
• Constraint Satisfaction Problems
• Game Playing
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
• Learning
• Perception, Communication and Robotics

Learning Outcomes

Upon completing this course, students should be able to:

• determine the characteristics of a given problem that an intelligent system must solve.
• translate a problem expressed in natural language(s) to a formal problem description using artificial intelligence problem formation language(s)
• select and implement an appropriate uninformed or heuristic search strategies for a given problem.
• conduct simple logic reasoning to answer a query.
• understand the different learning styles, including supervised, reinforced, unsupervised, inductive and deductive learning.
• select and apply appropriate learning algorithms such as decision tree, naive bayesian, etc to build predictive models.
• gain some basic knowledge about the capabilities and limitations of today's robot systems, and understand the importance of sensors (such as vision), actuators (such as motion planning) and software to the design of a robot system.

Appeals of Grades:

Any exercise or examination grade may be appealed. However, the appeal must be made to the instructor, in writing and attached to the work in question, and within 7 days of the grade being made available to the class. The instructor reserves the right to re-grade the entire piece of work submitted on appeal, not necessarily just the component that the student believes is in error.

Grade Conversion:

The following grade scale will be used:

Guidelines Concerning Academic Misconduct

All students taking this course are subject to the Vancouver Island University Policy and Procedures:

The official policies of Vancouver Island University can be viewed at http://www.viu.ca/policies/.

To quickly view some policies and procedures concerning student academic code of conduct and academic misconduct, etc, go to http://csci.viu.ca/~liuh/AcademicGuidelines.html.