September 27, 2024

Description:  What is the nature of Intelligence? How can we build intelligence machines?  What is the role of humans in an AI world?

While neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology all provide insights into these questions, this course will focus on the Big Ideas based on the last 60+ years of AI research.  We will seek to understand the foundations of machine learning (supervised, unsupervised, and self-supervised), state-space search, representation languages, scale-up power, and other Big Ideas leading up to the new generation of models such as GPT-4.

We will read foundational papers, discuss them in-depth, and write brief essays.  The course will meet weekly; in-person attendance and vigorous participation are required. 

The seminar is open to Allen School graduate and undergraduate students only.

The course home page is here: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse490a1/24au/

General information
Instructor: Oren Etzioni, email: etzioni@cs
TA: Kevin Farhat, email: kevinf7@cs
Time: Tuesdays, 3:30 PM – 4:50 PM
Location: CSE2 Room 271, except on 10/29, which will be in CSE2 G04

Expectations
Complete the readings before class.
Post writing assignments on the discussion board (use of a “GPT” is completely ok).
Be physically and mentally present in all class meetings (can miss at most 1).
Contribute to class discussions (including follow up on the discussion board).
No screens (phone or laptop) in class.

Topics/questions (evolving)
AI, The Big Questions
Computational Thinking—what is AI thinking?
GPT—what are the key AI ideas here?
Supervised learning
Scaling
Self-supervised learning
What’s next for AI?

To register for the course, please fill out this quick form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13zhTgG_rrNZSjRdsQbkK4AptAOy-yhccwNHMmkbA6QQ/edit