(First Year Undergraduate)

Artificial Intelligence Techniques A - Course Material and Useful Links

Dr John A. Bullinaria

j.a.bullinaria@cs.bham.ac.uk

I no longer teach this module, but this web-page is now sufficiently widely used that I will leave it in place. It contains all the overheads, handouts, and exercise sheets used in the lectures, details about the continuous assessment and examination, and so on, for the academic year 2003/4.

First, here's an outline of the module structure and lecture timetable. All the module handouts will be made available here as pdf files shortly after the paper versions have been distributed. Spare paper copies will be deposited in the School library.

Colour coding: Black = Regular Lecture, Blue = Guest Lecture, Green = Interactive Session.

Week Session 1
Mondays 10:00-11:00		 Session 2
Tuesdays 9:00-10:00		 Session 3
Tuesdays 14:00-15:00
1 - Introduction to the AI Programme
(John Bullinaria)		 -
2 Course overview - session types, syllabus, assessment, books, etc. [pdf] The Roots, Goals and Subfields of AI [pdf] Evolutionary Computation
(Thorsten Schnier)
3 Biological Intelligence and Neural Networks [pdf] Exercise Session 1 [pdf] Brain Modelling [pdf]
(John Bullinaria)
4 Building Intelligent Agents [pdf] Exercise Session 2 [pdf] Behaviourism and Cognitivism
(Jeremy Wyatt)
5 Knowledge Representation [pdf] Exercise Session 3 [pdf] Cognitivism and Robotics
(Jeremy Wyatt)
6 Semantic Networks [pdf] Exercise Session 4 [pdf] Frame Based Systems [pdf]
7 Production Systems [pdf] Exercise Session 5 (Including Discussion of Continuous Assessment Assignment) [pdf] Vision
(Ela Claridge)
8 Uninformed Search [pdf] Exercise Session 6 [pdf] Natural Language Processing
(Mark Lee)
9 Expert Systems [pdf] Exercise Session 7 [pdf] Treatment of Uncertainty [pdf]
10 Machine Learning [pdf] Exercise Session 8 [pdf] [ans.pdf] Philosophical Issues
(Aaron Sloman)
11 Limitations and Misconceptions of AI [pdf] Exercise Session 9 [pdf] Computer Chess
(Colin Frayn)

12 Two Revision Lectures Covering the Whole Module [pdf]

For formal details about the aims and objectives and assessment you should look at the official Module Description Page and Syllabus Page.

Note that the Continuous Assessment Assignment must be handed in to the School Office by 12 noon on Wednesday 14 January 2004. Missing this deadline will result in a penalty of 5% per working day (defined as a day when the School Office is open). It will be marked and returned to you before the end of the Spring Term.

For those of you who are having trouble finding a suitable topic for your continuous assessment essay, try taking a look at these links:

You can also find a long list of links to knowledge based systems (many of them 'intelligent') at KBS/Ontology Projects Worldwide. Finally, if you really can't decide and want a topic chosen for you, then write about CYC.

The Recommended Books for this module are:

Title Author(s) Publisher, Date Comments
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach S. Russell & P. Norvig Prentice Hall, 2003 This is the book that ties in most closely with the module
Artificial Intelligence (2nd edn) E. Rich & K. Knight McGraw Hill, 1991 A good second book
Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis Nils Nilsson Morgan Kaufmann, 1998 A good modern book
Introduction to Expert Systems (3rd edn) Peter Jackson Addison Wesley, 1999 The best book on Expert Systems
Artificial Intelligence (3rd edn) Patrick Winston Addison Wesley, 1992 A classic
Artificial Intelligence Rob Callan Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 A good modern book
Artificial Intelligence (4th edn) George Luger Addison Wesley, 2002 Some students may prefer this one
Artificial Intelligence Michael Negnevitsky Addison Wesley, 2002 A good modern approach

If you can only afford to buy one book for this module, I would recommend getting the one by Russell & Norvig.

This page is maintained by John Bullinaria. Last updated on 18 June 2004.