VO 501.054 & UE 501.096:
Introduction to AI
2 SSt.=4 ECTS (VO) & 1 SSt.=1 ECTS (UE)
(WS 2023/24-)

Organisational matters

Location of classes

Because of resource limitations at MUW during the first weeks of the semester, the first three course units (2023-10-03 through 2023-10-17) will be hosted by OFAI, at Freyung 6 / Stiege 6 / 7 (third floor, no elevator!)

 

Differing Academic Calendars Univie vs. MUW

This course is offered through the Medical University of Vienna (MUW): please note that the academic calendar of the MUW differs from the one of the University of Vienna: in particular, there will be a class unit on Tue, December 19, 2023!

 

Registration (Med.Campus, Medical University of Vienna, MUW)

• Note that the lecture (VO) and the exercises (UE) are two different courses:
  if you intend to take both, then you need to register for both of them on Med.Campus.
• Online registration for a course on Med.Campus requires a MUW student identification/login, obtained through (co-)registering with the MUW: (Co-)registration with MUW is required for all participants
   

E-Mail communication concerning the courses

→ E-Mail from you → to me:

• Please address all your e-mails regarding these courses (i.e., both, the VO and the UE) to: intro-ai-2023 (AT( ofai.at.
  ⚠️︎ All such messages should originate from an academic address (i.e.: not any commercial or private provider, such as gmail, hotmail, icloud, etc.)⚠️︎ 

← E-Mail to you ← from me:

• ⚠️︎ All e-mails related to these courses will be sent to your e-mail address as stored on Med.Campus (see above), which typically reads: "n<matriculation-number>@students.meduniwien.ac.at" ⚠️︎
• Such communication may include access credentials related to weekly online class units and for course materials offered.
  It is your responsibility to read all e-mails delivered to their MUW e-mail address reliably, in a regular and timely fashion (perhaps through setting up automatic forwarding of one's MUW e-mails to any other "primary" address used).

 

Access to the online course unit sessions and course materials (lecture slides and exercises):

• Access credentials may be sent to registered participants (see previous items).
• If you want/need to apply for "external" (non-MUW) access because you cannot register with Med.Campus in time for the start of the courses (which is key in order to receive my emails to you and to access the course moodle!), please submit a personal application, stating:
  1. As sender ("From:"):
     a current academic email address of yours that you access regularly (Note: emails originating from other (commercial, private,...) providers will not be processed);
  2. As recipient ("To:"):
     intro-ai-2023 (AT( ofai.at;
  3. As subject:
     "Request for access credentials for intro-ai-2023";
  4. As message content:
     1. Your full name;
     2. Your academic affiliation (which should match the academic sender address of the email!);
     3. The title and ID number of your study ("Studienkennzahl");
     4. Your Student ID number ("Matrikelnummer");
     5. ⚠️︎ Documentation of the current status of your (co-)registration application with MUW ⚠️︎.
• Exercises:
  • For the exercises (UE) (as well as for the lecture (VO) materials), we will use moodle: details will be explained in the first course unit, which for this purpose will start at the time of the weekly debriefing of the exercises at 10:00.
  • ⚠️︎ Timely submission of assignments and on-site attendance of all debriefing units of exercises is compulsory: missing more than two exercises or debriefing sessions equates to failing the UE!
  • All such absences need to be communicated/explained by email---preferably in advance. ⚠️︎

 

Exam

(Details on the course moodle)

Other Relevant Web Sites

The following collection does not attempt to stay abreast of current tumultuous developments; still: suggestions for additions, corrections, and comments are always welcome!
Unless specified, all URLs last checked on 2023-09-24.

• Ethics:
  • ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
    Adopted by ACM Council 2018-06-22, Preamble amended 2021-10-22
  • The European AI Alliance initiative of the European Commission
    • High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AIHLEG) set up by the European Commission:
  • The Asilomar AI Principlespublished 2017-08-11, developed in conjunction with the 2017 Asilomar conference (Future of Life Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. Making Automated Systems Work for the American People, Office of Science and Technology Policy, The White House, Washington, D.C. (published October 4, 2022)
  • Center for Human-Compatible AI (UC Berkeley)
  • Ethics and Philosophy of Information (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, England)
  • Future of Humanity Institute (University of Oxford):

    Search results for: "Artificial intelligence"

     

  • IEEE:
    • Ethics in Action ("From Principles to Practice")
    • The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems
    • The Public Voice project (EPIC, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Washington, D.C.), includes:
      • Algorithmic Transparency: End Secret Profiling (2020)
      • Facial Recognition Moratorium (October 2019)
      • Universal Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (October 2018)
  • The EU Artificial Intelligence policy (European Commission, Bruxelles, EU)
  • European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (Vienna, Austria, EU)

    Data protection, privacy and new technologies

  • Partnership on AI to benefit people and society

• Surveys:
  • AI Watch: Artificial Intelligence for the Public Sector, JRC and DIGIT Science for Policy, European Commission
  • The Artificial Intelligence Index
  • One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), Stanford University
  • The Guardian: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Kautz, H. A. (2022). The third AI summer: AAAI Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture. AI Magazine, 43(1):105-125. DOI: 10.1002/aaai.12036
    (YouTube Video, AAAI Channel, published 2022-04-08)

• Associations, Organisations:
  • ACM
    (Association for Computing Machinery):
    • SIG AI (ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence; formerly SIGART, started in 1966)
    • ACM A.M. Turing Centenary Celebration
    • The "Fathers of the Deep Learning Revolution" received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award
  • AAAI
    (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence):
    • AAAI AI Topics
    • The AAAI Library provides free access to e.g. journal articles, conference proceedings (including the Innovative Applications of AI conference series), symposia reports, and video recordings of plenary talks and panels
  • CLAIRE
    (Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe)
  • Commonsense Reasoning (Organisation)
  • EurAI
    (European Association for Artificial Intelligence), formerly: ECCAI (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence)
  • IEEE Computer Society
    (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
  • IFAAMAS
    (International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
    • Provides free access to AAMAS proceedings and pointers to conference websites
  • IJCAI
    (International Joint Conferencs on Artificial Intelligence), includes free access to:
    • The yearly IJCAI conference proceedings
    • The Artificial Intelligence journal
  • The Alan Turing Institute (UK national institute for data science and artificial intelligence)
  • AI Standards Hub <2023-09-19 Tue>, UK initiative dedicated to the evolving and international field of standardisation for AI technologies.

• Reference Publications:
  • AIMA (Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig (2020): Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.)
    • Comprehensive AIMA web site (this link points at information for the fourth "global" edition -- i.e.: not the "U.S." edition); including an Errata subpage
  • David L. Poole & Alan K. Mackworth (2023): Artificial Intelligence 3E: Foundations of Computational Agents, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Journals, Magazines, …:
  • Artificial Intelligence Journal (Elsevier ScienceDirect)
  • AAAI AI Magazine
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems
  • AI&Society (Springer)
  • KI-Künstliche Intelligenz
    (Springer, coverage of (not just!) the German(-tongue) AI landscape; large majority of articles in English language)
  • arXiv.org open access: Artificial Intelligence (⚠️︎ "handle with due care: "experts only" ⚠️︎)
  • …
     

  Some special issues
  (this selection is just meant to wet your appetite: do find out about further and more recent issues yourself!):

  • AAAI AI Magazine:
    • 41(2), 2020: DARPA's impact on Artificial Intelligence
    • 29(2), 2008: The AI Landscape.
    • 27(4), 2006: 50 years of Artificial Intelligence Research.
    • 27(2), 2006: Achieving Human-Level Intelligence by Integrated Systems and Research.
    • 26(4), 2006: Twenty-fifth anniversary issue.
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems:
    • 24(4), 2009: The New Frontier of Human-Level Artificial Intelligence.
    • 22(4), 2007: Intelligent Educational Systems of the Present and Future.
    • 21(3), 2006: The future of AI.
  • Nature News:
    • Alan Turing at 100 (Nature News Special, 2012)

• Public (co-)funding:
  • CORDIS (EU research results)
    • Hits for query term 'Artificial Intelligence'
  • DARPA activities (cf. also the related special issue of AI Magazine)
    • AI Next Campaign
    • DARPA Prize Challenges (Wikipedia page):
      • KAIST's DRC-HUBO Robot wins the DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015
      • CMU team wins the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007 (archive.org snapshot of CMU webpage)
      • Stanford team wins the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 (archive.org snapshots);
        PBS NOVA Coverage (including an hour-long video programme)

• Media Sites
  • Video Competitions: search for the yearly editions, e.g:
    • Winners of the IJCAI-ECAI-18 Video Competition
    • AAAI Video Competition YouTube channel
  • AI Panels:
    • Charlie Rose on PBS: Panel on Artificial Intelligence (2004-12-21)
      with Rodney Brooks, Eric Horvitz, and Ron Brachman; runtime: 25m:10s
    • MIT150 Keynote Panel The Golden Age: A look at the original roots of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience (recorded May 3, 2011)
      moderator: Steven Pinker; with Patrick Winston, Emilio Bizzi, Sydney Brenner, Noam Chomsky, Marvin Minsky, Barbara H. Partee; runtime: 2h:12m:10s
    • The Great Debate: Can an AI be conscious? (2019-06-28, ASSC 23, June 25-28, 2019, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness)
      moderated by Adrian Owen (Western U.); with Susan Schneider (U.of Connecticut), Anil Seth (U.Sussex), akwan Lau (UCLA and U.Hong Kong), Blake Richards (U.Toronto); runtime: 1h:40m
    • Montréal.AI AI Debate series:
      1. AI Debate 1: Gary Marcus vs. Yoshua Bengio, Mon, December 23, 2019, 18:30-20:30 EST
      2. AI Debate 2: Moving AI Forward: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Wed, December 23, 2020 16:00-19:00 EST; Moderator and co-organizer (with Vincent Boucher): Gary Marcus
      3. AI Debate 3: The AGI Debate, Fri, Dec.23, 2022

Paolo Petta