VO 501.054/UE 501.096: Introduction to AI
(WS 2010/11)

Organisational matters

• News
   

  20110308

  • Based on the results of the Doodle poll, the following two dates and times have been determined for the second and third exam dates:
    • Second Exam on Thursday, 2011-03-24, 12-13 (location: seminar room at OFAI, Freyung 6/6, third floor)
    • Third Exam on Tuesday, 2011-03-29, 11-12 (location: seminar room at IAI, Freyung 6/2)
  • Compulsory Registration via Med.Campus until 48 hours before the examination date!

  20110118

  • First Exam on 2011-01-25
  • Compulsory Registration via Med.Campus!

  20110110

  • Symposium "Defining Cognitive Informatics" on 2011-01-11.
  • For details see the entry for the course unit on 2011-01-11!

  20101210:

  • The course units on Tuesday 2010-12-14 will be held at the regular times (both, exercises and lecture)

  20101020:

  • Please note that credentials for access to the materials offered via this website are sent by default to the email addresses of registered participants with the Medical University of Vienna (i.e., typically: n<immatriculation number>@students.meduniwien.ac.at).

  20101014:

  • First batch of access credentials sent to students registered with Med.Campus.
  • Please use the email address intro-ai-2010 (AT( ofai.at for all correspondence related to this course.

  20101012:

  • Specification of modalities for getting access to materials offered through this web site have be cleaned up:
    1. Co-Register with the Medical University;
    2. Register online for the course via Med.Campus;
    3. You should receive access credentials within 72 hours (the list of students registered for the course is scanned daily);
    4. Please do get in touch directly in case of any issues with the previous steps.
  • Length limits for the first exercise have been added and the submission deadline pushed back by a week, as per request (thank you!)
  • Some additional material (names that came up in today's unit, background literature) has been added

  20101004:

  • The course will start on Tuesday, October 12. (Apologies for the very short notice!)
  • Additions to the Important Notices section and minor further corrections to the page content.

   

  20100802:

  • Web site online.
    Please report any conflicts of schedule at your earliest opportunity.

   

• Important Notices
  • All students are required to co-register with the Medical University

    See: "MUW:Mitbelegung" (there is short information in English at the very bottom of that page)

    Hard deadline: Monday, November 30, 2010

  • Online-registration for the course is only possible after co-registration with the Medical University (see previous item): please use your student identification/login to register with Med.Campus.
  • Access to materials offered on this web site

    Access information for materials published via this webpage will be sent to registered students (see previous item). If you want/need to obtain access to the materials for this course but cannot (yet) register with Med.Campus, please send a personal application for permission that should state:
    Full name of applicant, affiliation, the "Studienkennzahl", and immatriculation number ("Matrikelnummer").
    Please address such requests to: intro-ai-2010 (AT( ofai.at.

  • Submission of exercises:
    • Written exercises may be submitted by email to: intro-ai-2010 (AT( ofai.at only.
    • Specify as Subject: AI2010.##.Surname (replace ## by the number of the exercise).
    • The only accepted file formats are plain text or PDF.
    • Each submitted file should be named: AI2010.##.Surname.pdf or AI2010.##.Surname.txt, where ## is the number of the exercise.
    • Pages should be numbered.
    • The first page should carry the following header:
      "IntroAI2010", number of exercise, full name, MNR, date.
    • The deadline for submission of exercises usually is Friday noon of the same week.
    • Please inform me of any difficulties in submitting an exercise on time before the related deadline:
      each exercise is otherwise considered closed with the deadline and will be scored accordingly.

Materials

Course Log and Presentation Materials

20101012: Preparatory meeting and first unit

• Logistics
  • Confirmation of dates of course
  • Organisational matters
  • Overview of course modalities and content
• Introduction: The orgins and scope of modern Artificial Intelligence, Approaches to defining AI, Rationality
  • The material on this webpage
  • AI@50
  • Presentation Slides: PDF (616 KiB)
  • Background Literature: [McCarthy et al. 1955, Moor 2006, Brachman 2006, Hedberg 2006]
  • Some persons mentioned in the presentation and discussion:
    • Wilhelm Dilthey, Gottlob Frege, Charles P. Snow, Alan M. Turing, Joseph Weizenbaum
  • Requested literature:
    • [Turing 1950 and Commented version of (Turing 1950)]

 

• First Exercise, due Friday 20101022, 12:00:
  • Co-register with the Medical University to be able to register online for the course and the exercise.
  • Register online with Med.Campus for access to the online materials of the course.
  • Study the background literature.
  • Answer the following questions
    (no more than two paragraphs/half a page for each answer):
    1. If you had to cancel one out of the proposed "aspects of the artificial intelligence problem", which one would that be, and why?
    2. What other aspect would you suggest as a modern replacement?
       Explain the reasons why and what outcomes you would expect within what timeframe.
    3. Flip through the archive of the publication, AI Magazine:
       What research topic or result in AI surprised you most and why?
  • Please do follow the Submission modalities!

 

20101019: "Aktionstag" of all public Universities

20101026: "National Day"

20101102: "All Souls Day"

 

Further materials will be made available in due course;

tentative content of units, up to revision:

 

20101109: Intelligent Agents (AIMA Chapter 2)

• Debriefing (PDF, 64KiB) of first exercise
• Presentation Slides: PDF (v2, 20101116, 709KiB)
• Second Exercise, due Friday 20101112, 12:00:
  1. Define the notion of an "agent function" in your own words!
  2. Identify a recent example of an automous vehicle in the literature (i.e., on the Web, using the section pointing to Other relevant web sites, ...), and:
     1. Specify the references used and how you found them.
     2. Characterise informally what you understand to be the key properties and capabilities of that vehicle (not more than a single paragraph; less than half a page!).
     3. Provide a PEAS description of the target deployment scenario.

 

20101116: Intelligent Agents: Agent Architectures

• Debriefing of second exercise: PDF (20KiB)
• Presentation Slides: see 20101109 (updated 20101116! (v2))
• Third Exercise due 20101119, 12:00:
  • Please do download and study the specification (PDF, 85KiB) at your earliest opportunity, so that you can ask any clarification questions in time!

 

20101123: Intelligent Agents: Agent Types

• Debriefing of third exercise: PDF (8KiB, updated 20101126 20101125 to include solution for 2.b)
• Presentation Slides: see 20101109 (updated 20101116! (v2))
• Fourth Exercise (PDF, 26KiB) due 20101126, 12:00.

 

20101130: Problem Solving Agents

• Debriefing of fourth exercise: PDF (6KiB)
• Presentation Slides:
  • See 20101109 (updated 20101116! (v2))
  • Problem Solving and Search (PDF, 464KiB)
• Fifth Exercise (PDF, 22KiB) due 20101203, 12:00.

 

20101207: Problem Solving Agents/Search

• Debriefing of fifth exercise: PDF (4KiB)
• Presentation Slides:
  • See 20101130
• Sixth Exercise (PDF, 90KiB) due 20101211, 12:00.

 

20101214 Uninformed and Informed Search

• Presentation Slides:
  • Debriefing of sixth exercise: PDF (6KiB)
  • Uninformed Search: See 20101130
• Seventh Exercise (PDF, 48KiB) due 20101217, 12:00.

 

20101221: Uninformed and Informed Search

• Debriefing of seventh exercise: PDF (39KiB)
• Presentation Slides:
  • Uninformed Search: See 20101130
  • Informed Search (PDF, 101KiB)

 

Christmas holidays

 

20110111: Logical Agents: Propositional and First Order Logic

• "Defining Cognitive Informatics":

  a full-day symposium at the University of Vienna

  On Tuesday, 2011-01-11, a full-day symposium with invited talks by world-leading researchers in the field of Cognitive Informatics will be held at the University of Vienna.

  Participants of the "Introduction to AI" exercises and lecture are expected to attend the programme, which includes lectures by Tomaso Poggio, Peter König, and Heinrich Bülthoff.

  Location:

  Small Ceremony Chamber (Kleiner Festsaal), main building of the University of Vienna, Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring 1

  The symposium starts at 9 a.m.

  Detailed information provided by the Faculty of Computer Science of the University of Vienna

• Eight Exercise (PDF, 25KiB) due 20110114, 12:00.

 

20110118: Informed Search/Admissible Heuristics and Wrap-Up

• Presentation Slides: See 20101221
• Background Literature: [Russell&Norvig, 2003]

 

20110125: First Exam (11:00-12:00)

Location: Seminar Room, IAI

Written exam, no use of materials allowed (bring a non-erasable pen and your Student ID!)

Compulsory Registration via Med.Campus!

 

20110324 (Thursday): Second Exam (12:00-13:00)

Location: Seminar Room OFAI, Freyung 6/6, third floor.

Written exam, no use of materials allowed (bring a non-erasable pen and your Student ID!)

Compulsory Registration via Med.Campus!

 

 

20110329 (Tuesday): Third Exam (11:00-12:00)

Location: Seminar Room IAI, Freyung 6/2

Written exam, no use of materials allowed (bring a non-erasable pen and your Student ID!)

Compulsory Registration via Med.Campus!

 

Background Literature (local copies)

Please note that many of these works are protected by copyrights and are made available for purposes related to the present course only!
(Please see Organisational matters for how to apply for access permission).

• Agre P.:
  Computation and Embodied Agency
  Informatica, special issue on computational theories of mind, Gams M. (ed.), 19(4):527-535:1995
  (HTML)

• Agre P.:
  Computational Research on Interaction and Agency
  Artifcial Intelligence 72(1-2):1-52, 1995
  (HTML)

• Bonabeau E., Dorigo M., Theraulaz G.:
  Inspiration for optimization from social insect behaviour,
  Nature, 406(6791):39-42, 2000.
  (PDF (149KB))

• Bonabeau E., Theraulaz G.:
  Swarm Smarts,
  Scientific American, March 2000:73-79, 2000.
  (PDF (296KB))

• Brachman R.J.:
  (AA)AI - More Than The Sum of Its Parts,
  AI Magazine, Fifty years of Artificial Intelligence research, 27(4):19-34, 2006.
  (PDF (412 KiB))

• Bradshaw J.M.:
  Introduction
  in: Bradshaw J.M.(ed.): Software Agents, AAAI Press/MIT Press, Menlo Park, CA, 3-46, 1997.
  (PDF (gzip, 179KB))

• Briot J.-P., Gasser L.:
  Agents and concurrent objects
  In IEEE Concurrency 6(4):74-77,81, 1998.
  (PDF (201KB))

• Friedman B., Nissenbaum H.:
  Software Agents and User Autonomy
  Johnson W.L. (ed.) Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp.466-469, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1997
  (PDF (728KiB))

• Gat E.:
  On Three-Layer Architectures.
  in: Kortenkamp D., Bonasso R.P., Murphy R. (eds.):
  Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots, MIT/AAAI Press, 1997.
  (PostScript (zip Archiv, 614KB), PostScript (gzip, 615KB))

• Georgeff M., Pell B., Pollack M., Tambe M., Wooldridge M.J.:
  The Belief-Desire-Intention Model of Agency
  in: Müller J.P., Singh M.P., Rao A.S. (eds.):
  Intelligent Agents V. Agent Theories, Architectures and Languages, 5th International Workshop, ATAL'98, Paris, France, July 4-7, 1998, Proceedings, LNAI 1555, Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg, 1999.
  (PostScript (zip Archiv, 152KB), PostScript (157KB))

• Gerken C.:
  Braitenberg Vehicles: Networks on Wheels, Apex, NC, 1998.
  (HTML, lokale Kopie (mit ausgebesserten Verweisen), HTML als ZIP Archiv (260KB), Originalseite)

• Gilbert D., Aparicio M., Atkinson B., Brady S., Ciccarino J., Grosof B., O'Connor P., Osisek D., Pritko S., Spagna R., Wilson L.:
  The Role of Intelligent Agents in the Information Infrastructure
  Technical Report, IBM, Research Triangle Park, NC, 1995.
  (HTML als zip Archiv)

• Hedberg S.R.:
  AAAI's National and Innovative Applications Conferences Celebrate 50 Years of AI,
  AI Magazine, Fifty years of Artificial Intelligence research, 27(4), pp.103-110, 2006.
  (PDF (436 KiB))

• Hogg D.W., Martin F., Resnick M.:
  Braitenberg Creatures,
  Epistemology and Learning Memo #13, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge MA USA, 2001.
  (PDF (376KB))

• Jennings N.R., Wooldridge M.:
  Applications of Intelligent Agents
  in: Jennings N.R., Wooldridge M.J. (eds.):
  Agent Technology: Foundations, Applications, and Markets,
  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 1998.
  (PDF (109KiB))

• Johnson W.L.:
  Pedagogical Agent Research at CARTE,
  AI Magazine, 22(4/Winter):85-94, 2001.
  (PDF (1.3MB))

• Jordan M.I., Russell S.:
  Computational Intelligence,
  in Wilson R.A., Keil F.C. (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences,
  MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge/London, lxxiii-xc, 1999.
  (PDF (124 KB))

• Kotz D., Gray R.S.:
  Mobile Agents and the Future of the Internet
  in: ACM Operating Systems Review 33(3):7-13, August, 1999
  (PDF (104KiB))

• Laplante P.,Hoffman R.R., Klein G.:
  Antipatterns in the creation of intelligent systems
  IEEE Intelligent Systems 22(1):91-95
  (PDF (195KB))

• Legg S., Hutter M. (2007a):
  A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence.
  Technical Report IDSIA-07-07, Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, University of Lugano and Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland, 2007.
  Published in: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 157:17-24, 2007. (PDF (120KB))

• Legg S., Hutter M. (2007b):
  Tests of Machine Intelligence
  in: M. Lungarella et al. (Eds.): 50 Years of AI, Festschrift,
  LNAI 4850, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 232-242, 2007.
  (PDF (332KB))

• Lesser V.R.:
  Reflections on the Nature of Multi-Agent Coordination and Its Implications for an Agent Architecture.
  Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 1(1):89-111, 1998.
  (PDF (128KiB))

• Lester J.:
  Introduction to the Special Issue on Intelligent User Interfaces.
  AI Magazine 22(4):13-14, 2001
  (PDF (24KB))

• Lewis M.:
  Designing for Human-Agent Interaction.
  AI Magazine 19(2):67-78, 1998
  (PDF (92KB))

• Lieberman H.:
  Letizia: An Agent that Assists Web Browsing
  Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'95), Vol.1, 924-929, 1995.
  (PDF (128KiB))

• Liebermann H., Maulsby D.:
  Instructible agents: Software that just keeps getting better
  IBM Systems Journal, 35:3&4:539-556, 1996.
  (PDF (gzip, 1MB))

• Luger G.F.:
  AI: Early History and Applications,
  in: Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving,
  6th Edition, pp.3-33, Addison-Wesley, 2008.
  (PDF (154 KB))

• Maes P.:
  Agents that Reduce Work and Information Overload
  in: Communications of the ACM, 37(7):30-40,146, 1994.
  (HTML als zip Archiv (2.8MB), PDF (Originalartikel, 4.3MB))

• McCarthy J., Minsky M.L., Rochester N., Shannon C.E.:
  A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence,
  AI Magazine, Fifty years of Artificial Intelligence research, 27(4):12-14, 2006.
  (PDF (196 KiB))

• Moor J.:
  The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years,
  AI Magazine, Fifty years of Artificial Intelligence research, 27(4):87-91, 2006.
  (PDF (460 KiB))

• Nilsson N.J.:
  Teleo-Reactive Programs and the Triple-Tower Architecture,
  Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 5 (2001), Section B, pp. 99-110.
  http://www.ep.liu.se/ej/etai/2001/006/,
  (PostScript (zip Archiv, 133KB), PostScript (gzip, 133KB), PDF (317KB))

• Nwana H.S.:
  Software Agents: An Overview
  The Knowledge Engineering Review 11(3):205-244, 1996.
  (PDF (156KiB))

• Nwana H., Ndumu D.T.:
  An Introduction to Agent Technology
  BT Technology Journal 14(4):55-67, 1996.
  (PostScript (zip Archiv, 259KB), PostScript (gzip, 262KB))

• Nwana H., Ndumu D.T.:
  A Perspective on Software Agents Research
  The Knowledge Engineering Review 14(2):1-18, 1999.
  (PostScript (zip Archiv, 344KB), PostScript (gzip, 344KB))

• Parunak H.V.D.:
  "Go to the Ant": Engineering Principles from Natural Multi-Agent Systems.
  Annals of Operations Research, Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence and Management Science, 75:69-101, 1997.
  (PDF (159KB))

• Parunak H.V.D.:
  "Agents-While-You-Wait"
  Tutorial at PAAM'99
  (Presentation slides (PDF): Tutorial Agenda (80KB), Self-Organizing Behavior: Principles of self-organizing systems (1488KB), The What and Why of Agents: Definitions and Motivations (1864KB), The How of Agents: Architectural alternatives and design decisions (1717KB))

• Logical Agents, in:
  Russell S.J., Norvig P.: Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach, Second Edition,
  Prentice-Hall Pearson Education London/Sydney/Singapore, 2003, pp.194-239.
  (PDF (424KiB))

• Russell S.J., Norvig P.:
  Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach, Third Edition, Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, 2010.
  (AIMA: Web site for the text book)

• Sowa J.F.:
  Fads and fallacies about logic
  IEEE Intelligent Systems 22(2):84-87, 2007.
  (PDF (442KB))

• Steels L.:
  Semiotic Dynamics for Embodied Agents
  IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3):32-38, 2006.
  (PDF (540KB))

• Turing A.M.:
  Computing Machinery and Intelligence
  Mind, New Series, Oxford University Press, London/Oxford/New York, 59(236):433-460, 1950.
  (PDF (712KiB)
   see alsoTuring 2008)

• Turing A.M.:
  Computing Machinery and Intelligence (with comments by Kenneth Ford, Clark Glymour, Pat Hayes, Stevan Harnad, Ayse Pinar Sygin).
  in: Epstein R., Roberts G., Beber G. (eds.): Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer,
  Springer Science+Business Media B.V., The Netherlands,
  Chapter 3, 23-66, 2008.
  (PDF of the chapter (852KiB),
    front matter of the book (includes foreword by Daniel Dennett), PDF (156KiB),
    see also:Turing 1950)

• Wang, P.,
  What Do You Mean by "AI"?,
  in: Wang, P., Goertzel, B., Franklin S. (eds.): Artificial General Intelligence 2008,
  Proceedings of the First AGI Conference, AGI 2008, March 1-3, 2008, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, vol. 171, pp. 362-373, IOS Press, 2008.
  (PDF (85KiB))

• Weld D., Etzioni O.:
  The First Law of Robotics (a call to arms)
  Proceedings of the twelfth national conference on Artificial intelligence (AAAI'94), Vol.2, 1042-1047, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA, 1994.
  (PDF (196KiB))

• White J.:
  Mobile Agents White Paper
  (General Magic, Inc., 1996)
  (HTML als zip Archiv)

• Wooldridge M., Jennings N.:
  Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice
  in: The Knowledge Engineering Review, 10(2):115-152, 1995.
  (PDF (264KiB))

Other Relevant Web Sites

Suggestions for additions, corrections, and comments are always welcome!

• AAAI AI Topics
• BUBL Link: Artificial Intelligence
• arXiv.org open access: Artificial Intelligence/recent submissions
• ACM SIGART (ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence)
• IEEE Computer Society: Artificial Intelligence

• Associations
  • ÖGAI (Austrian Society for Artificial Intelligence)
  • ECCAI (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence)
  • IJCAI (International Joint Conferencs on Artificial Intelligence - includes free access to the Artificial Intelligence journal!)
  • AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence)
  • IFAAMAS (International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)

• AIMA
  • Comprehensive web site for [Russell&Norvig 2010]
     
• Educational Software:
  • CIspace
  • NetLogo

• Journals and Magazines
  • Artificial Intelligence Journal
  • AAAI AI Magazine
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems

  Special Issues

  • IEEE Intelligent Systems:
    • 24(4), 2009The 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.
  • AAAI AI Magazine:
    • 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.

• DARPA Grand Challenges (Wikipedia page)
  • CMU team wins the Urban Challenge 2007.
  • Stanford team wins the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005.
    PBS NOVA Coverage (including an hour-long video programme).

• Media Sites
  • AI Video Competition (AAAI, IJCAI)
  • PBS - Scientific American Frontiers
  • Charlie Rose on PBS: panel on Artificial Intelligence (2004-12-21) (25 minutes, with Rodney Brooks, Eric Horvitz, and Ron Brachman)
  • Intute (Web resources for education and research)
  • ScienceHack (validated science videos)
  • Videolectures.net
  • SciVee (alpha)

Section for Artificial Intelligence of the Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems of the Medical University of Vienna.

Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)

Paolo Petta