CSCI 3202
Artificial Intelligence
Assignment 1
Assigned:
Tue Aug 24
Due: Thu Aug 26
To help you gain a better appreciation for the state-of-the-art in AI
-- for what is feasible and what AI has achieved to date -- your first
assignment is to identify an example of an AI system, describe the
system, and discuss its successes and failures. Select a system
that does something interesting and impressive, i.e., the sort of
system you would describe to a non-computer-scientist to convince them
that CS and AI were valuable areas of study.
Section 1.4 of Russell & Norvig presents some examples of current
AI systems. You should be able to find many others on the web and
in technical journals. Some of the most compelling examples of AI
are buried in software, e.g., google uses many clever AI techniques to
interpret user queries.
Here are two URLs that you might use to start your search:
Another way to go about your search is to look in technical
journals. Russell's links include many journals. The best
bets are probably:
Machine Learning
Artificial Life
Journal of Machine Learning Research
Artificial Intelligence
AI Magazine
AI Review
IEEE Intelligent Systems
Journal of AI Research
If you are on a campus machine, you can go to libraries.colorado.edu
and search journal contents and retrieve journal articles
electronically. You may find it more rewarding to browse through
the physical journals on the shelves of the library.
What to hand in
You are to write no more than one
single-spaced page describing the AI system that you chose. Your
description should be adequate for the reader to understand what the
system does. You should describe what input the system uses
(e.g., a camera, written text, etc.) and what output it produces.
You might illustrate with an example of its behavior. You should
describe the range of problems that it can tackle, and also its
strengths and limitations. You may not be able to answer all of
these questions for all systems, but give as complete a description and
evaluation as you can. You may include photographs and figures,
which won't count toward your one-page limit.
Class presentation
In addition to your one-page write up, plan to give a brief (2-5
minutes) description of the system to your classmates on the assignment
due date. Bring photographs or figures to pass around to the
class, if you wish. Let's keep it simple: No need for
powerpoint presentations. The goal is for the class to gain an
appreciation of the range of AI problems that have been tackled in the
past.