Foundations of Artificial Intelligence I

The course “Foundations of Artificial Intelligence I” introduces into the field of artificial intelligence and one of its most important metaphors, which is metaphor of the rational agent.

The first module focuses on artificial intelligence as a research field. In the first part, this module discusses the beginnings of artificial intelligence with Alan Turing and his seminal article where he asked the question whether machines can think. We briefly touch upon the notions of symbolic and subsymbolic AI and also discuss four possible directions of AI research. We will review the Turing test as a test of intelligence and discuss a working definition for artificial intelligence. In the second part of this module, we review the history of AI and discuss 5 phases of advancement of the field of AI. The module concludes with a third part that discusses selected current challenges of AI and provides an outlook on the next decades of AI research. We touch upon current hot topic research fields such as transfer learning and reinforcement learning. With the help of examples, we will also discuss the limitations of AI systems in the understanding of unstructured information.

The second module focuses on the metaphor of the rational agent. In the first part of this module, we explore the interplay between perception, cognition, and action in an agent, and discuss how we can model intelligent agents. In the second part, we look more closely at the properties of agents and environments and discuss how agents can act successfully in different environments. In the third part, we introduce several types of agents and discuss their underlying architectures. We discuss the simple reflex agent, the model-based reflex agent, the goal-based agent, the utility-based agent, and the learning agent.

The course is based on the textbook by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, 3rd edition, 2012 or in the English version Artificial Intelligence – A Modern Approach.

The course is held in English language with German subtitles.

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