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Upcoming Programming Projects & Git RepositoriesWritten on 03.11.26 by Thorsten Klößner Dear students, the programming projects will officially start on Thursday, November 5th, at 12:00 with the release of Project 0. This project and all subsequent projects will be released via a project description document available in the Materials section of the CMS. The full release schedule for… Read more Dear students, the programming projects will officially start on Thursday, November 5th, at 12:00 with the release of Project 0. This project and all subsequent projects will be released via a project description document available in the Materials section of the CMS. The full release schedule for the projects can be found in the CMS timetable. The deadline of each project is two weeks after release. Access to your SIC GitLab programming project repository has already been granted by adding your SIC user account as a member to the repository, if this was possible. If you have entered an invalid username on your CMS status page, then this was not possible and you should have been informed via e-mail about this by now. In this case, the infrastructure will try again to add you to the repository over the next two days, which requires you to fix the username entry. Your repository already contains the files of project 0, but please refrain from changing anything until you receive the project description. To set up a work environment for the projects, we released a guide in the Materials section of the CMS. Please take a look. In case of questions or problems, please make a post in the technical support category of the forum (https://fai.forum.mi.uni-saarland.de/c/ai2627/technical-support/13). Introductory PresentationThere will be a presentation that serves as an introduction to the programming projects. This presentation will take place on Thursday, Nov 5th, 14:15 at the usual office hour time slot. The lecture hall in which the presentation will be given will be announced soon. The office hour will still take place afterwards, from 15:00-15:45, at the usual location (see CMS timetable). Regards, |
First Exercise SheetWritten on 27.10.26 by Jan Eisenhut Dear students, |
Tutorial AssignmentWritten on 26.10.26 by Jan Eisenhut Dear students, you can now find your tutorial group on the "Personal Status" page in CMS. The tutorials start next week (November 2 to November 6). Best regards, |
Tutorial PreferencesWritten on 22.10.26 by Jan Eisenhut Dear students, you can now select your tutorial preferences on your personal status page in CMS. If you wish to attend a tutorial, please submit your preferences by Monday, October 26, 12:00. If you do not submit preferences, we will assume you do not wish to attend the tutorials and will not… Read more Dear students, you can now select your tutorial preferences on your personal status page in CMS. If you wish to attend a tutorial, please submit your preferences by Monday, October 26, 12:00. If you do not submit preferences, we will assume you do not wish to attend the tutorials and will not assign you to any. Best regards, |
The first lecture will be on October 13th, 14:15 in E1 3, Lecture Hall 002. See also the Timetable.
Course Description
This course offers an introduction to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We focus on the theory and practice of sequential decision making where the AI agent needs to decide about actions in a complex environment so as to achieve a long-term objective such as reaching a goal, maximizing expected reward, or winning a game. For example, games like Go and Chess are sequential decision making problems. The course includes aspects of both, symbolic and sub-symbolic AI (aka data-driven AI aka ML), as well as combinations thereof, and therewith provides students with a glimpse of one of the most important challenges in AI today -- combining symbolic and sub-symbolic AI. A prominent example of an AI system leveraging such a combination is the AlphaGo/Zero system series, which changed the world of computer game-playing, and whose ingredients and architecture we will understand as part of the course.
Students learn to master techniques developed in the fields of search algorithms, classical planning, Markov decision processes, and game playing. The lecture is accompanied by C++ programming projects in which students implement some of the concepts and algorithms encountered in the lecture. With the knowledge acquired in this course, students are knowledgeable in crucial aspects of AI, and are well-prepared for student assistants jobs as well as BSc and MSc theses at FAI and other AI-related research groups in Saarbrücken.
For further information, please check the organization page.
Prerequisites. Solid knowledge in algorithms and data structures is necessary to follow this course. Solid knowledge in imperative programming is also necessary. In particular, the projects require to program in C++ and (some) Python. Basic knowledge in machine learning will help, but is not strictly required; the same goes for basic knowledge in complexity theory.
Note. Students who have passed the Artificial Intelligence course in previous years are not allowed to retake the exam.
The first lecture will primarily address organizational matters. We aim to answer any remaining questions there. If for some reason you cannot wait until then, you may contact Songtuan Lin directly or visit the Forum.