For an autonomous agent to behave in an intelligent manner it must be able to solve problems. This means it should be able to arrive at decisions that transform a given situation into a desired or goal situation. The agent should be able to imagine the consequence of its decisions to be able to identify the ones that work. In this first course on AI we study a wide variety of search methods that agents can employ for problem solving.
In a follow up course – AI: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning – we will go into the details of how an agent can represent its world and reason with what it knows. These two courses should lay a strong foundation for artificial intelligence, which the student can build upon. A third short course – AI: Constraint Satisfaction Problems – presents a slightly different formalism for problem solving, one in which the search and reasoning processes mentioned above can operate together.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This is a first course on Artificial Intelligence. While the intended audience is both UG and PG students studying Computer Science, in fact anyone comfortable with talking about algorithms should be able to do the course.
INDUSTRY SUPPORT
Any industry that is involved in development of AI applications. This not only includes software companies (like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook) but also manufacturing companies like Ford and General Electric, and retail companies like Amazon and Flipkart.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Deepak Khemani is Professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras. He completed his B.Tech. (1980) in Mechanical Engineering, and M.Tech. (1983) and PhD. (1989) in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, and has been with IIT Madras since then. In between he spent a year at Tata Research Development and Design Centre, Pune and another at the youngest IIT at Mandi. He has had shorter stays at several Computing departments in Europe. Prof Khemani’s long-term goals are to build articulate problem solving systems using AI that can interact with human beings. His research interests include Memory Based Reasoning, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Planning and Constraint Satisfaction, Qualitative Reasoning and Natural Language Processing.
Certification Process
1. Join the course
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COURSE ENROLMENT FEE: The Fee for Enrolment is Rs. 3000 + GST
2. Watch Videos+Submit Assignments
After enrolling, learners can watch lectures and learn and follow it up with attempting/answering the assignments given.
3. Get qualified to register for exams
A learner can earn a certificate in the self paced course only by appearing for the online remote proctored exam and to register for this, the learner should get minimum required marks in the assignments as given below:
CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE
Assignment score = Score more than 50% in at least 9/12 assignments.
Exam score = 50% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100
Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.”
4. Register for exams
The certification exam is conducted online with remote proctoring. Once a learner has become eligible to register for the certification exam, they can choose a slot convenient to them from what is available and pay the exam fee. Schedule of available slot dates/timings for these remote-proctored online examinations will be published and made available to the learners.
EXAM FEE: The remote proctoring exam is optional for a fee of Rs.1500 + GST. An additional fee of Rs.1500 will apply for a non-standard time slot.
5. Results and Certification
After the exam, based on the certification criteria of the course, results will be declared and learners will be notified of the same. A link to download the e-certificate will be shared with learners who pass the certification exam.
CERTIFICATE TEMPLATE
Course Details
Week 1 : Introduction: Philosophy, Mind, Reasoning, Computation, Dartmouth Conference, The Chess Saga, Epiphenomena Week 2 : State Space Search: Depth First Search, Breadth First Search, Depth First Iterative Deepening Week 3 : Heuristic Search: Best First Search, Hill Climbing, Solution Space, TSP, Escaping Local Optima, Stochastic Local Search Week 4 : Population Based Methods: Genetic Algorithms, SAT, TSP, emergent Systems, Ant Colony Optimization Week 5 : Finding Optimal Paths: Branch & Bound, A*, Admissibility of A*, Informed Heuristic Functions Week 6 : Space Saving Versions of A*: Weighted A*, IDA*, RBFS, Monotone Condition, Sequence Alignment, DCFS, SMGS, Beam Stack Search Week 7 : Game Playing: Game Theory, Board Games and Game Trees, Algorithm Minimax, AlphaBeta and SSS* Week 8 : Automated Planning: Domain Independent Planning, Blocks World, Forward &Backward Search, Goal Stack Planning, Plan Space Planning Week 9 : Problem Decomposition: Means Ends Analysis, Algorithm Graphplan, Algorithm AO* Week 10 : Rule Based Expert Systems: Production Systems, Inference Engine, Match-Resolve-Execute, Rete Net Week 11 : Deduction as Search: Logic, Soundness, Completeness, First Order Logic, Forward Chaining, Backward Chaining Week 12 : Constraint Processing: CSPs, Consistency Based Diagnosis, Algorithm Backtracking, Arc Consistency, Algorithm Forward Checking
Books and References
Text Book:
1. Deepak Khemani. A First Course in Artificial Intelligence, McGraw Hill Education (India), 2013.
Reference Books:
1. Stefan Edelkamp and Stefan Schroedl. Heuristic Search: Theory and Applications, Morgan Kaufmann, 2011.
2. John Haugeland, Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea, A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1985.
3. Pamela McCorduck, Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence, A K Peters/CRC Press; 2 edition, 2004.
4. Zbigniew Michalewicz and David B. Fogel. How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics. Springer; 2nd edition, 2004.
5. Judea Pearl. Heuristics: Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem Solving, Addison-Wesley, 1984.
6. Elaine Rich and Kevin Knight. Artificial Intelligence, Tata McGraw Hill, 1991.
7. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2009.
8. Eugene Charniak, Drew McDermott. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Addison-Wesley, 1985.
9. Patrick Henry Winston. Artificial Intelligence, Addison-Wesley, 1992.
1 review for Artificial Intelligence Search Methods for problem Solving
Erma Leaird –
Very good site for my students.