CS 4701: Practicum in Artificial Intelligence
Spring 2020
If you want to enroll in CS 4701 and were unable to register, please put
yourself on the wait list. Note that your position on the wait list
has no bearing on getting into the class - we do our best to ensure
that everyone with similar circumstances are treated comparably
regardless of when you happened to register.
You are strongly advised not to take CS 4701 unless you have
already completed one of our AI courses in CS or otherwise have had
some prior significant exposure to AI. Students who take it
concurrently with CS 4700 without having such prior exposure do not
perform well in the course.
Course Information
- Course Staff:
- Contact Information: Please use
FAI-PRACTICUM-L@cornell.edu. Email sent to this address not only
goes to Prof. Hirsh but also the course TAs, and whoever is able
to answer first will do so, getting you a response more quickly.
- Prerequisites: You are very strongly encouraged to
take 4701 only after you have completed 4700 or one of our other
AI courses, such as natural language or machine learning, or
otherwise have some significant AI experience under your belt.
You can take CS 4701 if you’ve taken one of those courses even if
you haven’t taken CS 4700. Those who have no prior experience
with AI at the start of 4701 have a very difficult time learning
enough quickly enough to have as strong a project as students
with such prior knowledge. Please consult with the professor or
the TAs if you have any questions concerning this.
- Lecture: CS 4701 does not have a regular meeting
time. There will be an organizational meeting at the start of the
semester, and there may be 1-2 other such meetings later in the
semester. They will be announced here and on Piazza.
- Introductory Meeting: (first time) 4:30 - 5:30pm, Friday 1/24/20, Gates G01
Introductory Meeting: (second time) 9:00 - 10:00am, Monday 1/27/20, Hollister B14
Slides used at both introductory meetings
- Partner finding event: 6:00 - 7:00pm, Tuesday 2/4/20, Gates 3rd floor lounge - the is the CS dept's semesterly event for students trying to find partners for their CS courses
- Office Hours
- Wednesdays 3:00 - 4:00pm, Rhodes 590 (Kati Hsu)
- Fridays 2:30 - 3:30pm, Rhodes 408 (Akira Shindo)
- Workload You will create a single semester-long programming
project, and that makes up nearly the entirety of your grade. The
goal is to exercise and reinforce AI knowledge you have previously
acquired by developing a large-scale system that uses this knowledge.
Students work in teams of 3. Any variance from this number requires
prior permission and is rarely granted. There will also be a number
of required milestones to be submitted along the semester – a project
proposal, mid-semester status report, etc.
CS 4701 lets you generate a project of your own design. It is highly
self-directed, and does not give you a carefully scaffolded series of
project pieces that come together at the end into a final system, as
is the case with some other CS department practicums. This is good
for some people, bad for others. Be introspective about this. If
your nature will be to let the project slide because the course is not
giving you project pieces along the way, with you desperately trying
to do it all in the final weeks of the semester, it will be apparent
in your final project and you will not perform well.
- Assignment subnmissions We will use CMS and Google forms for
submissions, depending on the milestone. Read the assignment
instructions carefully. Online discussion: We will be using
Piazza for online discussions and to ask and answer questions
over the course of the semester.
- Textbook None.
For further information please consult the Project Description.