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:
  • Instructor: Prof. Haym Hirsh
  • TAs: Kati Hsu and Akira Shindo

• 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.