The final exam will be a 3-hour open-book on-line exam (Canvas).
Questions will focus on your understanding of the material that has been presented in the course and can be found in the assigned readings and lecture notes, with an emphasis on the main concepts and topics and your ability to holistically comprehend these.
If you are unsure of which topics are the main ones, and which are sub-topics or less important, look at the lecture notes: If it's mentioned there it is important. If it's mentioned more than once it's even more important. But above all, your comprehension of the relationships between topics, and your ability to put this in context with the present state and future of AI, is what the final exam focuses on.
Below are some example questions. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of the types of questions that may appear on the final exam, it is representative form of some questions that may appear on the final exam, and are provided to help you prepare for the final exam. These are examples only, the specific question below may (or may not) appear - in this or modified form - on your final exam.
However you answer and whatever you write, make sure you present strong and clear arguments for your answer, referring back to the most relevant material covered in the course, as appropriate.
1. For a task of space junk cleanup, the European Space Agency (ESA) is planning to build an autonomous robotic satellite craft that can obliterate orbiting space junk with a powerful laser. Each encounter of the craft with a piece of junk must be documented through a camera and uploaded to an earth-bound computer as soon as it is finished. The laser must be tuned based on the junk's weight, density, and speed of motion relative to the trash satellite for each encounter. For most of the junk that the craft will encounter there exists no records of size, weight, speed, or other information. Everything onboard the craft, including its small electric-power thrusters, gets energy from its batteries, charged via its solar panels. The craft will stay in orbit for at least twenty years and its hardware will not be serviced during that time.
1a. ESA must decide what kind of control system to use for the craft. They ask you to write a report with an analysis of the requirements of the control system and recommendations for how it should be designed. They are especially interested in novel ideas and approaches. (i) What will your report say about the control system requirements? (ii) What will your recommendation look like? (Make sure you present strong and clear arguments for your answer.) [8%]
1b. A few months later ESA adds the following issue: They have determined that there is so much space junk that the craft should preferably fire at multiple objects simultaneously. This makes scheduling of events more complicated, which includes keeping track of junk items, making sure the craft is not hit by debris, and charging batteries, among other things. The company wants to develop a system based on the GMI-aspiring NARS / ONA system to control the photography unit. They want you to propose a way to do this. Please give an outline of your recommendations for how do this. Make sure you list the strengths and weaknesses of your approach, to help ESA come to the right conclusion of whether to choose NARS for this purpose. (Make sure you present strong and clear arguments for all aspects of your answer.) [8%]
2. How does GMI (“general machine intelligence”; “strong AI”) differ from “narrow AI” (“weak AI”)? [5%]
3. What is the key concept of constructivist AI (and psychology)? How does it relate to the concept of cognitive growth? Contrast with “good old fashioned AI” (GOFAI). [15%]
4. What role does software architecture play in research aiming to achieve general machine intelligence ? [12%]
5. With specific reference to “task-environments”, discuss how you would approach designing a methodology to evaluate the generality of an AI system. [12%]
6. How does the concept of 'control' relate to the concepts of 'goal', 'plan', and 'model'? [8%]
7. What are some of the contemporary methodologies used for building AI systems? Describe two limitations that they inherently have and explain how these limitations might be overcome. [10%]
2022(c )Kristinn R. Thórisson
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