Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents

READ THIS! : Each day follows a structured plan, starting at 10 am and proceeding for two hours (with one or two breaks), consisting of a mixture of teacher lectures and Q&A. After lunch students spend 1.5 hours reading two (and sometimes three) papers back-to-back, to prepare for the following discussion session. Discussion sessions are typically one hour long and are based primarily on student questions, often follwing a Q-and-A format. As the course progresses, material from prior sessions will be unified with new content – following the program is essential to not fall behind and be able to follow the discussions in full.

• 9:00-10:40: GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
  • Key concepts: Goals, Behaviors, Generality, Cognition, Perception, Classification
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: EMPIRICAL REASONING
  • Key concepts: Reasoning, Causality, Non-Axiomatic Logic, Defeasibility
• 13:00-14:30: Read papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: CUMULATIVE LEARNING
  • Key concepts: Reinforcement learning, learning by observation, cumulative learning
• D3 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D3 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: AUTONOMY
  • Key concepts: Autonomy, Control, Reflection, Generality
• D4 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D4 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• D5 10-12: TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
  • Key concepts: Everything from this week
• D5 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D5 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: SYMBOLS, MODELS, CAUSALITY
  • Key concepts: Cognitive Processes, Symbols vs. Concepts, Cumulative Modeling
• D1 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D1 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: MEANING
  • Key concepts: Meaning, Situatedness, Grounding, Seed-Programmed Self-Guided Learning
• D2 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D2 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: UNDERSTANDING
  • Key concepts: Understanding, Explanation, Curiosity, Creativity
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: ARCHITECTURES
  • Key concepts: Cognitive Architecture, Control, Classification, Generality
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
  • Key concepts: Everything from this week
• D5 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• D5 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: tbd
  • Key concepts: tbd
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: tbd
  • Key concepts: tbd
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: tbd
  • Key concepts:
• 13:00-14:30: Read assigned papers
• 14:30-15:30: Discussion

• 10:00-11:40: TYING IT ALL TOGETHER
  • Key concepts: Preparations for Final Exam
• 13:00-14:30: Discussion
• 14:30: Sessions end

• Sprint W2+W3: WORLDS
  • Key concepts: Environment, tasks, entities, variables, tests, goals, behaviors
  • Tasks & Environments
  • Patterns, Emergence & Self-Organization
• Sprint W4+W5: CONTROL
  • Key concepts: Control systems, levels of control, generality, autonomy
  • Agents & Control
  • Intelligence & Generality
  • Self-X & Predictability, Reliability, Self-Explanation
• Sprint W6+W7: LEARNING
  • Key concepts: Reinforcement learning, learning by observation, cumulative learning
  • Learning
  • Autonomy
• Sprint W8+W9: SYMBOLS, MODELS, CAUSALITY
  • Key concepts: Models, relations, causation, symbols, hierarchy, compositionality, grounding
  • Knowledge Representation
  • Causation, Probabilities & More
  • AI Architectures
• Sprint W10+11: UNDERSTANDING
  • Key concepts: In addition to the topic of understanding, curiosity, creativity and methodology, this sprint relies on everything from the previous sprints.
  • Understanding, Curiosity, Creativity
  • AI Methodologies
• W12: WRAP-UP

2025©K.R.Thórisson