10-202: Introduction to Modern AI (CMU)

(modernaicourse.org)

166 points | by vismit2000 11 hours ago ago

41 comments

  • aanet 9 hours ago

    > AI Policy for the AI Course

    “ Students are permitted to use AI assistants for all homework and programming assignments (especially as a reference for understanding any topics that seem confusing), but we strongly encourage you to complete your final submitted version of your assignment without AI. You cannot use any such assistants, or any external materials, during in-class evaluations (both the homework quizzes and the midterms and final).

    The rationale behind this policy is a simple one: AI can be extremely helpful as a learning tool (and to be clear, as an actual implementation tool), but over-reliance on these systems can currently be a detriment to learning in many cases. You absolutely need to learn how to code and do other tasks using AI tools, but turning in AI-generated solutions for the relatively short assignments we give you can (at least in our current experience) ultimately lead to substantially less understanding of the material. The choice is yours on assignments, but we believe that you will ultimately perform much better on the in-class quizzes and exams if you do work through your final submitted homework solutions yourself.”

    • piker 7 hours ago

      My money is on extraordinarily poor final exam results and/or cheating.

      • khannn 5 hours ago

        In my day professors said that you'd never have an AI in your pocket

        • _joel 3 hours ago

          but can I write 5318008 on my AI?

        • piker 5 hours ago

          True. Why even bother with school anyway?

    • linhns 7 hours ago

      This is the way it should be. AI to speed up the understanding process, and one final evaluation without any help to cement the understanding.

      • andsoitis 15 minutes ago

        > AI to speed up the understanding process

        What’s your hypothesis of how AI can accelerate how your brain understands something?

        • allthetime 10 minutes ago

          Quick, easy access to explanations and examples on complex topics.

          In my case, learning enough trig and linear algebra to be useful in game engine programming / rendering has been made a lot easier / more efficient.

          The same way Google or Wikipedia enables learning.

      • topherhunt 5 hours ago

        I don't think the final evaluation is to "cement the understanding" so much as _verify_ that students have taken accountability for their own learning process.

        • aanet 5 hours ago

          ^ This

          This is what a student, who truly wants to learn rather than simply complete a course / certification, would do... Use AI tools to explain + learn, but not outsource the learning process itself to the tools.

      • _345 an hour ago

        I disagree. I think we should treat AI tools like calculators for the exam.

  • somethingsome 2 hours ago

    I'm a little annoyed that 'modern AI' refers here only on LLMs, modern AI is way bigger than that.

    Having said that, it's probably a good course, CMU courses are often great.

    I was just expecting way more sota models in many fields due to the title.

    If someone has this kind of ressource I would be extremely interested!

  • apavlo 2 hours ago

    For those that are unaware, the instructor of this is on the board of OpenAI:

    https://openai.com/index/zico-kolter-joins-openais-board-of-...

  • neriymus 34 minutes ago

    I started doing the free version of the course a few days ago - the lessons are excellent but what is even better are the homework tasks which allows me to run my tests locally!

    It's sometimes easy to just listen and understand, but be unable to write the code myself - having this coding homework task has really helped me solidify this new knowledge.

    10/10 would recommend

  • gabrieledarrigo 9 hours ago

    Do you think this is a good course? Or, what do you suggest as a structured course to learn how LLMs work?

  • teleforce 3 hours ago

    I hope the instructor will publish a textbook to support and accompany the course, will buy in a heartbeat.

  • mold_aid 7 hours ago

    Can't wait for postmodern AI.

    • blackoil 5 hours ago

      How to flip burgers better than an AI robot!

      • aanet 5 hours ago

        :) Too true

        But tbh, it'll more likely be repairing those burger flippin' robots

  • sim04ful 9 hours ago

    Nothing on symbolic reasoning ?

    • cultofmetatron 9 hours ago

      I believe that would be part of whats now "classical ai"

    • xdavidliu 8 hours ago

      that would be the exact opposite of modern

    • chvid 8 hours ago

      No. That will be covered by the Post-modern AI course in the fall semester.

    • leonvoss 3 hours ago

      That's not AI.

  • frankdenbow 5 hours ago

    thanks for sharing, these look great.

  • aboardRat4 8 hours ago

    Nice to finally see the revival of Lisp and Prolog.

    • hearsathought 2 hours ago

      Lisp and Prolog never really "vived" nor were they ever really gone/dead. So they can't be revived. They've always been there, in the background, in their niche. As they always will.

    • signa11 5 hours ago

      prolog in another skin is called erlang you know.

  • emil-lp 11 hours ago

    [flagged]

    • small_model 10 hours ago

      Well it's the dominant and most successful implemented AI, would a comp sci course teach every failed computer architecture or focus on the ones that are in wide use today.

      • gield 6 hours ago

        Your analogy to computer architectures doesn't make sense, unless comparing GPT-like LLMs to different LLM architectures like Mamba or RWKV. It indeed wouldn't make sense to not teach about Mamba or RWKV in an introductory AI or LLM course.

        AI is much broader than LLMs alone. Computer vision, RL, classical ML, recommender systems, speech recognition, ... are still part of AI, just not very visible to the average consumer.

      • utopiah 5 hours ago

        > most successful implemented AI

        According to what? Spent money? Number of users? Outcomes and if so which ones?

        • boredemployee 5 hours ago

          probably according to marketing and not limited to hallucination

      • suddenlybananas 10 hours ago

        I think comp sci courses focuse on fundamentals rather than what's popular. Besides, other kinds of AI are not "failures", they have plenty of uses.

    • smokel 10 hours ago

      Don't trip over words. The course offers quite a range of knowledge that is suitable outside LLMs. It's an introduction.

    • axseem 10 hours ago

      It really depends on the target audience, because a lot of people have no idea what they are using is called an LLM or that there are various types of generative AI.

      • gignico 10 hours ago

        I think the problem is the under representation of other branches of AI research: knowledge representation, automated reasoning, planning, etc.

        These are important topics with important industrial applications which have the only downsides to not be suitable for implementing friendly chatbots and for raising the stocks of Silicon Valley companies.

        • Kaethar 9 hours ago

          I doubt renowned US universities don't offer courses that cover those topics.

          As someone who studied in a university system where the courses you had to take were mostly set in stone (just starting to offer some electives now), I really fancy the option of being able to choose what you study as much as possible.

          The AI course I took was mostly symbolic methods and some classic ML at the end. Most students were not interested at all and would've probably been more engaged studying ML directly. Too bad that wasn't an option.

    • cubefox 5 hours ago

      This is a perfectly reasonable take. It's quite outrageous that this was flagged.