I400/I590 Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence

Spring Semester 2008

Professor: Larry Yaeger

Office: Eigenmann Hall, Rm 907 (South wing)

Office Hours: By appointment, any afternoon or early evening I'm not in a class or meeting; see my work calendar

Phone: (812) 856-1845

Email: larryy (at) indiana.edu

Meeting Times: 2:30pm – 3:45pm MW Location: Informatics Bldg, Rm I107

Textbook (required): Braitenberg, V. Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology

All other reading materials available online via links on this page (on the private site only).

NOTE: This document appears in both a public and a private place; reading material links only work on the private site, to abide by copyright restrictions. (Lecture note links work on both sites.) The private site’s URL is provided to enrolled students and is accessible via OnCourse.

Schedule and Reading List

Links under the “Topics” heading are to PowerPoint lecture notes. You can download these in advance if you want something to take notes on, but be warned, they are likely to be in flux until the day of the class.

In the topics, S# means Speaker #. (Speaker topics can be inferred from the schedule, but are listed explicitly at the bottom of this page.)

In the reading assignments, B# means chapter # of the Braitenberg book.

L# is Lecture #.

Class	Date	Topics	Reading Assignment (for next class)	Extras (not required)
1a	MO 7 Jan	Class intro, L1-Intro to Artificial Life	Langton1	Dyson
1b	WE 9 Jan	Intro to Braitenberg, L2-Is it alive?	Farmer & Belin, B1
	MO 14 Jan	S1 (KatrinaP, PhilK), B1, discussion
2b	WE 16 Jan	L3-Intro to GAs	Goldberg, B2	Holland, Fraser, Charbonneau
3a	MO 21 Jan	No class - MLK Holiday
3b	WE 23 Jan	S2 (AmandaD, AlexG), B2, L4-Simulated Evolution (Sims movie)	Ray, Sims, B3	Sims1, Sims2
4a	MO 28 Jan	S3 (AndrewM, LukeW), B3, discussion, test prep	Exam 1, take-home
4b	WE 30 Feb	Exam 1 due, L5-Neural Networks Pt. 1 - Terms & Defs	Anderson, B4	Rumelhart & McClelland
5a	MO 4 Feb	S4 (KatieO, NickM), Mitja Hmeljack on Second Life, discussion
5b	WE 6 Feb	L6-Neural Nets Pt. 2 - Association & Hebb, B4, software demos	James, Hebb, B5	Plasticity
6a	MO 10 Feb	S5 (AustinB, JamesD), B5, ALife project ideas, discussion
6b	WE 13 Feb	L7-Intro to Information Theory	Schneider, B6	Shannon, n-grams
7a	MO 18 Feb	John Beggs guest lecture
7b	WE 20 Feb	L8-Neural Nets Pt 3 – Hebbian learning via Information Theory	Linsker1, Linsker2, B7	Swindale
8a	MO 25 Feb	S6 (JosephV), S7 (ChrisS), B6, B7, test prep
8b	WE 27 Feb	In-class Midterm (Exam 2)	B8
9a	MO 3 Mar	Return and discuss exams, S8 (JohnB, RobB), B8, discussion
9b	WE 5 Mar	L9-Neural Nets Pt 4 – Spiking Neuron Models	Izhikevich1, Izhikevich2, Izhikevich3	Herz, Destexhe, O'Reilly, BlueBrain
	MO 10 Mar	No Class - Spring Break
	WE 12 Mar	No Class - Spring Break
10a	MO 17 Mar	Informal presentation of project ideas
10b	WE 19 Mar	L10-Evolution & Learning	Hinton&Nowlan, Parisi, Chalmers, B9	Belew
11a	MO 24 Mar	Olaf Sporns guest lecture		Tononi1, Buzsáki
11b	WE 26 Mar	L11-Organisms simulated and real (Koko, Dolphin, Betty, Alex)	Walter, NewSci, Salience, Giurfa, B10	Swinderen, Foote, Clayton, NatGeo
12a	MO 31 Mar	S9 (ShiraG), S10 (JamieA, MichaelO), B9, B10, discussion
12b	WE 2 Apr	L12-Intelligence as an Emergent Phenomenon	Hillis, B11, B12	Dennett
13a	MO 7 Apr	S11 (MattK, CharlesH), B11, B12, discussion, test prep	Exam 3, take-home
13b	WE 9 Apr	Exam 3 due, L13-Evolution of Intelligence (movies)	Yaeger, B13, B14	Gould, McShea, Carroll
14a	MO 14 Apr	Return exams, S12 (BarryK, JoeR), B13, B14, discussion
14b	WE 16 Apr	L14-Is it alive? Pt. 2, Measuring Complexity	Langton2	Crutchfield, Feldman, Tononi2, Seth
15a	MO 21 Apr	Projects due, Project Demos
15b