Semester 1 of Georgia Tech’s Online Master’s in Computer Science.
I’m taking CS7637: Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence. My reasons: AI is super awesome; I liked the idea of cognitive science and AI; and one of the instructors - Dr. David Joyner - is very highly spoken of throughout the program for running well-designed courses.
Prereqs are “just some Python”. All seems well.
Lecture 1: “hi here are some blocks. can you order them?”
Me: “yes i can”
Lecture 2-8: “here are some ideas how computers would do this”
Me: “sounds good”
Homework 1: “hi isn’t AI cool. let’s talk freely about that.”
Me: “oh man i am going to crush this course - "
Project 1: “hi PLEASE BUILD YOUR AI NOW”
Me: “wait i”
Project 1: “YOU CAN USE PYTHON”
Me: “…”
Project 1: “LOOK HERE ARE SOME SIMPLE VISUAL INTELLIGENCE TESTS PLZ SOLVE THESE W YOUR AI AGENT”
Me: "”
Project 1: “THEY WILL BE GETTING HARDER”
Numerous forum posts: “HI MY AI USES AMAZING COMPUTER VISION AND IS ALREADY SO ADVANCED THAT IT IS TAKING OVER THE LAND AROUND MY CITY IN A GRAY GOO SCENARIO, HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS? THANK YOU, KIND TEACHERS”
Me: “oh no”
So there was a bit of a leap between the lectures and homeworks and the project.
But all is well now. It’s even getting fun (after that first icy shower of “oh god what have I signed up for”). Though calling the program I’m writing “AI” is very, very generous…
