10-202: Introduction to Modern AI (CMU)

(modernaicourse.org)

156 points | by vismit2000 10 hours ago

10 comments

  • aanet 7 hours ago
    > AI Policy for the AI Course

    ā€œ 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.ā€

    • piker 5 hours ago
      My money is on extraordinarily poor final exam results and/or cheating.
      • khannn 4 hours ago
        In my day professors said that you'd never have an AI in your pocket
        • piker 3 hours ago
          True. Why even bother with school anyway?
        • _joel 2 hours ago
          but can I write 5318008 on my AI?
    • linhns 6 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.
      • topherhunt 4 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 3 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 33 minutes ago
        I disagree. I think we should treat AI tools like calculators for the exam.
  • somethingsome 1 hour 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 1 hour 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-...

  • gabrieledarrigo 7 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 2 hours ago
    I hope the instructor will publish a textbook to support and accompany the course, will buy in a heartbeat.
  • sim04ful 8 hours ago
    Nothing on symbolic reasoning ?
    • cultofmetatron 8 hours ago
      I believe that would be part of whats now "classical ai"
      • cubefox 3 hours ago
        It's called GOFAI, or not AI at all. It's basically all machine learning nowadays.
    • xdavidliu 6 hours ago
      that would be the exact opposite of modern
    • leonvoss 2 hours ago
      That's not AI.
    • chvid 6 hours ago
      No. That will be covered by the Post-modern AI course in the fall semester.
  • mold_aid 6 hours ago
    Can't wait for postmodern AI.
    • blackoil 3 hours ago
      How to flip burgers better than an AI robot!
      • aanet 3 hours ago
        :) Too true

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

  • frankdenbow 3 hours ago
    thanks for sharing, these look great.
  • emil-lp 9 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • small_model 9 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 5 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 4 hours ago
        > most successful implemented AI

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

        • boredemployee 4 hours ago
          probably according to marketing and not limited to hallucination
      • suddenlybananas 9 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 8 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 9 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 9 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 8 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 3 hours ago
      This is a perfectly reasonable take. It's quite outrageous that this was flagged.
    • jccx70 8 hours ago
      [dead]
  • aboardRat4 7 hours ago
    Nice to finally see the revival of Lisp and Prolog.
    • hearsathought 1 hour 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 4 hours ago
      prolog in another skin is called erlang you know.