CS 311 examines the design and implementation of intelligent machines. We will study some of the algorithms and approaches that underlie computer chess programs, search engines, speech recognizers and robot navigation systems. We will also consider why computers have such a challenging time with some tasks, such as reading a children's book, recognizing a person in a picture, and playing the game of go.


Prerequisites: CS 102, CS 201
Suggested course(s) to take next: CS 312, CS 451

Having an artificial intelligence course at a college this size is incredible. It introduces a whole slew of currently relevant topics that change the way you think about programming.
-- Jonathan Stuart-Moore '05

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-- B. F. Skinner

Doing search right will eventually require machine understanding of natural language, i.e., full artificial intelligence.
-- Philip Greenspun, on Google's long term goals