CS 188: Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Fall 2024
Pieter Abbeel & Igor Mordatch
University of California, Berkeley
[Many of these slides were originated by Dan Klein and Pieter Abbeel]
 First Half of Today: Intros and Logistics
▪ Staff introductions: Pieter, Igor and course staff
▪ Course logistics
▪ Lectures, discussions, office hours, and exams
▪ Resources and communication platforms
▪ Collaboration and academic honesty
▪ DSP and extenuating circumstances
▪ Stress management and mental health
Staff Introductions: Pieter Abbeel
▪ Currently:
▪ Professor at UC Berkeley (2008 -- )
▪ Co-founder / Chief Scientist at Covariant (2017 -- )
▪ AI start-up investor and advisor (AIX, Perplexity, Ideogram, Genmo,
Skilld, Reflection, …)

▪ Previously:
▪ Co-founder Gradescope
▪ Early research scientist at OpenAI (2015-2017)

▪ Teaching:
▪ 188 Intro to AI
▪ 287 Advanced Robotics
▪ 294-158 Generative AI / Deep Unsupervised Learning

▪ Research:
▪ generative models
▪ reinforcement learning

▪ robotics
 Staff Introductions: Igor Mordatch
▪ Currently: Lecturer and Researcher at Google
DeepMind
▪ Previously: OpenAI, UC Berkeley, Pixar
▪ Research focus: robotics, large models, multi-
agent AI
 Our talented course staff!

TAs:

Matei Gardea Pranav Muralikrishnan Xavier Yin Catherine Chu Erin Tan Fangchen Liu Jerry Sun
Head TA Head TA Head TA

Joshua Liao Kenny Wang Kevin Zakka Michael Wu Mustafa Mirza Philipp Wu Saathvik Selvan

Readers:

Samantha Huang Wesley Zheng Advika Bhike Danial Toktarbayev Faith Dennis Tina Rong
 Course Information
▪ Communication:
http://inst.cs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/fa24 ▪ Announcements on Ed
▪ Questions?
▪ Materials: public post on Ed
▪ Confidential: private post on Ed
▪ If not suitable for Ed:
▪ [email protected]
▪ Or individual staff/instructors as needed

▪ Course technology:
▪ Website
▪ Ed
▪ Gradescope
▪ This course is webcast
 Course Information
▪ Prerequisites:
▪ (CS 61A or CS 61B) and (CS 70 or Math 55)
▪ Recommended: CS 61A and CS 61B and CS 70
▪ There will be math and programming

▪ Work and Grading:

▪ 5 programming projects: Python, groups of 1 or 2
▪ 5 late days budget for semester, maximum 2 per project
▪ 10 homework assignments:
▪ Electronic component: Online, interactive, solve alone/together, submit alone
▪ Written component: On paper, solve alone/together, submit alone, self-asses
▪ Drop lowest
▪ One midterms, One final
▪ Fixed scale
▪ Participation can help on margins
▪ Academic integrity policy
 Course Structure: Exams
▪ Save the dates!
▪ Midterm: Thursday, October 17, 7–9pm PT
▪ Final exam: Friday, December 20, 7-10pm PT
▪ If you can’t make it:
▪ If, and only if, you have a hard conflict with these times, contact us no later than
Wednesday 9/4 to see if you qualify for alternate exam slot (midterm 9-11pm same
day; final 9-noon next day). [email protected]
▪ More logistics closer to the exam
 Course Structure: Office Hours
▪ Join in-person or remotely to talk to staff about content, ask
questions on assignments, or raise any concerns you have
▪ Schedule and queue available on website
▪ Office hours start next week (September 3)
 Discussion Section
▪ 3 Types:
▪ Review / warm-up exercises
▪ Exam prep exercises
▪ 2hr review session

▪ You are welcome to attend any section of your preference

▪ From past semesters’ experience we know sections will be (over)crowded the first two
weeks of section, but then onwards things will sort themselves out

▪ We will do our best to provide a webcast of section

▪ Discussion Sections are highly encouraged (but optional)

▪ Sections will start the week of Sep 9 (i.e. no discussion section this week / next week)
 Textbook
▪ Not required, but for students who want to read more we
recommend
▪ Russell & Norvig, AI: A Modern Approach, 4th Ed.

▪ Warning: Not a course textbook, so our presentation does not

necessarily follow the presentation in the book.
 Laptops in Lecture
▪ Laptops can easily distract students behind you
Please consider sitting towards the back if using your laptop in lecture
 Instruction vs. Assessment

Instruction Assessment
Grow knowledge, collaborate, Measure knowledge, each student
work until success on their own, stopped before success

Our experience: these two goals don’t mix

▪ Lecture / Section / OH / Ed / Homework / Projects are instruction
▪ collaborative, work until success (but please no spoilers)
▪ Exams are assessment
▪ on your own
 Some Historical Statistics
▪ Homework and projects: work alone/together, iterate/learn till you nailed it

▪ Exams: assessment

▪ Written component to homework = old exam questions

▪ Suggestion: assess yourself by first spending some time working alone
 Inclusion
▪ We believe in the crucial importance of creating a learning environment that is welcoming and respectful to
students of all backgrounds. The following are specific steps that will help us in achieving this goal:
• If you feel your academic performance has been impacted negatively due to a lack of inclusion, or due to
experiences outside of class such as current events or family matters, please reach out to the instructors and
staff. Our job is not only to teach but to support you in every way we can.
• If something happens in the course that runs counter to the goal of making every student feel safe, respected,
and welcome, please contact the head TA or the instructors; if you don’t feel comfortable contacting course
staff, you can fill out this form to anonymously let the department know.
• You may also consult a departmental Faculty Equity Advisor, or fill out the anonymous feedback form for the
College of Engineering for equity and inclusion related feedback.
• If you have a preferred name or set of pronouns that differ from your legal name, you may designate a preferred
name for the classroom by following these steps.
• As a member of the CS 188 community, realize that you have an important duty to help other students feel
respected in helping create an inclusive learning environment.

You can also find these links on the Policies tab on the class webpage
 Grading Structure
▪ Projects (25%) Overall Grade
▪ Python programming assignments, autograded
▪ You can optionally work with a partner
▪ Reduced credit for submitting late, unless you have an extension
▪ Homework (20%)
▪ Electronic homework: Autograded on Gradescope
▪ Written homework: One question per week, graded by TAs on
correctness
▪ Submit individually (but feel free to discuss with others)
▪ No late submissions, unless you have an extension
▪ Midterm (20%), Final Exam (35%)
 Extensions and Accommodations
▪ We’ll drop your lowest homework score
▪ You have 5 slip days to use across the projects (max 2 for each)
▪ See course policies page for details on how they work
▪ In case of extenuating circumstances, you can request an
extension
▪ Extension form will be linked on the website
▪ We will consider each request seriously, but note that extensions are
*not* automatically granted just because you submitted a request.
 DSP
▪ Disabled Students’ Program (DSP)
▪ There’s a variety of accommodations UC Berkeley can help us set up for
you in this class
▪ https://dsp.berkeley.edu/
▪ Are you facing barriers in school due to a disability?
▪ Apply to DSP!
▪ We maintain proper access controls on this information: Only
instructors, course managers, head TAs, and logistics TAs can access any
DSP-related info
▪ Our goal is to teach you the material in our course. The more
accessible we can make it, the better.
 Collaboration and Academic Dishonesty
▪ We’re here to help! There are plenty of staff and resources
available for you
▪ You can always talk to a staff member if you’re feeling stressed or
tempted to cheat
▪ Collaboration on homework is okay, but please cite collaborators
▪ Do not post solutions online or share with others!
▪ Academic dishonesty policies
▪ Reported to Center of Student Conduct
▪ Negative points on assignments, and/or F in the class
 Stress Management and Mental Health
▪ Your health is more important than this course
▪ If you feel overwhelmed, there are options
▪ Academically: Ask on Ed, talk to staff in office hours, set up a meeting
with staff to make a plan for your success this semester
▪ Non-academic:
▪ Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS) has multiple free, confidential
services
▪ Casual consultations: https://uhs.berkeley.edu/counseling/lets-talk
▪ Crisis management: https://uhs.berkeley.edu/counseling/urgent
▪ Check out UHS’s resources: https://uhs.berkeley.edu/health-topics/mental-
health
 Announcements This Week
• Important this week:
• Check out website: https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/fa24
• Make sure you are on Gradescope and Ed (should be automatic, if not, contact staff)
• HW0: Math self-diagnostic is online now (due on Tue Sep 3 at 11:59pm)
• P0: Python tutorial is online now (due on Wed Sep 4 at 5pm)
• Inst accounts: not needed, but if you want one, contact staff

• Also important:
• We don’t control enrollment.
See https://eecs.berkeley.edu/resources/undergrads/cs/degree-reqs/enrollment-policy for
information regarding enrollment into CS classes, including email contact for EECS staff if you have
additional enrollment-related questions.
 Second Half of Today: What is AI?

▪ What is artificial intelligence?

▪ What can AI do?

▪ What is this course?

 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Text assistants
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Text assistants
▪ Image generation
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ 454 billion USD globally

https://www.precedenceresearch.com/artificial-intelligence-market
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
Bloomberg Law, 2023

New York Times, 2024

 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination The Economist, 2021
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
▪ Labor New York Times, 2023

MarketWatch, 2023
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
▪ Labor
▪ Sciences

Nature, 2022
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
▪ Labor
▪ Sciences

Wired, 2022
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
▪ Labor
▪ Sciences
▪ Education
Forbes, 2023
 AI is having real-world impact
▪ Public imagination
▪ Economy
▪ Politics
▪ Law
▪ Labor
▪ Sciences
▪ Education
Ok, but what does AI do???
Science fiction AI?
 What is AI?
The science of making machines that:

Think like people? Think rationally?

Act like people? Act rationally

 Rational Decisions
▪ We’ll use the term rational in a very specific, technical way:
▪ Rational: maximally achieving pre-defined goals
▪ Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of outcomes
▪ World is uncertain, so we’ll use expected utility
▪ Being rational means acting to maximize your expected utility
 Rational Decisions
▪ We’ll use the term rational in a very specific, technical way:
▪ Rational: maximally achieving pre-defined goals
▪ Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of outcomes
▪ World is uncertain, so we’ll use expected utility
▪ Being rational means acting to maximize your expected utility

A better title for this course would be:

Computational Rationality
 What About the Brain?
▪ Brains (human minds) are very good at making
rational decisions, but not perfect
▪ Brains aren’t as modular as software, so hard to
reverse engineer!
▪ AI may be better than brains at some tasks
▪ “Brains are to intelligence as wings are to flight”
▪ We can’t yet build AI on the scale of the brain
▪ ~100T synapses in the human brain vs ~500B
weights in artificial neural networks
▪ Still, the brain can be a great inspiration for AI!
A (Short) History of AI
 A (Short) History of AI
▪ 1940-1950: Early days: neural and computer science meet
▪ 1943: McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain
▪ 1950: Turing's “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”
▪ 1950—70: Excitement! Logic-driven
▪ 1950s: Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers program, Newell
& Simon's Logic Theorist, Gelernter's Geometry Engine
▪ 1956: Dartmouth meeting: “Artificial Intelligence” adopted
▪ 1965: Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning
 A (Short) History of AI
▪ 1970—90: Knowledge-based approaches
▪ 1969—79: Early development of knowledge-based
systems
▪ 1980—88: Expert systems industry booms
▪ 1988—93: Expert systems industry busts: “AI Winter”
▪ 1990—: Statistical approaches
▪ Resurgence of probability, focus on uncertainty
▪ General increase in technical depth
▪ Agents and learning systems… “AI Spring”?
“I could feel --- I could smell ---
▪ 1996: Kasparov defeats Deep Blue at chess a new kind of intelligence
across the table.” ~Kasparov
▪ 1997: Deep Blue defeats Kasparov at chess
 A (Short) History of AI
▪ 2000—: Where are we now?
▪ Big data, big compute, neural networks
▪ Some re-unification of sub-fields
▪ AI used in many industries
▪ Chess engines running on ordinary laptops can
defeat the world’s best chess players
▪ What can AI do now?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present? Google’s AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol at Go in 2016
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
But … a plot twist in 2023!
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
Win against any human at chess?
Win against the best humans at Go?
Play a decent game of table tennis?
Unload any dishwasher in any home?
Drive safely along the highway?
Drive safely along streets of San Francisco?
Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
Perform a surgical operation?
Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
Win an art competition?
Write an intentionally funny story?
Construct a building?
 This Course: Designing Rational Agents
▪ An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.
▪ A rational agent selects actions that maximize
its (expected) utility.
▪ Characteristics of the percepts, environment,
and action space dictate techniques for
selecting rational actions
▪ This course is about:
Sensors

Environment
▪ General AI techniques for a variety of problem Percepts

types

Agent
?

▪ Learning to recognize when and how a new Actuators

problem can be solved with an existing technique Actions
 Pac-Man as an Agent

Agent Environment
Sensors
Percepts
?
Actuators Actions

Pac-Man is a registered trademark of Namco-Bandai Games, used here for educational purposes
 Course Topics
Core Components of Rational Agents:

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning
 Course Topics

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning

How to find the best plan for to solve a problem?

 Course Topics

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning

How to learn to best act in the world?

 Course Topics

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning

How to make sense of uncertainty in the world?

 Course Topics

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning

How to learn a model of the world from data?

 Course Topics

Search & Reinforcement

Planning Learning

Probability & Supervised

Inference Learning

Applications

Impact on Sciences, Technology, Society

 Should I take CS 188?
▪ Yes, if you want to know how to design rational agents!
▪ CS 188 gives you extra mathematical maturity
▪ CS 188 gives you a survey of other non-CS fields that interact with AI
(e.g. robotics, cognitive science, economics)
▪ Disclaimer: If you’re interested in making yourself more
competitive for AI jobs, CS 189 and CS 182 are better fits.
▪ The last few CS 188 lectures (neural networks) are used by many
modern state-of-the-art systems. CS 189 and CS 182 cover these in
more depth
 By the end of this course you’ll:

▪ Build and understand math of rational, learning agents

▪ Select and apply the right AI methods for wide range of problems

▪ Recognize how these methods are used in modern AI systems

▪ Be prepared to make decisions on how AI is used in society

Next Week: Search