COMP24412 Symbolic AI syllabus 2017-2018
OverviewIntelligent systems need to be able to represent the world, reason about it, and communicate about it. This course provides an introduction to the key ideas in automated reasoning and to natural language processing (i.e. to the ideas and techniques that are used in order for computers to use the languages, like English, that we use for communicating with other people). The course is a mixture of theoretical and practical work--at the end of the course students will know the principles that such systems use, and they will have experience of implementing those principles in running systems.
The aim of this course is to explain basic techniques of AI programming, with special focus on the Prolog programming language and its application to processing natural language.
The following list specified the order in which material will be covered; however, it is not a timetable. Lectures may take more than one session if required. There is a block of time at the end of the course for catching up and revision.
Basic Prolog programming
Search techniques in AI
Natural language syntax.
Lectures 14 - 17
Natural language semantics.
Catch-up and revision.
22 in total, 2 per week
10 hours in total, 5 2-hour sessions.
Feedback methodsThe course has a number of lab exercises which are marked in the lab as usual, and feedback on these exercises is provided by written comments on the work and orally by the marker.
- Assessment written exam (2 hours)
- Lectures (24 hours)
- Practical classes & workshops (10 hours)
- Analytical skills
- Problem solving
|Programme outcome||Unit learning outcomes||Assessment|
|B1 C5 D2 D6||Have a working knowledge of the Prolog programming language.|
|A1 A5||Be able to write programs for computing the meanings of a range of natural language sentences.|
|A5||Understand the operation and use of automated theorem-provers, and the theoretical reasons for their limitations.|
|A1 A5||Understand the fundamentals of natural language syntax.|
|C5 D2||Understand how meaning-representations for natural language sentences can be computed.|
|Learn Prolog now!||Blackburn, Patrick and Johan Bos and Kristina Striegnitz||1904987176||College Publications (Texts in Computing 7)||2006||✔|
|Representation and inference for natural language: a first course in computational semantics||Blackburn, Patrick and Johan Bos||1575864967||CSLI (Center for the Study of Language and Information)||2005||✔|
Course unit materials
Links to course unit teaching materials can be found on the School of Computer Science website for current students.