Pendulum Swings in AI

Top-down vs. Bottom-up Ground vs. Lifted representation

The longer I live the farther down the Chomsky Hierarchy I seem to fall [Fernando Pereira]

Pure Inference and Pure Learning vs. Interleaved inference and learning

Knowledge Engineering vs. Model Learning Human-aware vs.

The representational roller-coaster in CSE 471

atomic

propositional/(factored)

relational

First-order

State-spacesearch

CSP Prop logic Bayes Nets

FOPCw.o. functions

FOPC Sit. Calc.

STRIS Planning

MDPs Min-max

Decisiontrees

Semester time

The plot shows the various topics we discussed this semester, and the representational level at which we discussed them. At the minimumwe need to understand every task at the atomic representation level. Once we figure out how to do something at atomic level, we always strive to do it at higher (propositional, relational, first-order) levels for efficiency and compactness. During the course we may not discuss certain tasks at higher representation levels either because of lack of time, or because there simply doesn’t yet exist undergraduate level understanding of that topic at higher levels of representation..

Discussion

What are the current controversies in AI? What are the hot topics in AI?