CS886 - Fall 2017 - AI and Philosophy: Additional Individual Project Info

In order to assist students in selecting a philosopher for study,
a set of books, each of which offers a very brief introduction
to a certain philospher, has been purchased and can be used as a resource.
These are from the Oxford University Press a Very Short Introduction series.
Students are not required to use one of these books as the foundation
for the project and in fact are encouraged to read additional sources
in order to learn more about the philosopher they have chosen for study,
if one of the books is selected as a starting point.
The set of books includes: Nietzsche, Hegel, Locke, Hobbes, Schopenhauer,
Russell, Kant, Descartes, Rousseau, Jung, Kierkegaard, Ancient Philosophy,
Humanism, Spinoza, Hume.

In order to assist students in making progress on their projects
throughout the term, a first checkpoint will be to have each student
describing to the class the philosopher they have chosen for study,
accompanied by a one-page point-form handout outlining some of the
key concepts and theories, which they will distribute to all classmates
on the date when the student is scheduled to discuss his/her philosopher.

From here, students are then encouraged to delve into AI references
in order to select a focus of study. A couple of useful references
include:
- social choice function descriptions from Chevalyre et al.
- outline of the use of norms in multiagent systems from Boella et al.
- general textbook on AI such as Russell and Norvig, especially
chapters on utility theory and multiagent systems
- general textbook on multiagent systems such as Weiss or Wooldridge
or Shoham and Leyton-Brown

Students will outline their current thinking about how to introduce
new variations of current AI theories, inspired by a concept from
their chosen philosopher, in a 15 minute presentation to class.
These presentations will take place while students are still creating
their final solutions; they will be judged on the basis of clarity.
Class discussion may assist in giving students feedback about
how to progress to complete the final project: committing to a particular
direction for the AI theory and effectively illustrating it through examples.

For the final project, it is expected that this will include a list of
references which help to explain the AI theory that forms the
centrepiece for the project and current researchers who make use of it.