CIS 5590.004 — Special Topics Course — Spring 2025

Artificial General Intelligence

Syllabus

Instructor

Dr. Pei Wang
Email: pei.wang@temple.edu
Office: Room 347, Science Education and Research Center (SERC)
Office Hours: to be announced

Time and Location

Lecture time: Thursday 5:30 - 8:00 PM
Classroom: Wachman Hall 407

Course Description

In recent years, an emerging field of “artificial general intelligence (AGI)” has been formed by researchers who believe the necessity and possibility of treating AI as one problem, rather than as a collection of loosely related problems. This CIS Special Topic Course on AGI will cover the major topics in this field, such as

• Objectives and definitions,
• Theoretical restrictions,
• Strategies and techniques,
• Safety and ethics issues.

Given the current diversity in opinion and practice in the field, the course will be organized around the instructor’s own AGI project, NARS (Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System). While the aspects of NARS are introduced, the related AGI problems will be analyzed, as well as the alternative solutions proposed by other researchers. The lectures will be accompanied by reading, discussion, and projects. With the help of the instructor, each student will select a topic for a course project, which can be

• Implementation of a subset of a particular AGI model,
• Evaluation of the cognitive capabilities of an AGI system,
• Theoretical analysis of an important problem in AGI from a new perspective.

This will be a graduate-level course, and undergraduate students need the permission of the instructor to enroll.

Course Objective

• To give students a broad understanding of the basic problems and the proposed solutions in AGI.
• To give students a detailed understanding of NARS and the related AGI problems.
• To give students research experience in AGI by exploring selected topics in depth.

Schedule

See course website at http://www.cis.temple.edu/~pwang/5590-AGI/5590-index.htm

Prerequisites

• CIS 1166 and 2166 (Mathematical Concepts in Computing)
• CIS 2033 (Computational Probability and Statistics)
• CIS 1068 and 2168 and 3223 (Programming, Data Structure, and Algorithms)
• CIS 2229 or 3207 (Operating System)
• CIS 3203 or 4526 (Artificial Intelligence or Machines Learning)

Reference Materials [This course has no required course materials that must be purchased]

• Non-Axiomatic Logic: A Model of Intelligent Reasoning, Pei Wang, World Scientific Publishing, 2013. [The draft of a revised edition of the book will be made accessible to the students.]
• There will be additional papers to read and/or open-source software to experiment.

Grading

• Assignments: 40% (weekly, with late penalty)
• Project: 40% (individual or group)
• Participation: 20% (attendence and discussion)

Policies and Rules

• Temple has established a blanket policy on the use of generative AI tools. For this course, the use of such tools is allowed, though should be acknowledged.
• Attendance to all lectures is required. Late arrival or early leaving are not allowed except in special situations.
• No eating, talking, sleeping during the lectures.
• The Student Success Center services include the Writing Center, the PASS program, Academic Coaching, STEM tutoring, the Conversation Partners program, and more.
• Students should be familiar with the Student Conduct Code of the university.
• Temple University has a statement on the Student and Faculty Academic Rights and Responsibilities Policy, such as: Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom.
• Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the impact of a documented disability, including special accommodations for access to technology resources and electronic instructional materials required for the course, should contact me privately to discuss the specific situation by the end of the second week of classes or as soon as practical. If you have not done so already, please contact Disability Resources and Services (DRS) at 215-204-1280 in 100 Ritter Annex to learn more about the resources available to you. We will work with DRS to coordinate reasonable accommodations for all students with documented disabilities.