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Pages 67-71

June 24

Proposal for revising the AI Qual.

1. The student is expected to be thoroughly familiar with Charniak and
McDermoth. The examiners should also read it and be prepared to ask questions
based on it.  He should be prepared to say how he would tackle any of its
excercises.

2. If one or more of the examiners finds the book's treatment of some topic
inadequate, he can raise a point or ask a question in advance of the exam.
The new point should be raised in writing as early as possible but may by
agreement with the chairman of the exam committee as late as a week or two
before the exam depending on how extensive the issues are. The new issues
should take off from the text but can involve limited additional reading.
Students should plan to keep the two weeks prior to the exam free enough
to allow for this. The object is to make this book last for several years and
not change it until the examiners find another book enough better to justify
all the examiners becoming equally familiar with the new book.

3. The student shall offer one to three additional topics from a specified
list. The only reason for a student to offer more than one is the hope of
raising the chances of a pass "with distinction". With the consent of the
chairman who will take into account the suitability of the topic and an
examiner, the student may offer a topic on the list.

4. Here is a draft list of additional topics:

Non-monotonic reasoning

Planning

Automatic theorem proving

Vision

Control of robot arms

Speech recognition

Game playing programs

Advanced pattern matching }
                          } may be the same
AI system writing         }

Learning

It would be good if each swupplementary topic had a brief description
and a *small* bibliography.  If the examiner on a supplementary topic
is determined in advance, the student can negotiate with him about what
papers to include.

If the faculty finds this a good proposal, I am willing to be chairman of
the exam committee for two years.
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