Project Milestone 1: Project Proposal

The project is a chance for you to delve into one of the topics we have covered in class. You can choose between two directions: creating a novel AI system or answering a research question. For the direction that you choose, write a project proposal that answers the questions below.

In addition to the proposal that you will write for this first milestone, you need to also come to office hours (the instructor’s or the TA’s) at least once. This is a part of the grade (1 point out of 14), but also remember that we are experienced researchers and should be able to help you narrow down which ideas of yours are the most feasible + interesting.

Option 1: Build a novel AI system

Use the techniques we have learned in class to build a novel AI system. By the end of the semester, you should have a demo that runs either in Colab or a website showcasing your system.

Write a project proposal that includes the following sections:

1. Project Description(3 points): What novel AI system do you propose to design?
   • Give an example mockup of what the user experience will look like.
2. Proposed Method(3 points): How will you be using algorithms from class in order to create your system? Will you need to train an agent?
   • Write 2-3 paragraphs explaining your proposed method.
3. Data(3 points): What data will be needed to build your system?
   • Does the needed data already exist? If so, how much data is available?
4. Related work(3 points): Do similar systems exist to the one you propose to create?
   • Give pointers to them and explain how you think they relate to your project idea.
5. Team members(1 point): Give a list of the students who will participate in this project, and what contribution you expect each person to make to the project.

Option 2: Attempt to answer an AI research question

By the end of the semester, you should have an academic paper that describes the research question, the experiments you ran to try and answer it, and an analysis of the experimental results.

Write a project proposal that includes the following sections:

1. Project Description (3 points): What research question or problem are you trying to solve?
   • Write a problem definition (1 to 2 paragraphs)
   • Give an illustrative example of the problem and/or your proposed solution.
2. Data (3 points): What kind of data will you need to train and evaluate your method?
   • Does the needed data already exist? If so, how much data is available?
3. Evaluation (3 points): What evaluation metrics do you plan to use to answer your research question?
4. Related work (3 points): What previous research has been done on this research question?
   • Give pointers to several research papers that you think are relevant along with short explanations of how you think they relate to your project idea.
5. Team members (1 point): Give a list of the students who will participate in this project, and what contribution you expect each person to make to the project.

What to Submit

Submit to Blacboard:

• proposal.pdf which contains your project proposal. To make grading easier, your proposal should include section headers corresponding to each of the bulleted points. LaTeX is preferred but not required.

Grading