edX: CSMM.101x Artificial Intelligence Review

CSMM.101x Artificial Intelligence is the first part of the 4-part AI MicroMasters program offered by Columbia University on edX. The 12-week course provides a broad introduction to AI intended for graduate students. You don't need prior exposure to AI to take the course, but should know the basics linear algebra and probability and be familiar with programming in Python if you want to complete the programming assignments. Grading is based on weekly quizzes, a few programming projects and a final exam.

Weekly content in CSMM.101x consists of three or more topic sections followed by a weekly quiz. Course lectures generally span 5 to 15 minutes and most weeks after the first have 50 to 90 minutes of lecture content. The lead instructor does an adequate job covering the material, although the explanations aren't always easy to follow, due, in part, to the fact that the course covers a large number of topics so there isn't a lot of time devoted to any one topic in particular. After some general AI background in the first week, weeks 2 through 4 cover search agents including uniformed search, greedy search, heuristics, A* search, local search and adversarial search. The course then takes a 3-week detour into machine learning, covering everything from linear regression and clustering to neural networks and ensemble models. The final 5 weeks jump around from one subject to another, covering a variety of mostly unrelated topics including constraint satisfaction problems, reinforcement learning, natural language processing, deep learning and robotics.

The length and broad scope of the course means that it will take more effort to complete than the average MOOC, especially if you are going for a certificate. I audited the course, so I did not complete the programming assignments. The course lectures don't always cover things in depth, but based on the instructions for the programming assignments, it seemed like they would take a significant time commitment and give you deeper your understanding of the material.

CSMM.101x Artificial Intelligence views AI with a wide lens, making it a good option for those looking for exposure to as many different topics in AI as possible. I am not sure why the creators decided to spend almost half of the course covering topics in machine learning when the entire second course in the MicroMasters program is devoted to machine learning anyway, but at least it means the course works as a standalone introduction.

I give CSMM.101x Artificial Intelligence 3.5 out of 5 stars: Good.