This week we will continue to study symbolic planning. This is in section 19:
19: Monitoring, re-planning and hierarchical plans
We then change tack. Symbolic planning provides agents with some limited means to cope with uncertainty; limited because it doesn't support quantifying uncertainty, which is required if you want to assess risk when deciding what to do. Furthermore, symbolic planning problems assume that the goal is already defined. But this ignores situations where the agent faces a dilemma, in that in all likelihood, it is impossible to achieve everything it desires. So, in situations where some factors are more likely than others, some things are more likely to be achievable than others, and you can't have everything you want, how do you choose what to do? The focus of the rest of this course is to address this question. This week, in section 20, we will start by introducing probabilities, preferences, and how they combine to define rational behaviour.
20: Uncertainty, Preferences and Rationality
We will be building on these initial concepts for the rest of the course.
Finally this week, in lecture 21, there will be a presentation of coursework 2 for this course. The deadline for submitting this coursework is 12noon, Thursday 30th March 2023, and it is worth 15% of your overall grade:
21: Introduction to Coursework 2
As always, these lectures will be delivered in person and live streamed. But in addition, each of the above includes pre-recorded videos of the lectures (with edited captions), the slides that were used in the videos, required readings, and a post-lecture quiz. The quiz is a chance for you to gauge your understanding of the material presented here, and so we strongly encourage you to review this content in the above order, and then complete the quiz. If there is anything you don't understand, then you have several options:
- Post a question on piazza;
- Ask a question at the in-persion lecture; and/or
- Ask your tutor
For coursework, you can also get your queries addressed by attending the demonstrators' teaching hour.