Schedule
This is a rough schedule of topics for each day, and the release and due dates for homework assignments. Dates and topics are subject to change.
All reading is due before class time on that day. “Perusall” means there will be 1 to 3 short readings on Persuall for that day. All readings (including papers) will be posted to Perusall.
Instructions for paper discussions are here.
Code for the course is here.
| Date | Topics | Due (Before Class) | Assigned (After Class) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Intro | ||
| T 3/28 | Intro to Class / Intro to ALife | ||
| R 3/30 | GitHub / C++ | ||
| Week 2 | Heredity | ||
| T 4/4 | Inheritance in Evolution / Inheritance in C++ | Persuall | |
| R 4/6 | NO CLASS: Instructor Absence | ||
| Week 3 | Variation | ||
| T 4/11 | Evolutionary Algorithms | Perusall | |
| R 4/13 | Survival of the Flattest Discussion | PAPER 1: Wilke et al. 2001 | |
| Week 4 | Competition | ||
| T 4/18 | Selection Schemes | Perusall | |
| R 4/20 | Ecological Diversity Discussion | PAPER 2: Simha et al. 2022 | |
| Week 5 | DIY | ||
| T 4/25 | ALife Hackathon Day 1 | ||
| R 4/27 | ALife Hackathon Day 2 | ||
| Week 6 | Intro to MABE2 | ||
| T 5/2 | MABE2 & Project Pitches | ||
| R 5/4 | NO CLASS: Reading Period | ||
| Week 7 | Neural Nets | ||
| T 5/9 | Neural Networks | Perusall && Project Claims | |
| R 5/11 | Pyrrhic Vision Discussion | PAPER 3: Birhane and Prabhu 2021 | |
| Week 8 | LLMs | ||
| T 5/16 | chatGPT et al. | Perusall | |
| R 5/18 | Stochastic Parrots Discussion | PAPER 4: Bender et al. 2021 | |
| Week 9 | Project Work | ||
| T 5/23 | Project Work Day | ||
| R 5/25 | Guest Consultation: Austin Ferguson / Project Work Day | ||
| Week 10 | Project Work | ||
| T 5/30 | Project Work Day | ||
| R 6/1 | Open Problems Discussion | Bedau et al. 2000 |
Final Portfolios Due Wednesday 6/7 by 5:30 PM