Training Artificial Neural Networks (Part 1)

CSI4106 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Important

Deadline: Assignment 2 must be submitted no later than October 22, 2025, at 11 PM. Please refer to the assignment description available on Brightspace.

Prepare

• Russell and Norvig (2020), pages 750–788

Watch 3Blue1Brown videos on neural networks

• But what is a Neural Network? (19 minutes)
• Gradient descent, how neural networks learn (21 minutes)
• What is backpropagation really doing? (14 minutes)
• Backpropagation calculus (10 minutes)

Narrative of PyTorch’s inception

• PyTorch (2024) Official PyTorch Documentary - Powering the AI Revolution (36 minutes)

Participate

• slides (PDF)

Practice

• Circular Separability: To complement your exploration of TensorFlow Playground (below), I have developed a notebook focusing on feature engineering.
• Tinker With a Neural Network in Your Browser

References

Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. 2020. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. 4th ed. Pearson. http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/.