Artificial General Intelligence
Boston University - Spring 2025
Instructor: Prof. Iddo Drori, CDS 839
Pre-requisite: ML or Deep Learning or AI or Computer Vision or NLP
Grading: Presentations 50%, competition 40%, participation 10%
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Monday, January 20): Holiday
Lecture 1 (Wednesday, January 22): Reasoning foundation models
Reading:
Chain-of-thought prompting elicits reasoning in large language models, Wei et al, 2022
Quiet-STaR: Language models can teach themselves to think before speaking, Zelikman et al, 2024
Rewarding progress: Scaling automated process verifiers for LLM reasoning, Setlur et al, 2024
Deliberative alignment: Reasoning enables safer language models, Guan et al, 2025
Towards system 2 reasoning in LLMs: Learning how to think with meta-chain-of-thought, Xiang et al, 2025
AlphaLLM: Toward self-improvement of LLMs via imagination, searching, and criticizing, Tian et al, 2024
rStar-Math: Small LLMs can master Math reasoning with self-evolved deep thinking, Guan et al, 2025
Free process rewards without process labels, Yuan et al, 2024
DeepSeekMath: Pushing the limits of mathematical reasoning in open language models, Shao et al, 2024
Process reinforcement through implicit rewards, Cui et al, 2025
OpenAI o3, Chen, Ren, Altman, 2024
DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing reasoning capability in LLMs via reinforcement learning, DeepSeek-AI, 2025
Lecture 2 (Monday, January 27): Self-improving foundation models
Reading:
Self-improving foundation models without human supervision, Setlur et al, 2024, see References
Lecture 3 (Wednesday, January 29): Open source and open weights foundation models
2 OLMo 2 Furious, Walsh et al, 2024
DeepSeek-V3 technical report, DeepSeek-AI, 2024
Sky-T1, NovaSky, 2025
OLMoE: Open Mixture-of-Experts Language Models
Lecture 4 (Monday, February 3): World and self models
Reading:
Genie 2: A large-scale foundation world model, Parker-Holder et al, 2024
Lecture 5 (Wednesday, February 5): AI agents
Reading:
Building effective agents, Anthropic, 2024
Open source tools for building AI agents:
Rivet: Visual workflows
LangGraph: Graph workflows
CrewAI: Multi-agent systems
OpenAI Swarm: Multi-agent orchestration
Trading agents: Multi-agents LLM financial trading framework, Xiao et al, 2024
Generative agent simulations of 1,000 people, Park et al, 2024
Lecture 6 (Monday, February 10): Generation, synthetic data, and verification
Multiagent finetuning: Self improvement with diverse reasoning chains, Subramaniam et al, 2025
Lecture 7 (Wednesday, February 12): Weight-space learning
President's Day (Monday, February 17): No classes
Lecture 8 (Monday, February 24): Small, adaptive, fast learning, self-training foundation models
Lecture 9 (Wednesday, February 26): AI for super-human Mathematics
IMO, autoformalization, Lean, test-time reinforcement learning
Lecture 10 (Monday, March 3): AI for super-human visual reasoning
ARC, meta-learning, synthetic data, program synthesis, test-time training, human video screen analysis
Lecture 11 (Wednesday, March 5): AI for scientific discovery
Reading:
Can LLMs generate novel research ideas?, Si et al, 2024
The AI scientist: Toward fully automated open-ended scientific discovery, Lu et al, 2024
PaperQA2: Language agents achieve superhuman synthesis of scientific knowledge, Skarlinski et al, 2024
AutoSurvey: Large language models can automatically write surveys, Wang et al, 2024
Review feedback agent: Assisting ICLR 2025 reviewers with feedback, Thakkar et al, 2024
The virtual lab: AI agents design new SARS-CoV-2 nanobodies with experimental validation, Swanson et al, 2024
Spring recess (Saturday, March 8 - Sunday, March 16)
Lecture 12 (Monday, March 17): Video and audio analysis and synthesis, simulation
Lecture 13 (Wednesday, March 19): Meta learning, AI coding AI
Lecture 14 (Monday, March 24): Humanoid robots
Robots that learn, Malik, 2024
Isaac GR00T, Nvidia, 2024
Lecture 15 (Wednesday, March 26): Fly brain
Reading:
Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain, Dorkenwald et al, 2024
The fly connectome reveals a path to the effectome, Pospisil et al, 2024
Predicting visual function by interpreting a neuronal wiring diagram, Seung, 2024
Lecture 16 (Monday, March 31): Human brain
Human brain development, forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, spinal cord.
Cerebral cortex: frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, Boca's area, auditory cortex, occipital lobe, Wernicke's area.
Brain cells: Neuron, dendrite, microglia, oligodendrocyte, astrocyte, axon, synapse.
Blood-brain barrier: Astrocyte, transporter, endothelial cell, pericyte.
Pituitary gland: Hypothalmus, pituitary stalk, posterior lobe, capillaries, anterior lobe, thyroid.
Surrounding layers: Arachnoid mater, dura matter, blood vessels in subarachnoid space, pia mater, connective tissue, white and gray matter.
Self-cleaning: Cerebrospinal fluid, astrocyte, waste removal.
Neurotransmitters: Adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, glutamate, endorphins, serotonin.
Emotions: Anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, hypothalmus, hippocampus, amigdala, septal nuclei.
Placibo: Cingulate cortex, insula, thalamus, nucleas accumbens, amygdala, ventral tegmental area, periaqueductal gray matter.
Memory: Frontal lobe, putamen, amygdala, temporal lobe, hippocampus, cerebellum, parietal lobe, caudate nucleus, thalamus.
Memory types: Sensory, short-term, long-term procedural, declarative, episodic.
Eyes: Optic nerve, optic chiasma, optic tract, thalamus, membrane, occipital lobes.
Music: Parietal lobe, frontal lobe, superior temproal gyrus, planum temporale, auditopry cortex, limbic circuit, insula.
Timing: Cerebellum, basal ganglia.
Consciosness
Ethics
Reading:
The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?, Zheng and Meister, 2024
Simulation and assimilation of the digital human brain, Lu et al, 2024
Lecture 17 (Wednesday, April 2): Human-AI co-evolution
Lecture 18 (Monday, April 7)
Lecture 19 (Wednesday, April 9)
Lecture 20 (Monday, April 14)
Lecture 21 (Wednesday, April 16)
Lecture 22 (Wednesday, April 23): Social responsibility
Lecture 23 (Monday, April 28): Safety and security
Reading:
Responsible scaling policy, Anthropic, 2024
OpenAI model spec, 2024
Scaling automatic neuron description, Choi et al, 2024
Lecture 24 (Wednesday, April 30): AI governance
Reading:
Hardware-enabled governance mechanisms, Kulp et al, 2024
Open problems in technical AI governance, Reuel et al, 2024