AI SPEC FOR QAA BENCHMARKING PANEL

Note added 3 Mar 2007: I and some others had some reservations about the document because we felt it did not adequately distinguish degrees that were mainly concerned with training for particular vocations involving use of computers and development of software systems from degrees that were more concerned with teaching the foundations of the subject and preparing future researchers to extend both the foundations and the techniques. This meant, in particular, that some of us felt that there was insufficient emphasis on the mathematical content of computer science and the possibility of doing theoretical (e.g. I personally felt then, and still feel that that expressed a narrowness of vision in the majority of members of the computer science community. The more detailed overview is given in section C, as an indication of the scope of the field. This might be used by reviewers considering degrees in AI, not in order to define what should or should not be in such a degree, but in order to provide some background that might be useful when assessing an AI degree course, or possibly when designing one. There is no implication that everything mentioned here must be included in a degree with "Artificial Intelligence" in its title, or that topics not included here are excluded.