UC San Diego · Fall 2026

CSE 151B | Introduction to Deep Learning

What you’ll learn

G1 Build a training system

Implement and debug a neural network: predictions, losses, gradients, and training.

G2 Understand design choices

Explain design choices, test their tradeoffs, and judge what experiments establish.

G3 Reason about AI in the real world

Evaluate AI safety, ethics, ownership, control, and governance in real-world use.

G4 Apply AI in professional practice

Build, use, and adapt AI for real needs; make and communicate sound deployment decisions.

Lectures Tuesdays & Thursdays · 2:00–3:20 p.m. · WLH 2005 (Warren Lecture Hall, room 2005) Discussion Mondays · 4:00–4:50 p.m. · CENTR 115 (Center Hall, room 115) Midterm In class on Oct 20

Weekly schedule

Homework template

Week / dates Monday quiz Tuesday / Thursday lectures Homework & Programming Assignments Weekly learning goal Project milestones (tentative)
00Sep 24–25 No Monday meeting.

Thu · Sep 24 Syllabus and AI today
Course syllabus and discussion of modern AI systems. Recording

HW0 Ungraded
PA0 Ungraded

Released Sep 24

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01Sep 28–Oct 2

Sep 28 · Foundations clinic Discussion of HW0 and PA0 topics.

PyTorch Primer

Tue · Sep 29 ML settings and learning objectives
Review supervised, self-supervised, and reward-based learning objectives. Handout Recording Supplement

Thu · Oct 1 Deep learning vs. machine learning
Nonlinear networks and activation functions. Handout Recording

Released Sep 28
Due Oct 5

Understand when each type of machine learning objective is appropriate. Construct deep neural networks and compute a forward pass through a network.

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02Oct 5–9

Oct 5 · Quiz 1 Learning settings, objectives, and forward computation.

Tue · Oct 6 Backpropagation
Computing and checking gradients through neural networks. Recording

Thu · Oct 8 Optimization
Gradient descent, learning rates, and curvature. Handout Recording Supplement

Released Oct 5
Due Oct 12

Compute gradients, understand gradient descent, and learn to set the learning rate.

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03Oct 12–16

Oct 12 · Quiz 2 Backpropagation, curvature, and gradient descent.

Tue · Oct 13 Training deep networks
Initialization, normalization, weight decay, and dropout.

Thu · Oct 15 Evaluation and benchmarking
Loss versus task performance, data leakage, and fair comparisons.

HW3
PA3

Released Oct 12
Due Oct 19

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