My impressions: CS 221 (AI) is taken mostly by sophomores and juniors who are interested in AI, but come from all areas within CS. CS 229 (ML) is taken mostly b

My impressions: CS 221 (AI) is taken mostly by sophomores and juniors who are interested in AI, but come from all areas within CS. CS 229 (ML) is taken mostly by juniors and seniors who are on the AI track. CS 229 has a reputation for being the harder class. I get the idea that people come out of 221 with a knowledge of what techniques are out there so that they can accomplish simple tasks and know where to look when they need to learn more, and that people come out of 229 with a relatively firm foundation to solve ML problems (at least, as firm a foundation as you can get in 3 months in a large and difficult field).