The Artificial intelligence

Introduction To Artificial Intelligence

What is AI?

Four categories of definitions:

	Human-centered	Rationality-centered
Thought-centered	Systems that think like humans.	Systems that think rationally.
Behaviour-centered	Systems that act like humans.	Systems that act rationally.

Acting Humanly: The Turing Test Approach

Short version: AI is the enterprise of constructing an intelligent artefact.
- Intelligence: things people do well exhibit intelligence, but not all of them (i.e. bodily functions).

Turning Test: a functional definition.

Long version: AI is the enterprise of constructing a physical symbol system that can reliably pass the turning test.

Artefact: We are not really changing the world; we are just going through a thinking process to capture the knowledge about an inference about problem solving. We are trying to build intelligent systems.

Passing the Turing test would indicate that the system is intelligent according to the “Systems that act like humans” definition, but only appears to be intelligent according to the “Systems that think like humans” definition.

Thinking Humanly: The Cognitive Modelling Approach

Require an understanding of the actual workings of human minds.
- Cognitive Science: construct precise and testable theories of the workings of human minds through human minds through computer models and psychological experiments.

Is it necessary for intelligent entities to duplicate human thought process?
- The distinction has helped both AI and cognitive science. (… ?)

Thinking Rationally: The “Laws of Thought” Approach

Build intelligent systems using logic
- Logic rules such as “syllogisms”: Aristotle is a man; all men are mortal; so Aristotle is mortal.
- In principle, any solvable problem can be solved by logic.

Not always practical:
- Not easy to express knowledge with 100% certainty in logical notation.
- Intractable: quickly exhaust the current computing power and resources.

Thinking Rationally: The “Laws of Thought” Approach

A rational agent acts so as to achieve the best outcome, or when there is uncertainty, the best expected outcome.
- No need to imitate human, either internally or externally.
- Not necessarily based on logic.
- Perfect rationality may be computationally to expensive, but a good starting point for limited rationality.

Possible Solutions

C++/STL. If you are not familiar with the STL library, I encourage you to become so. It supports mainstream data structures and memory management is automatic.

Java is another supported solution. Version does not matter much.

If you are just a C programmer, you should get setup on C++/STL as soon as possible.

For now, just stick with these two alternatives.

For next time, search Wikipedia for Neats vs. Scruffies. (Two different camps of AI).
Scruffies: Just tries to build a system to solve a problem to see if it works.
Neats: Try to generalize, formalize to build something better; less sloppy.