Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

What could the term "Artificial Intelligence" possibly mean, if anything? Is it worth studying?

Definitions

There are hundreds of definitions of artificial intelligence. Most contain a bias as to whether the writer of the definition sees AI as dealing with thinking versus acting, and whether they see it as trying to model humans or capturing intelligence (rationality) abstractly.

  Humanly
Rationally
Thinking Thinking humanly — cognitive modeling. Systems should solve problems the same way humans do. Thinking rationally — the use of logic. Need to worry about modeling uncertainty and dealing with complexity.
Acting Acting humanly — the Turing Test approach. Acting rationally — the study of rational agents: agents that maximize the expected value of their performance measure given what they currently know.

Some definitions

Eight more can be found here. And a handful more here.

Concerns

AI has both scientific (nature of intelligence) and engineering (design and production of intelligent agents) aspects.

AI Science: The Nature of Intelligence

AI researchers study the nature of intelligence. They don’t (necessarily) try to build androids because

  1. It was the study of the principles of aerodynamics, not the attempt to make mechanical birds, that enabled human flight.
  2. We already know how to make new humans anyway (sorry, no hyperlinks here).

Intelligence involves sensing, thinking, and acting.

SENSING THINKING ACTING
Translation of sensory inputs (percepts) into a conceptual representation
  • Computer Vision
  • Speech Recognition
  • Language Understanding
Manipulation of the conceptual representation
  • Knowledge Representation
  • Problem Solving/Planning
  • Learning (making improvements based on the results of past actions)
Translation of intent into (physical) actions (reflexive or deliberative)
  • Robotics
  • Speech and Language Synthesis

AI Engineering: Intelligent Agents

An agent is something that senses and acts.

Areas of Study

In no particular order, nor with any thought of completeness, here are a few:

Influences

From Section 1.2 of Russell and Norvig:

Brief History

Highlights:

More history:

Applications

Today AI is in:

See Also