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The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence

This document provides an introduction to artificial intelligence including definitions and approaches. It defines AI as making computers behave like humans and taking actions to maximize success. The four main approaches are: acting humanly by passing the Turing test, thinking humanly through cognitive modeling, thinking rationally using logic and laws of thought, and acting rationally as an intelligent agent. It also outlines the foundations of AI from fields like philosophy, psychology, computer engineering, control theory, cybernetics, and linguistics.

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S.Srinidhi sandoshkumar
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920 views4 pages

The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence

This document provides an introduction to artificial intelligence including definitions and approaches. It defines AI as making computers behave like humans and taking actions to maximize success. The four main approaches are: acting humanly by passing the Turing test, thinking humanly through cognitive modeling, thinking rationally using logic and laws of thought, and acting rationally as an intelligent agent. It also outlines the foundations of AI from fields like philosophy, psychology, computer engineering, control theory, cybernetics, and linguistics.

Uploaded by

S.Srinidhi sandoshkumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1.

1 Introduction to AI
1.1.1 What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence is the branch of computer science concerned with making computers
behave like humans.
Major AI textbooks define artificial intelligence as "the study and design of intelligent
agents," where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions
which maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it
as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer
programs."
The definitions of AI according to some text books are categorized into four approaches and are
summarized in the table below :

Systems that think like humans Systems that think rationally


―The exciting new effort to make computers ―The study of mental faculties through the use of
think … machines with minds,in the full and computer models. (Charniak and
literal sense.(Haugeland,1985) McDermont,1985)

Systems that act like humans Systems that act rationally


The art of creating machines that “Computational intelligence is the study of the
perform functions that require design of intelligent agents.(Poole et al.,1998
intelligence when performed by people.
(Kurzweil,1990)
The four approaches in more detail are as follows :
(a) Acting humanly : The Turing Test approach
o Test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950
o The computer is asked questions by a human interrogator.

The computer passes the test if a human interrogator, after posing some written questions,
cannot tell whether the written responses come from a person or not. Programming a
computer to pass ,the computer need to possess the following capabilities :

 Natural language processing to enable it to communicate successfully in


English.
 Knowledge representation to store what it knows or hears
 Automated reasoning to use the stored information to answer questions and to
draw
new conclusions.
 Machine learning to adapt to new circumstances and to detect and
extrapolate patterns

To pass the complete Turing Test,the computer will need


 Computer vision to perceive the objects,and
 Robotics to manipulate objects and move about.

(b)Thinking humanly : The cognitive modeling approach


We need to get inside actual working of the human mind :
(a) through introspection – trying to capture our own thoughts as they go by;
(b) through psychological experiments
Allen Newell and Herbert Simon,who developed GPS,the ―General Problem
Solver‖
tried to trace the reasoning steps to traces of human subjects solving the same
problems.
The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science brings together computer models
from AI
and experimental techniques from psychology to try to construct precise
and testable theories of the workings of the human mind

(c) Thinking rationally : The “laws of thought approach”


The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to codify ―right
thinking,that is irrefuatable reasoning processes. His syllogism provided patterns
for argument structures that always yielded correct conclusions when given correct
premises—for example,‖Socrates is a man;all men are mortal;therefore Socrates is
mortal.. These laws of thought were supposed to govern the operation of the
mind;their study initiated a field called logic.

(d) Acting rationally : The rational agent approach


An agent is something that acts. Computer agents are not mere programs ,but they are
expected to
have the following attributes also : (a) operating under autonomous control, (b) perceiving
their environment, (c) persisting over a prolonged time period, (e) adapting to change. A
rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the best outcome.
1.1.2 The foundations of Artificial Intelligence
The various disciplines that contributed ideas,viewpoints,and techniques to AI are given
Philosophy(428 B.C. – present)
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was the first to formulate a precise set of laws governing the
rational part of the mind. He developed an informal system o f syllogisms for proper
reasoning,which allowed one to generate conclusions mechanically,given initial
premises.

Computer Human Brain


8 11
Computational units 1 CPU,10 gates 10 neurons
10 11
Storage units 10 bits RAM 10 neurons
11 14
10 bits disk 10 synapses
-9 -3
Cycle time 10 sec 10 sec
10 14
Bandwidth 10 bits/sec 10 bits/sec
9 14
Memory updates/sec 10 10
Table 1.1 A crude comparison of the raw computational resources available to computers

(circa
2003 ) and brain. The computer’s numbers have increased by at least by a factor of 10 every few
years. The brain’s numbers have not changed for the last 10,000 years.

Brains and digital computers perform quite different tasks and have different properties.
Tablere 1.1 shows that there are 10000 times more neurons in the typical human brain than
there are gates in
the CPU of a typical high-end computer. Moore’s Law predicts that the CPU’s gate count will
equal the brain’s neuron count around 2020.

Psycology(1879 – present)
The origin of scientific psychology are traced back to the wok if German physiologist
Hermann von
Helmholtz(1821-1894) and his student Wilhelm Wundt(1832 – 1920)
In 1879,Wundt opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology at the university of
Leipzig.
In US,the development of computer modeling led to the creation of the field of cognitive
science. The field can be said to have started at the workshop in September 1956 at MIT.

Computer engineering (1940-present)


For artificial intelligence to succeed, we need two things: intelligence and an
artifact. The computer has been the artifact of choice.
A1 also owes a debt to the software side of computer science, which has supplied
the operating systems, programming languages, and tools needed to write modern
programs

Control theory and Cybernetics (1948-present)


Ktesibios of Alexandria (c. 250 B.c.) built the first self-controlling machine: a water
clock with a regulator that kept the flow of water running through it at a constant,
predictable pace. Modern control theory, especially the branch known as stochastic
optimal control, has
as its goal the design of systems that maximize an objective function over time.

Linguistics (1957-present)
Modem linguistics and AI, then, were "born" at about the same time, and grew up
together, intersecting in a hybrid field called computational linguistics or natural
language processing.

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