Introduction to AI

Intelligence: A Modern Approach.
3rd edition, Prentice Hall, 2010

by computational methods
What is AI?

create machines that:

perform tasks regarded as requiring intelligence when done by humans



AI Methodology: Take a task at which people are better, e.g.:
Prove a theorem
Play chess
Plan a surgical operation
Diagnose a disease
Navigate in a building
and build a computer system that does it automatically
But do we want to duplicate human imperfections?

are important

 Ability to create and manipulate symbolic knowledge (definitions,

concepts, theorems, …)

What is the impact of hardware on low-level reasoning, e.g., to go from signals to symbols?

the “best” decision given what is available (knowledge, time, resources)

“Best”

means maximizing the expected value of a utility function
 Connections to economics and control theory

What is the impact of self-consciousness, emotions, desires, love for music, fear of dying, etc ... on human intelligence?

resemblance to our bodies and imitated our actions as closely

as possible for all practical purposes, we should still have two very certain means of recognizing that they were not real men. The first is that they could never use words, or put together signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others… Secondly, even though some machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they are acting not from understanding, …”

Discourse on the Method, by Descartes (1598-1650)

asked questions by a human interrogator. It passes the test

if the interrogator cannot tell whether the responses come from a person

Required capabilities: natural language processing, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, learning,...

No physical interaction

Chinese Room (J. Searle)

Can Machines Act/Think Intelligently?

tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart
E.g.:
Display visually distorted

words
Ask user to recognize these words
Example of application: have only humans open email accounts

information processing AI has made impressive achievements showing that tasks initially

assumed to require intelligence can be automated
But each success of AI seems to push further the limits of what we consider “intelligence”

including Checkers, Othello, and Chess, but still do not do

well in Go
AI techniques are used in many systems: formal calculus, video games, route planning, logistics planning, pharmaceutical drug design, medical diagnosis, hardware and software trouble-shooting, speech recognition, traffic monitoring, facial recognition, medical image analysis, part inspection, etc...
Stanford’s robotic car, Stanley, autonomously traversed 132 miles of desert
Some industries (automobile, electronics) are highly robotized, while other robots perform brain and heart surgery, are rolling on Mars, fly autonomously, …, but home robots still remain a thing of the future

information processing AI has made impressive achievements showing that tasks initially

assumed to require intelligence can be automated
Maybe yes, maybe not, if intelligence is not separated from the rest of “being human”

that intelligent behaviors are only based on information processing? Is

this a valid assumption?

If yes, can the human brain machinery solve problems that are inherently intractable for computers?

In a human being, where is the interface between “intelligence” and the rest of “human nature”, e.g.:
How does intelligence relate to emotions felt?
What does it mean for a human to “feel” that he/she understands something?

Is this interface critical to intelligence? Can there exist a general theory of intelligence independent of human beings? What is the role of the human body?

that intelligent behaviors are based on information processing? Is this

a valid assumption?

If yes, can the human brain machinery solve problems that are inherently intractable for computers?

In a human being, where is the interface between “intelligence” and the rest of “human nature”, e.g.:
How does intelligence relate to emotions felt?
What does it mean for a human to “feel” that he/she understands something?

Is this interface critical to intelligence? Can there exist a general theory of intelligence independent of human beings? What is the role of the human body?

In the movie I, Robot, the most impressive feature of the robots is not their ability to solve complex problems, but how they blend human-like reasoning with other key aspects of human beings (especially, self-consciousness, fear of dying, distinction between right and wrong)

beings, just as Biochemistry contributes to building a model of

human beings based on bio-molecular interactions
Both try to explain how a human being operates
Both also explore ways to avoid human imperfections (in Biochemistry, by engineering new proteins and drug molecules; in AI, by designing rational reasoning methods)
Both try to produce new useful technologies
Neither explains (yet?) the true meaning of being human

search (puzzles, games)
Planning
Reasoning under uncertainty, including probabilistic reasoning
Learning
Agent architectures
Robotics and

perception
Natural language processing

Search

Knowledge rep.

Planning

Reasoning

Learning

Agent

Robotics

Perception

Natural language

...

Expert
Systems

Constraint satisfaction

and games, formal logic and theorem proving
70’s: Robotics, perception,

knowledge representation, expert systems
80’s: More expert systems, AI becomes an industry
90’s: Rational agents, probabilistic reasoning, machine learning
00’s: Systems integrating many AI methods, machine learning, reasoning under uncertainty, robotics again

Recognition and Synthesis
224S
224U
227B
General Game Playing
226
Statistical Techniques in Robotics
229
Machine Learning
Structured Probabilistic Models
157
Logic

& Automated Reasoning