Unit-1 Introduction to Intelligent Systems

Questions with Answers.

Q-1 what is Acting humanly: The Turing Test approach?

Ans-To conduct this test, we need two people and the machine to be evaluated. One
person plays the role of the interrogator, who is in a separate room from the compute
and the other person. The interrogator can ask questions of either the person or the
computer by typing questions and receiving typed responses. However, the
interrogator knows them only as A and B and aims to determine which the person is
and which are the machine. The goal of the machine is to fool the interrogator into
believing that is the person. If the machine succeeds at this,then we will conclude that
the machine is acting humanly. But programming a computer to pass the test provides
plenty to work on, to posses the following capabilities.
Natural Language Processing – to enable it to communicate successfully in English.
Knowledge Representation - to store information provided before or during the
interrogation.
Automated Reasoning - to use the stored information to answer questions and to draw
new conclusions.
Machine Learning - to adopt to new circumstances and to learn from experience ,
example etc.
Total Turing Test: The test which includes a video signal so that the interrogator can
test the perceptual abilities of the machine. To undergo the total Turing test, the
computer will need:
Computer Vision - to perceive objects
Robotics - to move them

Q-2 What is think humanly Congnitive?

Ans- To construct a machine program to think like a human, first it requires the
knowledge about the actual workings of human mind. After completing the study about
human mind it is possible to express the theory as a computer program. It the
program‘s input/output and timing behavior matches with the human behavior then
we can say that the program‘s mechanism is working like a human mind.
Example: General Problem Solver (GPS)

Q-3 What is Thinking rationally?

Ans- Thinking rationally means :The laws of thought approach

The right thinking introduced the concept of logic.
Example: Ram is a student of III year CSE.
All students are good in III year in CSE.
RAM is Good Student.
Q-4 What is Acting rationally?

Ans-The rational agent approach

Acting rationally means, to achieve one‘s goal given one‘s beliefs. In the previous Topic
laws of thought approach, correct inference is selected, conclusion is Derived, but the
agent acts on the conclusion defined the task of acting rationally.
The study of rational agent has TWO advantages:
i. Correct inference is selected and applied.
ii. It concentrates on scientific development rather than other methods.

Q-5 Write Note on History of AI?

Ans- 1943 McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit of model of brain

1950 Turing‘s ―Computing Machinery and Intelligence
1950s Early AI programs, including Samuel‘s checkers program, Newell & Simon‘s
Logic Theorist, Gelernter‘s Geometry Engine
1956 Dartmouth meeting: ― Artificial Intelligence adopted
1965 Robinson‘s complete algorithm for logical reasoning
1960 – 74 AI discovers computational complexity Neural network research
almost disappears
1969 – 79 Early development of knowledge based systems
1980 – 88 Expert systems industry booms
1988 – 93 Expert systems industry busts: ―AI winter
1985 – 95 Neural networks return to popularity
1988 Resurgence of probability; general increase in technical
1995 Agents
2003 Human-level AI back on the agenda.

Q-6 What is Software Agent?

Ans- Some Software Agents (or) Software Robots (or) Soft bots exist in rich, unlimited
domains. So,Actions are done in real time.Action is performed in the complex
environment. It is designed to scan online news sources and shows the actions with
natural language processing.

Q-7 What are the properties of Task Environment ?

Ans-

1. Accessible vs. inaccessible (or) fully observable vs. partially observable

If an agent‘s sensors give it access to the complete state of the environment at each
point in time, then we say that the task environment is fully observable. Fully
observable environments are convenient because the agent need not maintain any
internal state to keep track of the world.
An environment might be partially observable because of noisy and inaccurate sensors
or because parts of the state are simply missing from the sensor data.

2. Deterministic vs. non-deterministic (or) stochastic

If the next state of the environment is completely determined by the current state and
the action executed by the agent, then the environment is deterministic; otherwise, it
is stochastic. In principle, an agent need not worry about uncertainty in a fully
observable, deterministic environment. If the environment is partially observable,
however, then it could appear to be stochastic.

3. Episodic vs. non-episodic (or) sequential In an episodic environment, the agent‘s

experience is divided into atomic episodes. Each episode consists of its own percepts
and actions and it does not depend on the previous episode. In sequential
environments, the current decision could affect all future of decisions. Eg.Chess and
taxi driving. Episodic environments are much simpler than sequential environments
because the agent does not need to think ahead.

4. Static vs. dynamic

If the environment is changing for agent‘s action then the environment is dynamic for
that agent otherwise it is static. If the environment does not change for some time,
then it changes due to agent‘s performance is called semi dynamic environment.
E.g.
Taxi driving is dynamic.
Chess is semi dynamic.
Crossword puzzles are static.

5. Discrete vs. continuous

If the environment has limited number of distinct, clearly defined percepts and actions
then the environment is discrete. E.g. Chess
If the environment changes continuously with range of value the environment is
continuous. E.g. Taxi driving.
6. Single agent vs. multiagent

Q-8 Write short note on Agent Types and Agent Program?

Ans- The Structure of Agents

An intelligent agent is a combination of Agent Program and Architecture.
Intelligent Agent = Agent Program + Architecture
Agent Program is a function that implements the agent mapping from percepts to
actions. There exists a variety of basic agent program designs, reflecting the kind of
information made explicit and used in the decision process. The designs vary in
efficiency, compactness, and flexibility. The appropriate design of the agent program
depends on the nature of the environment.
Architecture is a computing device used to run the agent program.
To perform the mapping task four types of agent programs are there. They are:
1. Simple reflex agents
2. Model-based reflex agents
3. Goal-based agents
4. Utility-based agents
We then explain in general terms how to convert all these into learning agents.

1. Simple reflex agents

The simplest kind of agent is the simple reflex agent. It responds directly to percepts
i.e. these agent select actions on the basis of the current percept, ignoring the rest of
the percept history.
An agent describes about how the condition – action rules allow the agent to make
the connection from percept to action.

Condition – action rule: if condition then action

Figure: A simple reflex agent

Figure: gives the structure of this general program in schematic form, showing how
the condition – action rules allow the agent to make the connection from percept to
action. In the above schematic diagram, the shapes are described as:

Rectangle – to denote the current internal state of the agent‘s decision process.
Oval – to represent the background information in the process.

The agent program, which is also very simple, is shown in the following figure.

function SIMPLE-REFLEX-AGENT (percept) returns an action

static: rules, a set of condition-action rules
state ← INTERPRET – INPUT(percept)
rule ← RULE – MATCH(state, rules)
action ← RULE – ACTION[rule]
return action

INTERRUPT-INPUT - function generates an abstracted description of the current state

from the percept.
RULE-MATCH - function returns the first rule in the set of rules that matches the given
state description.
RULE-ACTION - the selected rule is executed as action of the given percept.
The agent in figure will work only ―if the correct decision can be made on the basis of
only the current percept – that is, only if the environment is fully observable.

Example: Medical diagnosis system

if the patient has reddish brown spots then start the treatment for measles.

2. Model-based reflex agents (Agents that keep track of the world)

The most effective way to handle partial observability is for the agent ―to keep track of
the part of the world it can’t see now”. That is, the agent which combines the current
percept with the old internal state to generate updated description of the current
state.
The current percept is combined with the old internal state and it derives a new current
state is updated in the state description is also. This updation requires two kinds of
knowledge in the agent program. First, we need some information about how the
world evolves independently of the agent. Second, we need some information about
how the agent‘s own actions affect the world.
The above two knowledge implemented in simple Boolean circuits or in complete
scientific theories – is called a model of the world. An agent that uses such a model is
called a model- based agent.

Figure: A model – based reflex agent.

The above figure shows the structure of the reflex agent with internal state, showing
how the current percept id combined with the old internal state to generate the
updated description of the current state. The agent program is shown in figure.
function REFLEX-AGENT-WITH-STATE (percept) returns an action
static: state, a description of the current world state
rules, a set of condition-action rules
action, the most recent action, initially none
state ← UPDATE-STATE(state, action, percept)
rule ← RULE-MATCH(state, rules)
action ← RULE-ACTION[rule]
return action

Figure: A model-based reflex agent. It keeps track of the current state of the world
using an internal model. It then chooses an action in the same way as the reflex agent.
UPDATE-STATE - This is responsible for creating the new internal state description by
combining percept and current state description.

3. Goal-based agents
An agent knows the description of current state and also needs some sort of goal
information that describes situations that are desirable. The action matches with the
current state is selected depends on the goal state.
The goal based agent is more flexible for more than one destination also. After
identifying one destination, the new destination is specified, goal based agent is
activated to come up with a new behavior. Search and Planning are the subfields of AI
devoted to finding action sequences that achieve the agent‘s goals.

Figure: A model-based, goal-based agents

The goal-based agent appears less efficient, it is more flexible because the knowledge
that supports its decisions is represented explicitly and can be modified. The goal-based
agent‘s behavior can easily be changed to go to a different location.

4. Utility-based agents ( Utility – refers to ― the quality of being useful‖ )

An agent generates a goal state with high – quality behavior (utility) that is, if more
than one sequence exists to reach the goal state then the sequence with more reliable,
safer, quicker and cheaper than others to be selected.
A utility function maps a state (or sequence of states) onto a real number, which
describes the associated degree of happiness. The utility function can be used for two
different cases: First, when there are conflicting goals, only some of which can be
achieved (for e.g., speed and safety), the utility function specifies the appropriate
tradeoff. Second, when the agent aims for several goals, none of which can be achieved
with certainty, then the success can be weighted up against the importance of the
goals.

Q-9 what is Learning Agent?

Ans- Learning agents

The learning task allows the agent to operate in initially unknown environments and to
become more competent than its initial knowledge. A learning agent can be divided
into four conceptual components They are:

Learning element - This is responsible for making improvements. It uses the feedback
from the critic on how the agent is doing and determines how the performance
element should be modified to do better in the future.

Performance element - which is responsible for selecting external actions and it is

equivalent to agent: it takes in percepts and decides on actions.

Critic - It tells the learning element how well the agent is doing with respect to a fixed
performance standard.

Problem generator - It is responsible for suggesting actions that will lead to new and
informative experiences. In summary, agents have a variety of components, and those
components can be represented in many ways within the agent program, so there
appears to be great variety among learning methods. Learning in intelligent agents can
be summarized as a process of modification of each component of the agent to bring
the components into closer agreement with the available feedback information,
thereby improving the overall performance of the agent (All agents can improve their
performance through learning).

Q-10 what is Problem Solving Agent? [ Important ]

Ans-Problem solving agent is one kind of goal-based agent, where the agent decides
what do by finding sequences of actions that lead to desirable states. If the agent
understood the definition of problem, it is relatively straight forward to construct a
search process for finding solutions, which implies that problem solving agent should
be an intelligent agent to maximize the performance measure.
The sequence of steps done by the intelligent agent to maximize the performance
measure:
1. Goal formulation - based on the current situation and the agent‘s performance
measure, is the first step of problem solving.
2. Problem formulation - is the process of deciding what actions and states to consider,
given a goal.
3. Search - An agent with several immediate options of unknown value can decide what
to do by first examining different possible sequence of actions that lead to states of
known value, and then choosing in best sequence. This process of looking for such a
sequence is called search.
4. Solution - a search algorithm takes a problem as input and returns a solution in the
form of an action sequence.
5. Execution phase - Once a solution is found, the actions it recommends can be carried
out.
It first formulates a goal and a problem, searches for a sequence of actins that would
solve the problem, and then executes the actions one at a time. When this is complete,
it formulates another goal and starts over.

Note: First - first action in the sequence

Rest - returns the remainder
Search- choosing the best one from the sequence of actions
Formulate problem - sequence of actions and states that lead to goal state
Update state - initial state is forced to next state to reach the goal state

Well-defined problems and solutions

A Problem can be defined formally by four components:
The initial state that the agent starts in.
A description of the possible actions available to the agent. The most common
formulation uses a successor function. Given a particular state x, SUCCESSORFN(x)
returns a set of < action, successor > ordered pairs, reachable from x by any single
action.
Together, the initial state and successor function implicitly define the state space of the
problem- the set of all states reachable from the initial state. The state space forms a
graph in which the nodes are states and the arcs between nodes and actions. A path in
the state space is a sequence of states connected by a sequence of actions.
The goal test, which determines whether a given state is a goal state. If more than one
goal state exists, then we can check whether any on of the goal state is reached or not.
A path cost function that assigns a numeric cost to each path. The cost of a path can be
described as the sum of the costs of the individual actions along the path.
The step cost of taking action a to go from x to state y is denoted by c(x, a, y).The
preceding elements define a problem can be gathered together into a single data
structure that is given as input to a problem-solving algorithm.
A solution to a problem is a path from the initial state to a goal state. Solution quality is
measured by the path cost function, and an optimal solution has the lowest path cost
among all solutions.
Formulating problems
We derive a formulation of the problem in terms of the initial state, successor
function, goal test, and path cost.The process of removing detail from a representation
is called abstraction. In addition to abstracting the state description, we must abstract
the actions themselves. data type PROBLEM Components: initial state, successor
function, goal-test, path-cost.