What is Artificial Intelligence

(John McCarthy , Basic Questions)

• What is artificial intelligence?
• It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand
human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are
biologically observable.

• Yes, but what is intelligence?

• Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world.
Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some
machines.

• Isn't there a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to

human intelligence?
• Not yet. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds of
computational procedures we want to call intelligent. We understand some of the
mechanisms of intelligence and not others.

• More in: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html

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What is AI?
Views of AI fall into four categories:
• Acting humanly
• Turing test approach.
• NLP – successful communication
• Knowledge representation
• Automated reasoning
• Machine learning
• Computer vision to perceive
• Robotics to manipulate objects
• Thinking humanly
• Cognitive modelling approach. Combination of Techniques
from AI and Psychology
What is AI?
• Thinking rationally
• Laws of Thought approach. Argument structures, that
yielded correct results based on the premises. Gave way
to logic
• Acting rationally
• Rational agent approach. The one that acts so as to
achieve the best outcome or when there is uncertainty
the best expected outcome.

The textbook advocates "acting rationally“

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What is Artificial Intelligence?

• Human-like (“How to simulate humans intellect and behavior on by

a machine.)
• Mathematical problems (puzzles, games, theorems)
• Common-sense reasoning (if there is parking-space, probably illegal
to park)
• Expert knowledge: lawyers, medicine, diagnosis
• Social behavior
• Rational-like:
• achieve goals, have performance measure
What is Artificial Intelligence
• Thought processes
• “The exciting new effort to make computers think ..
Machines with minds, in the full and literal sense”
(Haugeland, 1985)
• Behavior
• “The study of how to make computers do things at
which, at the moment, people are better.” (Rich, and
Knight, 1991)
The Turing Test
(Can Machine think? A. M. Turing, 1950)

• Requires
• Natural language
• Knowledge representation
• Automated reasoning
• Machine learning
• (vision, robotics) for full test
 What is AI?
• Turing test (1950)
• Requires:
• Natural language
• Knowledge representation
• automated reasoning
• machine learning
• (vision, robotics.) for full test
• Thinking humanly:
• Introspection, the general problem solver (Newell and
Simon 1961)
• Cognitive sciences
• Thinking rationally:
• Logic
• Problems: how to represent and reason in a domain
• Acting rationally:
• Agents: Perceive and act
 AI examples
Common sense reasoning
• Tweety is a bird => it can fly
• Yale Shooting problem
Update vs revise knowledge
• The OR gate example: A or B -→ C
• Observe C=0, vs Do C=0
Chaining theories of actions
Looks-like(P) → is(P)
Make-looks-like(P) → Looks-like(P)
----------------------------------------
Makes-looks-like(P) ---is(P) ???
Garage-door example: garage door not included.
• Planning benchmarks
• 8-puzzle, 8-queen, block world, grid-space world
Abduction: cambridge parking example
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History of AI
• McCulloch and Pitts (1943)
• Neural networks that learn
• Minsky (1951)
• Built a neural net computer
• Darmouth conference (1956):
• McCarthy, Minsky, Newell, Simon met,
• Logic theorist (LT)- proves a theorem in Principia Mathematica-Russel.
• The name “Artficial Intelligence” was coined.
• 1952-1969
• GPS- Newell and Simon
• Geometry theorem prover - Gelernter (1959)
• Samuel Checkers that learns (1952)
• McCarthy - Lisp (1958), Advice Taker, Robinson’s resolution
• Microworlds: Integration, block-worlds.
• 1962- the perceptron convergence (Rosenblatt)
The Birthplace of
“Artificial Intelligence”, 1956
• Darmouth workshop, 1956: historical meeting of the precieved founders
of AI met: John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Alan Newell, and Herbert
Simon.

• A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial

Intelligence. J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, and C.E.
Shannon. August 31, 1955. "We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of
artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at
Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed
on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other
feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a
machine can be made to simulate it." And this marks the debut of the
term "artificial intelligence.“

• 50 anniversery of Darmouth workshop

 History, continued
• 1966-1974 a dose of reality
• Problems with computation
• 1969-1979 Knowledge-based systems
• Weak vs. strong methods
• Expert systems:
• Dendral:Inferring molecular structures
• Mycin: diagnosing blood infections
• Prospector: recomending exploratory drilling (Duda).
• Roger Shank: no syntax only semantics
• 1980-1988: AI becomes an industry
• R1: Mcdermott, 1982, order configurations of computer systems
• 1981: Fifth generation
• 1986-present: return to neural networks
• Recent event:
• AI becomes a science: HMMs, planning, belief network
Abridged history of AI
• 1943 McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain
• 1950 Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
• 1956 Dartmouth meeting: "Artificial Intelligence" adopted
• 1952—69 Look, Ma, no hands!
• 1950s Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers
program, Newell & Simon's Logic Theorist,
Gelernter's Geometry Engine
• 1965 Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning
• 1966—73 AI discovers computational complexity
Neural network research almost disappears
• 1969—79 Early development of knowledge-based systems
• 1980-- AI becomes an industry
• 1986-- Neural networks return to popularity
• 1987-- AI becomes a science
• 1995-- The emergence of intelligent agents
State of the art
• Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry
Kasparov in 1997
• Proved a mathematical conjecture (Robbins conjecture) unsolved for
decades
• No hands across America (driving autonomously 98% of the time
from Pittsburgh to San Diego)
• During the 1991 Gulf War, US forces deployed an AI logistics planning
and scheduling program that involved up to 50,000 vehicles, cargo,
and people
• NASA's on-board autonomous planning program controlled the
scheduling of operations for a spacecraft
• Proverb solves crossword puzzles better than most humans
• DARPA grand challenge 2003-2005, Robocup
Agents (chapter 2)
• Agents and environments
• Rationality
• PEAS (Performance measure, Environment,
Actuators, Sensors)
• Environment types
• Agent types
Agents
• An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving
its environment through sensors and acting upon that
environment through actuators
• Human agent: eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors;
hands,
• legs, mouth, and other body parts for actuators
• Robotic agent: cameras and infrared range finders for
sensors;various motors for actuators
Agents and environments

• The agent function maps from percept histories to

actions:
• [f: P* → A]
• The agent program runs on the physical architecture to
produce f
• agent = architecture + program
Vacuum-cleaner world

• Percepts: location and contents, e.g., [A,Dirty]

• Actions: Left, Right, Suck, NoOp
Rational agents
• An agent should strive to "do the right thing",
based on what it can perceive and the actions it
can perform. The right action is the one that will
cause the agent to be most successful
• Performance measure: An objective criterion for
success of an agent's behavior
• E.g., performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner
agent could be amount of dirt cleaned up,
amount of time taken, amount of electricity
consumed, amount of noise generated, etc.
Rational agents
• Rational Agent: For each possible percept
sequence, a rational agent should select an action
that is expected to maximize its performance
measure, given the evidence provided by the
percept sequence and whatever built-in knowledge
the agent has.
•
What’s involved in Intelligence?
Intelligent agents
• Ability to interact with the real world
• to perceive, understand, and act
• e.g., speech recognition and understanding and synthesis
• e.g., image understanding
• e.g., ability to take actions, have an effect

• Knowledge Representation, Reasoning and Planning

• modeling the external world, given input
• solving new problems, planning and making decisions
• ability to deal with unexpected problems, uncertainties

• Learning and Adaptation

• we are continuously learning and adapting
• our internal models are always being “updated”
• e.g. a baby learning to categorize and recognize animals
Implementing agents
• Table look-ups
• Autonomy
• All actions are completely specified
• no need in sensing, no autonomy
• example: Monkey and the banana
• Structure of an agent
• agent = architecture + program
• Agent types
• medical diagnosis
• Satellite image analysis system
• part-picking robot
• Interactive English tutor
• cooking agent
• taxi driver
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Environment
• Fully vs Partially Observable – Complete state of the
environment or due to noisy sensors can be
partially or unobservable
• Single vs Multi-agent – Crossword puzzle, chess /
tic-tac-toe playing agent
• Deterministic vs Stochastic – Next state dependent
on the current state is deterministic, else stochastic
(uncertain)
• Episodic vs Sequential – Agent’s experience (atomic
Episodes) and actions happen at every episodes
and sequential influences future decisions
Environment
• Static vs Dynamic – Environment changes while
agent is deliberating (dynamic) else static
• Discrete vs Continuous – State, percepts, actions
are discrete.. Ex: Game playing vs Autonomous
vehicle
• Known vs Unknown – Outcomes of all actions are
given in Known environment, else unknown

• (Most complicated agent – partially observable,

multi-agent, stochastic, sequential, dynamic,
continuous, unknown)

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 Agent types

• Example: Taxi driver

• Simple reflex
• If car-in-front-is-breaking then initiate-breaking
• Agents that keep track of the world
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and on highway then initiate-
breaking
• needs internal state
Agent types
• goal-based
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and needs to get to hospital then go to
adjacent lane and plan
• search and planning
• utility-based
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and on fwy and needs to get to hospital
alive then search of a way to get to the hospital that will make your
passengers happy.
• Needs utility function that map a state to a real function (am I
happy?)
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