1 – What is AI?

Artificial Intelligence
• Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make computers do things which, at moment
people do better.
• Artificial intelligence can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.
• From the perspective of intelligence, artificial intelligence is making machines "intelligent" --
acting as we would expect people to act.
o The inability to distinguish computer responses from human responses is called the
Turing test.
o Intelligence requires knowledge.
• From a business perspective AI is a set of very powerful tools, and methodologies for using
those tools to solve business problems.
• From a programming perspective, AI includes the study of symbolic programming, problem
solving, and search.
o Typically AI programs focus on symbols rather than numeric processing.
o Problem solving i.e. to achieve a specific goal.
o Search - rarely access a solution directly. Search may include a variety of techniques.
• It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs.

AI Problems
• Much of the early work in the field of AI focused on formal tasks, such as game playing and
theorem proving.
• Game playing and theorem proving share the property that people who do them well are
considered to be displaying Intelligence.
• Initially computers could perform well at those tasks simply by being fast at exploring a large
number of solution paths and then selecting the best one.
• Humans learn mundane (ordinary) tasks since their birth. They learn by perception,
speaking, using language, and training. They learn Formal Tasks and Expert Tasks later.
• Another early foray into AI focused on commonsense reasoning, which includes reasoning
about physical objects and their relationship to each other, as well as reasoning about
actions and their consequences.
• As AI research progressed, techniques for handling large amount of world knowledge were
developed.
• New tasks reasonably attempted such as perception, natural language understanding and
problem solving in specialized domains.
• Some of the task domains of artificial intelligence are presented in table I.
• Earlier, all work of AI was concentrated in the mundane task domain.

Gopi Sanghani, CE Department | 2180703 – Artificial Intelligence 1

 1 – What is AI?
Mundane tasks Formal tasks Expert tasks
Perception Games Engineering
− Computer Vision − Go − Design
− Speech, Voice − Chess (Deep Blue) − Fault Finding
− Ckeckers − Manufacturing
− Monitoring
Natural Language Processing Mathematics Scientific Analysis
− Understanding − Geometry
− Language Generation − Logic
− Language Translation − Integration and
Differentiation
Common Sense Reasoning Theorem Proving Financial Analysis
Planning Medical Diagnosis
Robot Control
Table I Task Domains of AI

• Later, it turned out that the machine requires more knowledge, complex knowledge
representation, and complicated algorithms for handling mundane tasks.
• This is the reason why AI work is more flourishing in the Expert Tasks domain now, as the
expert task domain needs expert knowledge without common sense, which can be easier to
represent and handle.

What is an AI technique?
• Artificial intelligence problems span a very broad spectrum. They appear to have very little
in common except that they are hard.
• AI Research of earlier decades results into the fact that intelligence requires knowledge.
• Knowledge possess following properties:
o It is voluminous.
o It is not well-organized or well-formatted.
o It is constantly changing.
o It differs from data. And it is organized in a way that corresponds to its usage.
• AI technique is a method that exploits knowledge that should be represented in such a way
that:
o Knowledge captures generalization. Situations that share common properties are
grouped together. Without this property, inordinate amount of memory and
modifications will be required.
o It can be understood by people who must provide it. Although bulk of data can
be acquired automatically, in many AI domains most of the knowledge must
ultimately be provided by people in terms they understand.
Gopi Sanghani, CE Department | 2180703 – Artificial Intelligence 2
 1 – What is AI?
o It can easily be modified to correct errors and to reflect changes in the world.
o It can be used in many situations even though it may not be totally accurate or
complete.
o It can be used to reduce its own volume by narrowing range of possibilities.
• There are three important AI techniques:
1. Search –
a. Provides a way of solving problems for which no direct approach is
available.
b. It also provides a framework into which any direct techniques that are
available can be embedded.
2. Use of knowledge –
a. Provides a way of solving complex problems by exploiting the structure of
the objects that are involved.
3. Abstraction –
a. Provides a way of separating important features and variations from
many unimportant ones that would otherwise overwhelm any process.

Classification of AI
1. Weak AI: The study and design of machines that perform intelligent tasks.
o Not concerned with how tasks are performed, mostly concerned with performance
and efficiency, such as solutions that are reasonable for NP-Complete problems. E.g.,
to make a flying machine, use logic and physics, don’t mimic a bird.
2. Strong AI: The study and design of machines that simulate the human mind to perform
intelligent tasks.
o Borrow many ideas from psychology, neuroscience. Goal is to perform tasks the way
a human might do them – which makes sense, since we do have models of human
thought and problem solving.
o Includes psychological ideas in STM, LTM, forgetting, language, genetics, etc.
Assumes that the physical symbol hypothesis holds.
3. Evolutionary AI. The study and design of machines that simulate simple creatures, and
attempt to evolve and have higher level emergent behavior. For example, ants, bees, etc.

Applications of AI
• AI has been dominant in various fields such as −
1. Gaming − AI plays vital role in strategic games such as chess, poker, tic-tac-toe, etc.,
where machine can think of large number of possible positions based on heuristic
knowledge.
2. Natural Language Processing − It is possible to interact with the computer that

Gopi Sanghani, CE Department | 2180703 – Artificial Intelligence 3

 1 – What is AI?
understands natural language spoken by humans.
3. Expert Systems − There are some applications which integrate machine, software, and
special information to impart reasoning and advising. They provide explanation and
advice to the users.
4. Computer Vision Systems − These systems understand, interpret, and comprehend
visual input on the computer.
5. Speech Recognition − Some intelligent systems are capable of hearing and
comprehending the language in terms of sentences and their meanings while a human
talks to it. It can handle different accents, slang words, noise in the background, change
in human’s noise, etc.
6. Handwriting Recognition − The handwriting recognition software reads the text written
on paper by a pen or on screen by a stylus. It can recognize the shapes of the letters and
convert it into editable text.
7. Intelligent Robots − Robots are able to perform the tasks given by a human. They have
sensors to detect physical data from the real world such as light, heat, temperature,
movement, sound, bump, and pressure. They have efficient processors, multiple sensors
and huge memory, to exhibit intelligence. In addition, they are capable of learning from
their mistakes and they can adapt to the new environment.

Gopi Sanghani, CE Department | 2180703 – Artificial Intelligence 4