Intorduction to

Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Satya Prakash Sahu

Department of Information Technology
Outline

Textbooks
● S. Russell and P. Norvig, "Artificial Intelligence: A
Modern Approach" (Second Edition), Prentice Hall,
1995
● Nils Nilsson, "Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis",
Morgan Kauffmann, 1998
● Elaine Rich and Kevin Knight, "Artificial Intelligence"
(Second Edition), TMH, 1991
Overview

What is Artificial Intelligence?

A brief History
Intelligent agents
State of the art
What is Artificial
Intelligence?
Thought processes vs behavior
Human-like vs rational-like
How to simulate humans intellect and
behavior by a machine.
● Mathematical problems (puzzles, games,
theorems)
● Common-sense reasoning
● Expert knowledge: lawyers, medicine,
diagnosis
● Social behavior
 What is AI?
Views of AI fall into four categories:

Thinking humanly Thinking rationally

Acting humanly Acting rationally

The textbook advocates "acting rationally"

List of AI-topics
 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

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 automation of activities that we
associate with human thinking, activities
such as decision-making, problem solving,
learning… (Bellman)
Formal Definitions:
Branch of Computer Science concerned with study and
creation of computer system that exhibits some form
intelligence:

● System that can learn new concepts and tasks.

● That can reason and draw useful conclusions about the world
around us.
● That can understand the natural languages or perceive and
comprehend the visual scene.
● And the system that can perform other type of facts that require
human type of intelligence.

According to the father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy, it is

“The science and
engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs”.
Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer, a
computer-controlled robot, or a software think intelligently, in
the similar manner the intelligent humans think.

AI is accomplished by studying how human brain thinks and how

humans learn, decide, and work while trying to solve a problem,
and then using the outcomes of this study as a basis of developing
intelligent software and systems.

It has gained prominence recently due, in part, to big data, or the

increase in speed, size and variety of data businesses are now
collecting.

AI can perform tasks such as identifying patterns in the data more

efficiently than humans, enabling businesses to gain more insight
out of their data.

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.
AI Vocabulary:
Intelligence relates to tasks involving higher mental
processes, e.g. creativity, solving problems, pattern
recognition, classification, learning, induction, deduction,
building analogies ,optimization, language processing,
knowledge and many more. Intelligence is the computational
part of the ability to achieve goals.

● It is simply a integrated sum of facts, which gives us the ability to

acquire, understand and apply knowledge, or ability to exercise &
reason the thoughts which embodies all kind of knowledge.

Intelligent behavior is depicted by perceiving one’s

environment, acting in complex environments, learning and
understanding from experience, reasoning to solve
problems and discover hidden knowledge, applying
knowledge successfully in new situations, thinking abstractly,
using analogies, communicating with others and more.
Knowledge: Collection or database of different rule & facts
which has proven truth in all respect.

Science based goals of AI pertain to developing concepts,

mechanisms and understanding biological intelligent behavior.
The emphasis is on understanding intelligent behavior.

Engineering based goals of AI relate to developing

concepts, theory and practice of building intelligent machines.
The emphasis is on system building.

Applications of AI refers to problem solving, search and

control strategies, speech recognition, natural language
understanding, computer vision, expert systems, etc.

Application areas or Task Domains are further categorized

in Mundane Tasks, Formal Tasks and Expert Tasks:
Mundane tasks
• Perception (Vision, Speech, Touch, Smell, etc.)
• Natural Language Processing (understanding, generation
and translation)
• Common sense reasoning
• Robot control

Formal Tasks
• Games(Chess, Backgammon, Checkers, etc.)
• Mathematics(Geometry, Logic, Integral calculus, Theorem
Proving properties of programs)

Expert Tasks:
• Scientific Analysis
• Chemical Synthesis
• Medical Diagnosis
• Financial Analysis
• Engineering (Designing, Fault Finding and Manufacturing
Planning)
 Recall
Belief: It is defined as essentially any meaningful and coherent expression that can be
represented. Thus, a belief can be true or false.

Hypothesis: It is defined as justified belief that is not known to be true. Thus, a

hypothesis is a belief that is backed up with some supporting evidence, but it may still be
false. In other words, it is a preliminary assumption or tentative explanation that accounts
for a set of facts, taken to be true for the purpose of investigation and testing.

Knowledge: a true justified belief and can be defined as the body of facts and principles
accumulated by humankind or the act, fact, or state of knowing.

Data: Data in computer terminology mean raw facts and figures. For example 'Rocky',
197701, 'A' are data. Data are processed to form information.

Information: Data arranged in useful and meaningful form is known as information. For
example 'Rocky, whose roll number is 197701, has got grade A' is an information as it is
conveying some meaning.
 DIKW hierarchy:

(Source: “Lokers, Rob, et al. "Analysis of Big Data technologies for use in agro-environmental science. " Environmental Modelling & Software 84 (2016): 494-504.”)
 The Turing Test
(Can Machine think? A. M. Turing, 1950)

Requires:
● Natural language
● Knowledge representation
● Automated reasoning
● Machine learning
● (vision, robotics) for full test
Acting/Thinking
Humanly/Rationally
Turing test (1950)
Requires:
● Natural language
● Knowledge representation
● automated reasoning
● machine learning
● (vision, robotics.) for full test
Methods for 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 (1980-1990)
Tweety
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
Cambridge parking example
Smoked fish example
 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. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use
language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for
humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in
one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it
together for a summer.”

And this marks the debut of the term "artificial intelligence.”

Brief History of AI- continued
McCulloch and Pitts (1943)
● Neural networks that learn
Minsky and Edmonds (1951)
● Built a neural net computer
Darmouth conference (1956):
● McCarthy, Minsky, Newell, Simon met,
● Logic theorist (LT)- Of Newell and Simon 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)
 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
 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) on the PANS (Portable
Advanced Navigation Support) hardware platform in 1990
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…

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
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
• Graduate student
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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 fwy then
initiate-breaking
● needs internal state
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?)
Problems in AI
Intelligence does not imply perfect understanding; every intelligent
being has limited perception, memory and computation.
Many points on the spectrum of intelligence versus cost are viable,
from insects to humans. AI seeks to understand the computations
required from intelligent behaviour and to produce computer systems
that exhibit intelligence.
Aspects of intelligence studied by AI include perception,
communicational using human languages, reasoning, planning,
learning and memory.
The following questions are to be considered before we can step
forward:
● 1. What are the underlying assumptions about intelligence?
● 2. What kinds of techniques will be useful for solving AI problems?
● 3. At what level human intelligence can be modelled?
● 4. When will it be realized when an intelligent program has been built?
Branches of AI:
A list of branches of AI is given below. However some branches
are surely missing, because no one has identified them yet.
Some of these may be regarded as concepts or topics rather
than full branches.
● Logical AI
● Search
● Pattern Recognition
● Representation
● Inference
● Common sense knowledge & reasoning
● Learning from experience
● Planning
● Epistemology (real time problems)
● Ontology (study of kinds of things and their properties)
● Heuristics
● Genetic Programming
 AI Techniques
❑Intelligence requires Knowledge
❑Knowledge possesses fewer desirable properties such as:
◦ Voluminous
◦ Hard to characterize accurately
◦ Constantly changing
◦ Differs from data that can be used
❑AI technique is a method that exploits knowledge that should be
represented in such a way that:
◦ Knowledge captures generalization
◦ It can be understood by people who must provide it
◦ It can be easily modified to correct errors.
◦ It can be used in variety of situations
Types of AI Techniques
Search: Provides a way of solving the problems for
which no more direct approach is available as well
as framework into which any direct techniques that
are available can be embedded.
Use of Knowledge: Provides a way of solving
complex problems by exploiting the structures of the
objects that are involved.
Abstraction: Provides a way of separating
important features and variations from the many
unimportant ones that would otherwise overwhelm
any process.
Summary
What is Artificial Intelligence?
● modeling humans thinking, acting, should think,
should act.
History of AI
Intelligent agents
● We want to build agents that act rationally

Real-World Applications of AI
● AI is alive and well in various “every day” applications
• many products, systems, have AI components
Assigned Reading
● Chapters 1 and 2 in the text R&N