ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE
Unit 1
 CONTENT
▪ Introduction to AI: What is AI?
▪ Intelligent Agents and environment;
▪ Rationality; the nature of environment; the structure of agents.
▪ Problem solving: Problem-solving agents; Example problems; Searching for solution; Uninformed
search strategies. Informed Search, Exploration,
▪ Constraint Satisfaction
▪ Adversial Search: Informed search strategies; Heuristic functions; On-line search agents and unknown
environment.
▪ Constraint satisfaction problems; Backtracking search for CSPs.
▪ Adversial search: Games; Optimal decisions in games; Alpha-Beta pruning.
 INTRODUCTION TO AI
It is a branch of computer science by which intelligent machines is created which can behave like a
human, think like humans, and able to make decisions."
OR
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 composed of two words Artificial and Intelligence, where Artificial defines
"man-made," and intelligence defines "thinking power", hence AI means "a man-made thinking
power."
Components of Intelligence or What is Intelligence composed of?
1) Learning
2)Reasoning
3)Linguistic Intelligence
4)Perception
5) Problem solving
Learning:
▪ It is the activity of gaining knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing
something. Learning enhances the awareness of the subjects of the study.
▪ The ability of learning is possessed by humans, some animals, and AI-enabled systems.
Reasoning : It is the set of processes that enables us to provide basis for judgement, making decisions, and
prediction.
Problem Solving :
▪ It is the process in which one perceives and tries to arrive at a desired solution from a present situation by
taking some path, which is blocked by known or unknown hurdles.
▪ Problem solving also includes decision making, which is the process of selecting the best suitable alternative
out of multiple alternatives to reach the desired goal are available
Perception:
It is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Perception
presumes sensing. In humans, perception is aided by sensory organs. In the domain of AI, perception
mechanism puts the data acquired by the sensors together in a meaningful manner.
Linguistic Intelligence : It is one’s ability to use, comprehend, speak, and write the verbal and
written language. It is important in interpersonal communication.
Spatial Learning : It is learning through visual stimuli such as images, colors, maps, etc. For
Example, A person can create roadmap in mind before actually following the road.
Stimulus-Response Learning : It is learning to perform a particular behavior when a certain
stimulus is present. For example, a dog raises its ear on hearing do
AI DISCIPLINES
 TYPES OF AI
Artificial Intelligence can be divided in various types, there are mainly two types of main categorization which
are based on capabilities and based on functionally of AI.
 AI TYPE 1: BASED ON
Weak AI or Narrow AI:
CAPABILITY
▪ Narrow AI is a type of AI which is able to perform a dedicated task with intelligence. The most
common and currently available AI is Narrow AI in the world of Artificial Intelligence.
▪ Narrow AI cannot perform beyond its field or limitations, as it is only trained for one specific task.
Hence it is also termed as weak AI. Narrow AI can fail in unpredictable ways if it goes beyond its
limits.
▪ Apple Siri is a good example of Narrow AI, but it operates with a limited pre-defined range of
functions.
▪ Some Examples of Narrow AI are playing chess, purchasing suggestions on e-commerce site,
self-driving cars, speech recognition, and image recognition
General AI:
▪ General AI is a type of intelligence which could perform any intellectual task with efficiency like a
human.
▪ The idea behind the general AI to make such a system which could be smarter and think like a human by
its own.
▪ Currently, there is no such system exist which could come under general AI and can perform any task as
perfect as a human.
▪ The worldwide researchers are now focused on developing machines with General AI.
▪ As systems with general AI are still under research and it will take lots of efforts and time to develop
such systems.
Super AI:
▪ Super AI is a level of Intelligence of Systems at which machines could surpass human intelligence and
can perform any task better than human with cognitive properties. It is an outcome of general AI.
▪ Some key characteristics of strong AI include capability include the ability to think, to reason, solve the
puzzle, make judgments, plan, learn, and communicate by its own.
▪ Super AI is still a hypothetical concept of Artificial Intelligence. Development of such systems in real is
still world changing task.
 AI TYPE 2: BASED ON
FUNCTIONALITY
1.Reactive Machines
▪ Purely reactive machines are the most basic types of Artificial Intelligence.
▪ Such AI systems do not store memories or past experiences for future actions.
▪ These machines only focus on current scenarios and react on it as per possible best action.
▪ IBM's Deep Blue system is an example of reactive machines.
▪ Google's AlphaGo is also an example of reactive machines.

2. Limited Memory
o Limited memory machines can store past experiences or some data for a short period of time.
o These machines can use stored data for a limited time period only.
o Self-driving cars are one of the best examples of Limited Memory systems. These cars can
store recent speed of nearby cars, the distance of other cars, speed limit, and other information
to navigate the road.
3.Theory of Mind
o Theory of Mind AI should understand the human emotions, people, beliefs, and be able
to interact socially like humans.
o This type of AI machines is still not developed, but researchers are making lots of efforts
and improvement for developing such AI machines.

4.Self-Awareness
o Self-awareness AI is the future of Artificial Intelligence. These machines will be super
intelligent, and will have their own consciousness, sentiments, and self-awareness.
o These machines will be smarter than human mind.
o Self-Awareness AI does not exist in reality still and it is a hypothetical concept.
 TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE
1)Linguistic Intelligence
▪ It is the ability to speak, recognize and use the mechanism of grammar, semantic and phonology, It is
an ability to think and express the scenario easily as user understands
▪ Ex: Novelist, Journalist.

2)Musical Intelligence
▪ It is an ability to analyses pitch, rhythm and tone.

▪ This enables us to recognize, create, reproduce and reflect it on the music.

Ex: Musician, singers.

3) Spatial Intelligence
▪ It is an ability to think in virtualization this builds the capacity to visualize the things manipulate the
images, construct 3D images etc.
Ex: Graphics, game developer, architect.
4)Interpersonal Intelligence
▪ It is an ability to interact, understand other efficiency.
▪ The person must have an ability to note and react sensitivity with others depending on mood of another person.
▪ The person with this type of intelligence will have multiple perspectives on one situation Ex: politicians, leader,
social worker.
5)Intrapersonal Intelligence
▪ It is the capacity to understand oneself and once thoughts and feelings
▪ They are self-motivated and they are very much aware of their own feeling
Ex: Spiritual Leader, philosopher.
6) Kinetic Intelligence/bodily intelligence
It is the capacity to manipulate the object by using physical skills this involves timings, perfection
Ex: Surgeons or athletes
7)Logical-mathematical Intelligence
It is an ability to calculate quantify and carry out mathematical operations.
It helps in solving complex problems by a simple technique
It is an ability to understand the relationship in the absence of an object
Ex: Scientist, mathematician etc.
 KNOWLEDGE
▪ Humans are best at understanding, reasoning, and interpreting knowledge. Human knows things,
which is knowledge and as per their knowledge they perform various actions in the real world. But
how machines do all these things comes under knowledge representation and reasoning.
▪ Knowledge representation and reasoning (KR, KRR) is the part of Artificial intelligence which
concerned with AI agents thinking and how thinking contributes to intelligent behavior of agents.
▪ It is responsible for representing information about the real world so that a computer can
understand and can utilize this knowledge to solve the complex real world problems such as
diagnosis a medical condition or communicating with humans in natural language.
▪ It a way which describes to represent knowledge in artificial intelligence. Knowledge representation
is not just storing data into some database, but it also enables an intelligent machine to learn from
that knowledge and experiences so that it can behave intelligently like a human
WHICH IS IN THE FORM OF
KNOWLEDGE?
▪ Object: All the facts about objects in our world domain. E.g., Guitars contains strings, trumpets
are brass instruments.
▪ Events: Events are the actions which occur in our world.
▪ Performance: It describe behavior which involves knowledge about how to do things.
▪ Meta-knowledge: It is knowledge about what we know.
▪ Facts: Facts are the truths about the real world and what we represent.
▪ Knowledge-Base: The central component of the knowledge-based agents is the knowledge
base. It is represented as KB. The Knowledgebase is a group of the Sentences
 TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
1. Declarative Knowledge:
▪ Declarative knowledge is to know about something.
▪ It includes concepts, facts, and objects.
▪ It is also called descriptive knowledge and expressed in declarative sentences.
▪ It is simpler than procedural language
2. Procedural Knowledge
▪ It is also known as imperative knowledge.
▪ Procedural knowledge is a type of knowledge which is responsible for knowing how to do
something.
▪ It can be directly applied to any task.
▪ It includes rules, strategies, procedures, agendas, etc.
▪ Procedural knowledge depends on the task on which it can be applied.
3. Meta-knowledge: Knowledge about the other types of knowledge is called Meta-knowledge.
4. Heuristic knowledge:
▪ Heuristic knowledge is representing knowledge of some experts in a filed or subject. Heuristic
knowledge is rules of thumb based on previous experiences, awareness of approaches, and which are
good to work but not guaranteed.
5. Structural knowledge
▪ Structural knowledge is basic knowledge to problem-solving.
▪ It describes relationships between various concepts such as kind of, part of, and grouping of
something.
▪ It describes the relationship that exists between concepts or objects.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
PROGRAMMING WITH AI AND
PROGRAMMING WITHOUT AI
 APPLICATIONS OF AI
▪ Gaming − AI plays crucial 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.
▪ Natural Language Processing − It is possible to interact with the computer that understands natural language
spoken by humans.
▪ 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.
▪ Vision Systems − These systems understand, interpret, and comprehend visual input on the computer
▪ Speech Recognition − Some intelligent systems are capable of hearing and comprehending the language in terms
of sentences and their meanings while a human talk to it. It can handle different accents, slang words, noise in the
background, change in human’s noise due to cold, etc.
▪ 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.
▪ 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
 AGENT
The AI system consists of the agent and environment; the agents will acts up on the environment.
Agent: An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting
upon that environment through actuators.
An Agent runs in the cycle of perceiving, thinking, and acting.
The agent receives the information from the environment from sensors and store and process the
information in the agent program do the actions by using the effectors.
The agent consists of the following terms
1. Sensors: Sensor is a device which detects the change in the environment and sends the information to
other electronic devices. Sensors can be camera, infrared ray’s devices, keyboard, eye, ear etc.
2. Effectors: Effectors are the devices which affect the environment. Effectors can be legs, wheels,
arms, fingers, wings, fins, and display screen.
3. Actuators: Actuators are the component of machines that converts energy into motion. The actuators
are only responsible for moving and controlling a system. An actuator can be an electric motor, gears,
rails, etc
 INTELLIGENT AGENTS
▪ An intelligent agent (IA) is an entity that makes a decision, that enables artificial intelligence to be put
into action. It can also be described as a software entity that conducts operations in the place of users or
programs after sensing the environment. It uses actuators to initiate action in that environment.
▪ This agent has some level of autonomy that allows it to perform specific, predictable, and repetitive tasks
for users or applications.
▪ It’s also termed as ‘intelligent’ because of its ability to learn during the process of performing tasks.
▪ The two main functions of intelligent agents include perception and action. Perception is done through
sensors while actions are initiated through actuators.
▪ Intelligent agents consist of sub-agents that form a hierarchical structure. Lower-level tasks are
performed by these sub-agents.
▪ The higher-level agents and lower-level agents form a complete system that can solve difficult problems
through intelligent behaviors or responses.
 AGENTS AND ENVIRONMENT
The agent can be
1) Software as agent Software agent can have keystrokes, file contents as sensory input and act on
those inputs and display output on the screen.
2) Robot as an agent A robotic agent can have cameras, infrared range finder, NLP for sensors and
various motors for actuators
3) Human as an agent A human agent has eyes, ears, and other organs which work for sensors and
hand, legs, vocal tract work for actuators.
 EXAMPLE
▪ Consider the vacuum cleaner and list the following properties for it.

▪ Environment: Room A and Room B.

▪ Status of environment: Dirty, Clean Percept: [location and status] i.e. [A, dirty]
▪ Action: left, right, suck no operation.
▪ Agent function: it is mapping between the percept sequence and the action
▪ In the above example the vacuum cleaner will works in two room A and B,it will move from A and B
automatically if current room it clean
▪ Its moving actions are left and right and it will perform suck operation if it detects the dirt.
 RATIONALITY
▪ It is the performance measure of the agent which would defines the criteria of success

▪ Rationality is status of being reasonable, sensible, and having good sense of judgment.

▪ Rationality is concerned with expected actions and results depending upon what the agent has perceived. Performing actions
with the aim of obtaining useful information is an important part of rationality.
Rationality of an agent depends on the following −
• The performance measures, which determine the degree of success.

• Agent’s Percept Sequence till now.

• The agent’s prior knowledge about the environment.

• The actions that the agent can carry out.

▪ A rational agent always performs right action, where the right action means the action that causes the agent to be most
successful in the given percept sequence.
The problem the agent solves is characterized by
1. Performance Measure
2. Environment
3. Actuators
4. Sensors (PEAS).
 EXAMPLE
▪ Consider the vacuum cleaner which cleanse two rooms A and B, it can take rest for some time by going to
sleep mode. It may make the noise while sucking.
▪ So to measure the performance its cleanliness is not only the criteria but we must consider its noise, it’s
time to travel between two rooms, its sleeping time etc will come into picture while deciding its
performance.
Rationality of the agent is measured by following criteria:
The performance measure that defines the criterion of success.
The agent prior knowledge of the environment.
The possible actions that the agent can perform.
The agent’s percept sequence to date
PEAS
Task environment of any agent is decided by PEAS.
Following are the Properties of the agent to be listed while designing the rational agent.
P: Performance of the AI system.
E: Environment in which it acts.
A: Actuators S: Sensors
PEAS for Self driving car
▪ Performance: Safety, time, legal drive, comfort.
▪ Environment: Roads, other cars, pedestrians, road signs.
▪ Actuators: Steering, accelerator, brake, signal, horn.
▪ Sensors: Camera, sonar, GPS, Speedometer, odometer, accelerometer, engine sensors, keyboard.

PEAS for Vacuum cleaner

▪ Performance: cleanness, efficiency: distance traveled to clean,battery life, security.
▪ Environment: room, table, wood floor, carpet, different obstacles.
▪ Actuators: wheels, different brushes, vacuum extractor.
▪ Sensors: camera, dirt detection sensor, cliff sensor, bump sensors, infrared wall sensors.
TYPES OF THE AGENTS
1. Simple reflex agent
2. Model reflex agent
3. Goal based agent
4. Utility based agent
5. Learning agent
 SIMPLE REFLEX AGENT
▪ Simple reflex agents act only on the basis of the current percept.
▪ The agent function is based on the condition-action rule i.e If
(condition) then else A condition-action rule is a rule that maps a state
i.e, condition to an action.
▪ If the condition is true, then the action is taken, else not.
▪ Example: if( temp>40 ) Then Turn on the AC.
▪ This agent function only succeeds when the environment is fully
observable environment.
Limitations:
▪ Very limited intelligence.
▪ No knowledge of non-perceptual parts of state.
▪ Usually too big to generate and store.
▪ If there occurs any change in the environment, then the collection of
rules need to be updated.
 MODEL REFLEX AGENT
▪ These are the agents with memory.
▪ It stores the information about the previous state, the current state and
performs the action accordingly.
▪ It mainly has two parts
1) Model: It represents the knowledge about the world.it stores the complete
aspects of the task that agent is performing.
Example: If it is a self driving car then Model contains complete knowledge
about driving car .
2) Internal representation: It represents the mapping between the current
percept and the previous history of the agent.
Example: while driving, if the driver wants to change the lane, he looks into
the mirror to know the present position of vehicles behind him. While
looking in front, he can only see the vehicles in front, and as he already has
the information on the position of vehicles behind him (from the mirror a
moment ago), he can safely change the lane.
▪ The previous and the current state get updated quickly for deciding the
action.
▪ It works well in partially observable environment
 GOAL BASED AGENT
▪ These are the agents whose aim is to reach the Goal
▪ These agents will take the decisions not only based on the
current percept but also using the knowledge of the GOAL
.i.e. The agent will think whether the present action will
help to reach the destination.
▪ This involves the searching and planning concepts to take
the actions and to reach the GOAL
Example: If the agent is a self-driving car and the goal is the
destination, then the information of the route to the
destination helps the car in deciding when to turn left or right.
So in the above example the agent takes the actions
according to current percept and the GOAL.
 UTILITY BASED AGENT
▪ These agents are used when there is multiple options to
achieve the goal and to determine which option is best.
▪ The utility based agent chooses the best option based on the
users preferences, utility describes the happiness of the agent
along with reaching the goal. i.e. Sometimes achieving the
desired goal is not enough. We may look for a quicker, safer,
cheaper trip to reach a destination.
▪ The utility based agent chooses the action which gives
maximum degree of happiness or satisfaction.
▪ Example: for a self driving car the destination is known, but
there are multiple routes. Choosing an appropriate route also
matters to the overall success of the agent. There are many
factors in deciding the route like the shortest one, the
comfortable one, etc
 LEARNING AGENT
▪ A learning agent in AI is the type of agent which can learn from its past
experiences or it has learning capabilities.
▪ It starts to act with basic knowledge and then able to act and adapt
automatically through learning.
▪ A learning agent has mainly four conceptual components, which are:
1. Learning element: It is responsible for making improvements by
learning from the environment
2. Critic: Learning element takes feedback from critic (Analysis )which
describes how well the agent is doing with respect to a fixed
performance standard.
3. Performance element: It is responsible for selecting external action
4. Problem Generator: This component is responsible for suggesting
actions that will lead to new and informative experiences.
▪ Example: Human is the best example for learning agent who can learn
the things from environment and can analyze whether it is right or
wrong and act on the environment when it is required.
 TYPES OF ENVIRONMENT
1. Fully Observable vs. Partially Observable
▪ When an agent sensor is capable to sense or access the complete state of an agent at each point in
time, it is said to be a fully observable environment.
▪ If an agent is not capable to sense the complete state of the agent at each point of time is called
as it is partially observable
▪ Maintaining a fully observable environment is easy as there is no need to keep track of the
history of the surrounding.
▪ Example: Chess – the board is fully observable, a player can see his part of moves and the
opponent part of moves as well.
▪ Poker (cards) – the environment is partially observable because the player can see the moves in
his hand but cannot able to see the cards in the other player’s hands
2. Deterministic vs. Stochastic
▪ The agent’s current state completely determines the next state of the agent, then the environment is said to be
deterministic environment. It has uniqueness in the agent
▪ The agent’s current state cannot completely determine next state of the agent, and then it is called as
stochastic environment. It has randomness in its moves.
▪ Example: Traffic signal: If the person in the traffic signal is the agent then base on his present color of signal
he can determines next state of the signal so it is deterministic environment.
▪ Self driving car: For self driving car it cannot determines its next action based on present action it may varies
frequently so it is stochastic environment
3. Single-agent vs. Multi-agent
▪ An environment consisting of only one agent is said to be a single-agent environment.
▪ An environment involving more than one agent is a multi-agent environment.
▪ Example: The game of football is multi-agent as it involves 11 players in each team.
▪ A person left alone in a maze is an example of the single-agent system.
4. Dynamic vs. Static
▪ An environment that keeps constantly changing itself when the agent is up with some action is said to
be dynamic.
▪ An environment with no change in it as the agent is acting is called a static environment.
▪ Example: Vacuum cleaner in the room whose environment will not change as the it cleans the room
every time so it is static environment
▪ Chess game the coins will move each and every minutes so it is dynamic environment
5. Discrete vs. Continuous
▪ If an environment consists of a finite number of actions that can be deliberated in the environment to
obtain the output, it is said to be a discrete environment.
▪ The environment in which the actions performed cannot be numbered ie. is not discrete, is said to be
continuous.
▪ Example: Self-driving cars are an example of continuous environments as their actions is driving,
parking, etc. which cannot be numbered.
▪ The game of chess is discrete environment as it has only a finite number of moves. The number of
moves might vary with every game, but still, it’s finite.
6. Episodic vs. sequential:
▪ If in an environment an action on current situation will not affects the actions on present and previous sates
then it is called as episodic environment.
▪ Here set of actions will perform based on current percept and it will not affect the next actions.
▪ Example:- Chat bot: It is the best example of episodic environment because it will answers the particular
question we asked and the next answer will not be linked to the previous questions.
▪ Chess: This is an example of sequential because every move in chess will depends on its previous moves and
the every current move will affect next move.
7. Known vs Unknown
▪ Known and unknown are not actually a feature of an environment, but it is an agent's state of knowledge to
perform an action.
▪ In a known environment, the results for all actions are known to the agent. While in unknown environment,
agent needs to learn how it works in order to perform an action.
▪ It is quite possible that a known environment to be partially observable and an Unknown environment to be
fully observable.
8. Accessible vs Inaccessible
▪ If an agent can obtain complete and accurate information about the state's environment, then such
an environment is called an Accessible environment else it is called inaccessible.
▪ An empty room whose state can be defined by its temperature is an example of an accessible
environment.
▪ Information about an event on earth is an example of Inaccessible environment.
 POPULAR SEARCH
ALGORITHMS
Problem-solving agents:
In Artificial Intelligence, Search techniques are universal problem-solving methods. Rational agents or Problem-solving agents
in AI mostly used these search strategies or algorithms to solve a specific problem and provide the best result. Problem-solving
agents are the goal-based agents and use atomic representation.
Search Algorithm Terminologies:
1. Search: Searching is a step-by-step procedure to solve a search-problem in a given search space.
A search problem can have three main factors:
a) Search Space: Search space represents a set of possible solutions, which a system is having.
b) Start State: It is a state from where agent begins the search.
c) Goal test: It is a function which observe the current state and returns whether the goal state is achieved or not.
2. Search tree: A tree representation of search problem is called Search tree. The root of the search tree is the root node, which
is corresponding to the initial state.
3. Actions: It gives the description of all the available actions to the agent.
4. Transition model: A description of what each action do, is represented as a transition model.
5. Path Cost: It is a function, which assigns a numeric cost to each path.
6. Solution: It is an action sequence, which leads from the start node to the goal node.
7. Optimal Solution: If a solution has the lowest cost among all solutions.
 TYPES OF SEARCH
ALGORITHMS
Based on the search problems the search algorithms are classified into
1. Uninformed (Blind search) search
2. Informed search (Heuristic search) algorithms.
Uninformed/Blind Search:
The uninformed search does not contain any domain knowledge such as closeness, the location of the
goal.
It operates in a brute-force way as it only includes information to traverse the tree and to identify leaf
and goal nodes.
Uninformed search applies a way in which search tree is searched without any information about the
search space like initial state operators and test for the goal, so it is also called blind search.
It examines each node of the tree until it achieves the goal node.
Informed Search
▪ Informed search algorithms use domain knowledge. In an informed search, problem information is
available which guides the search.
▪ An informed search strategy finds a solution more efficiently than an uninformed search strategy.
Informed search is also called a Heuristic search.
▪ A heuristic is a way, which might not always be guaranteed for best solutions but guaranteed to
find a good solution in reasonable time.
▪ Informed search can solve much complex problem, which could not be solved in another way
AO* ALGORITHM
▪When a problem can be divided into a set of sub problems, where each sub problem can be solved
separately and a combination of these will be a solution, AND-OR graphs or AND - OR trees are
used for representing the solution.
▪The decomposition of the problem or problem reduction generates AND arcs. One AND arc may
point to any number of successor nodes. All these must be solved so that the arc will rise to many
arcs, indicating several possible solutions. Hence the graph is known as AND - OR instead of AND.
Figure shows an AND - OR graph.
An algorithm to find a solution in an AND - OR graph must handle AND area appropriately. A* algorithm
cannot search AND - OR graphs efficiently. This can be understand from the give figure.
Traverse the graph starting at the initial node and following the current best path, and accumulate the set of nodes
that are on the path and have not yet been expanded.
Pick one of these unexpanded nodes and expand it. Add its successors to the graph and computer f ' (cost of the
remaining distance) for each of them.
Change the f ' estimate of the newly expanded node to reflect the new information produced by its successors.
Propagate this change backward through the graph. Decide which of the current best path.
The propagation of revised cost estimation backward is in the tree is not necessary in A* algorithm. This is
because in AO* algorithm expanded nodes are re-examined so that the current best path can be selected. The
working of AO* algorithm is illustrated in figure as follows:
 AO* ALGORITHM:
1. Initialize the graph to start node
2. Traverse the graph following the current path accumulating nodes that have not yet been expanded or solved
3. Pick any of these nodes and expand it and if it has no successors call this value FUTILITY otherwise calculate only f'
for each of the successors.
4. If f' is 0 then mark the node as SOLVED
5. Change the value of f' for the newly created node to reflect its successors by back propagation.
6. Wherever possible use the most promising routes and if a node is marked as SOLVED then mark the parent node
as SOLVED.
7. If starting node is SOLVED or value greater than FUTILITY, stop, else repeat from 2.
HEURISTIC FUNCTIONS
▪ As we have already seen that an informed search make use of heuristic functions in order to reach
the goal node in a more prominent way. Therefore, there are several pathways in a search tree to
reach the goal node from the current node. The selection of a good heuristic function matters
certainly. A good heuristic function is determined by its efficiency. More is the information about
the problem, more is the processing time.
▪ Some toy problems, such as 8-puzzle, 8-queen, tic-tac-toe, etc., can be solved more efficiently with
the help of a heuristic function.
▪ Consider the following 8-puzzle problem where we have a start state and a goal state. Our task is to
slide the tiles of the current/start state and place it in an order followed in the goal state. There can
be four moves either left, right, up, or down. There can be several ways to convert the
current/start state to the goal state, but, we can use a heuristic function h(n) to solve the problem
more efficiently.
▪ A heuristic function for the 8-puzzle problem is defined below:
▪ h(n)=Number of tiles out of position.
▪ So, there is total of three tiles out of position i.e., 6,5 and 4. Do not count the empty tile present in the goal
state). i.e. h(n)=3. Now, we require to minimize the value of h(n) =0.
▪ We can construct a state-space tree to minimize the h(n) value to 0, as shown below:
It is seen from the above state space tree that the goal state is minimized from h(n)=3 to h(n)=0.
However, we can create and use several heuristic functions as per the reqirement. It is also clear from the
above example that a heuristic function h(n) can be defined as the information required to solve a given
problem more efficiently. The information can be related to the nature of the state, cost of
transforming from one state to another, goal node characterstics, etc., which is expressed as a
heuristic function.
Properties of a Heuristic search Algorithm
▪ Use of heuristic function in a heuristic search algorithm leads to following properties of a heuristic
search algorithm:
• Admissible Condition: An algorithm is said to be admissible, if it returns an optimal solution.
• Completeness: An algorithm is said to be complete, if it terminates with a solution (if the solution
exists).
• Dominance Property: If there are two admissible heuristic
algorithms A1 and A2 having h1 and h2 heuristic functions, then A1 is said to dominate A2 if h1 is
better than h2 for all the values of node n.
• Optimality Property: If an algorithm is complete, admissible, and dominating other algorithms,
it will be the best one and will definitely give an optimal solution.
 ADVERSARIAL SEARCH
▪ Adversarial search is a search, where we examine the problem which arises when we try to plan
ahead of the world and other agents are planning against us.
▪ we have studied the search strategies which are only associated with a single agent that aims to find the
solution which often expressed in the form of a sequence of actions.
▪ But, there might be some situations where more than one agent is searching for the solution in the same
search space, and this situation usually occurs in game playing.
▪ The environment with more than one agent is termed as multi-agent environment, in which each agent is
an opponent of other agent and playing against each other. Each agent needs to consider the action of
other agent and effect of that action on their performance.
▪ So, Searches in which two or more players with conflicting goals are trying to explore the same search
space for the solution, are called adversarial searches, often known as Games.
▪ Games are modeled as a Search problem and heuristic evaluation function, and these are the two main
factors which help to model and solve games in AI.
 TYPES OF GAMES IN AI:
• Perfect information: A game with the perfect information is that in which agents can look into the
complete board. Agents have all the information about the game, and they can see each other moves
also. Examples are Chess, Checkers, Go, etc.
• Imperfect information: If in a game agents do not have all information about the game and not aware
with what's going on, such type of games are called the game with imperfect information, such as
tic-tac-toe, Battleship, blind, Bridge, etc.
• Deterministic games: Deterministic games are those games which follow a strict pattern and set of
rules for the games, and there is no randomness associated with them. Examples are chess, Checkers,
Go, tic-tac-toe, etc.
• Non-deterministic games: Non-deterministic are those games which have various unpredictable
events and has a factor of chance or luck. This factor of chance or luck is introduced by either dice or
cards. These are random, and each action response is not fixed. Such games are also called as
stochastic games.
Example: Backgammon, Monopoly, Poker, etc.
 ZERO SUM GAME
▪ Zero-sum games are adversarial search which involves pure competition.
▪ In Zero-sum game each agent's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of utility of another agent.
▪ One player of the game try to maximize one single value, while other player tries to minimize it.
▪ Each move by one player in the game is called as ply.
▪ Chess and tic-tac-toe are examples of a Zero-sum game.
Zero-sum game: Embedded thinking
▪ The Zero-sum game involved embedded thinking in which one agent or player is trying to figure out:
▪ What to do.
▪ How to decide the move
▪ Needs to think about his opponent as well
▪ The opponent also thinks what to do
▪ Each of the players is trying to find out the response of his opponent to their actions. This requires embedded thinking or
backward reasoning to solve the game problems in AI.
 FORMALIZATION OF THE
▪ PROBLEM:
A game can be defined as a type of search in AI which can be formalized of the following
elements:
• Initial state: It specifies how the game is set up at the start.
• Player(s): It specifies which player has moved in the state space.
• Action(s): It returns the set of legal moves in state space.
• Result(s, a): It is the transition model, which specifies the result of moves in the state space.
• Terminal-Test(s): Terminal test is true if the game is over, else it is false at any case. The state
where the game ends is called terminal states.
• Utility(s, p): A utility function gives the final numeric value for a game that ends in terminal states s
for player p. It is also called payoff function. For Chess, the outcomes are a win, loss, or draw and its
payoff values and for tic-tac-toe, utility values are +1, -1, and 0.
 GAME TREE:
▪ A game tree is a tree where nodes of the tree
are the game states and Edges of the tree are
the moves by players. Game tree involves
initial state, actions function, and result
Function.
Example: Tic-Tac-Toe game tree:
▪ The following figure is showing part of the
game-tree for tic-tac-toe game. Following are
some key points of the game:
• There are two players MAX and MIN.
• Players have an alternate turn and start with
MAX.
• MAX maximizes the result of the game tree
• MIN minimizes the result.
EXAMPLE
• From the initial state, MAX has 9 possible moves as he starts first. MAX place x and MIN place o,
and both player plays alternatively until we reach a leaf node where one player has three in a row or
all squares are filled.
• Both players will compute each node, minimax, the minimax value which is the best achievable
utility against an optimal adversary.
• Suppose both the players are well aware of the tic-tac-toe and playing the best play. Each player is
doing his best to prevent another one from winning. MIN is acting against Max in the game.
• So in the game tree, we have a layer of Max, a layer of MIN, and each layer is called as Ply. Max
place x, then MIN puts o to prevent Max from winning, and this game continues until the terminal
node.
• In this either MIN wins, MAX wins, or it's a draw. This game-tree is the whole search space of
possibilities that MIN and MAX are playing tic-tac-toe and taking turns alternately.
▪ Hence adversarial Search for the minimax procedure works as follows:
• It aims to find the optimal strategy for MAX to win the game.
• It follows the approach of Depth-first search.
• In the game tree, optimal leaf node could appear at any depth of the tree.
• Propagate the minimax values up to the tree until the terminal node discovered.
▪ In a given game tree, the optimal strategy can be determined from the minimax value of each node,
which can be written as MINIMAX(n). MAX prefer to move to a state of maximum value and MIN
prefer to move to a state of minimum value then:
TYPES OF ALGORITHM IN
ADVERSARIAL SEARCH
▪ Here the results depends on the players which will decide the result of the game
Types of adversarial search algorithm
1. Minmax Algorithm
2. Alpha-Beta Algorithm
 MINMAX ALGORITHM
• Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm which is used in decision-making and game
theory. It provides an optimal move for the player assuming that opponent is also playing optimally.
• Mini-Max algorithm uses recursion to search through the game-tree.

• Min-Max algorithm is mostly used for game playing in AI. Such as Chess, Checkers, tic-tac-toe, go, and
various tow-players game. This Algorithm computes the minimax decision for the current state.
• In this algorithm two players play the game, one is called MAX and other is called MIN.

• Both the players fight it as the opponent player gets the minimum benefit while they get the maximum
benefit.
• Both Players of the game are opponent of each other, where MAX will select the maximized value and
MIN will select the minimized value.
• The minimax algorithm performs a depth-first search algorithm for the exploration of the complete game
tree.
• The minimax algorithm proceeds all the way down to the terminal node of the tree, then backtrack the tree
as the recursion.
 WORKING OF MIN-MAX
ALGORITHM:
Step-1: In the first step, the algorithm generates the entire game-tree and apply the utility function to
get the utility values for the terminal states. In the below tree diagram, let's take A is the initial state of
the tree. Suppose maximizer takes first turn which has worst-case initial value =- infinity, and
minimizer will take next turn which has worst-case initial value = +infinity
Step 2: Now, first we find the utilities value for the Maximizer, its initial value is -∞, so we will
compare each value in terminal state with initial value of Maximizer and determines the higher nodes
values. It will find the maximum among the all.
• For node D max(-1,- -∞) => max(-1,4)= 4
• For Node E max(2, -∞) => max(2, 6)= 6
• For Node F max(-3, -∞) => max(-3,-5) = -3
• For node G max(0, -∞) = max(0, 7) = 7
Step 3: In the next step, it's a turn for minimizer, so it will compare all nodes value with +∞, and will
find the 3rd layer node values.
• For node B= min(4,6) = 4
• For node C= min (-3, 7) = -3
▪ Step 4: Now it's a turn for Maximizer, and it will again choose the maximum of all nodes value and
find the maximum value for the root node. In this game tree, there are only 4 layers, hence we reach
immediately to the root node, but in real games, there will be more than 4 layers.
• For node A max(4, -3)= 4
PROPERTIES OF MINI-MAX
ALGORITHM:
Complete- Min-Max algorithm is Complete. It will definitely find a solution (if exist), in the finite
•
search tree.
• Optimal- Min-Max algorithm is optimal if both opponents are playing optimally.
• Time complexity- As it performs DFS for the game-tree, so the time complexity of Min-Max
algorithm is O(bm), where b is branching factor of the game-tree, and m is the maximum depth of the
tree.
• Space Complexity- Space complexity of Mini-max algorithm is also similar to DFS which
is O(bm).
Disadvantage of minimax algorithm is that it gets really slow for complex games such as Chess, go,
etc. This type of games has a huge branching factor, and the player has lots of choices to decide. This
limitation of the minimax algorithm can be improved from alpha-beta pruning
 ALPHA-BETA ALGORITHM
▪Alpha–beta pruning is a search algorithm that seeks to decrease the number of nodes that are evaluated by
the minimax algorithm in its search tree. It is an adversarial search algorithm used commonly for machine
playing of two-player games (Tic-tac-toe, Chess, Go, etc.). It stops completely evaluating a move when at least
one possibility has been found that proves the move to be worse than a previously examined move. Such
moves need not be evaluated further. When applied to a standard minimax tree, it returns the same move as
minimax would, but prunes away branches that cannot possibly influence the final decision.
▪Eliminating a branch without consideration is called pruning
Procedure for pruning or cut off:-
● Traverse the search tree in depth-first order

● For each MAX node n, α(n)=maximum child value found so far

● Starts with – ∞

● Increases if a child returns a value greater than the current α(n)

● For each MIN node n, β(n)=minimum child value found so far

● Starts with + ∞

● Decreases if a child returns a value less than the current β(n)

● MAX cutoff rule: At a MAX node n, cut off search if α(n)>=β(n)

● MIN cutoff rule: At a MIN node n, cut off search if β(n)<=α(n)

● Carry α and β values down in search

BACKTRACKING
▪ Backtracking can be defined as a general algorithmic technique that considers searching every
possible combination in order to solve a computational problem.
▪ Backtracking is an algorithmic technique for solving problems recursively by trying to build a
solution incrementally, one piece at a time, removing those solutions that fail to satisfy the
constraints of the problem at any point of time (by time, here, is referred to the time elapsed till
reaching any level of the search tree).
▪ When we have multiple choices, then we make the decisions from the available choices. In the
following cases, we need to use the backtracking algorithm:
• A piece of sufficient information is not available to make the best choice, so we use the
backtracking strategy to try out all the possible solutions.
• Each decision leads to a new set of choices. Then again, we backtrack to make new decisions. In
this case, we need to use the backtracking strategy.
ONLINE SEARCH AGENTS AND
UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENTS
▪ Online Search Agents
Agent interleaves computation and action
Good for dynamic or semi dynamic domains
When there is a penalty for sitting around and computing
Necessary if the environment is unknown
▪ Problem stipulates
▪ List of actions in state s
▪ Step-cost function based on
1. previous state
2. Action
3. resulting state (only known afterwards)