COMPSCI 204 – Intro to Artificial Intelligence

Definition and History of AI

Acknowledge: Some slides were adapted from those by Dan Klein and
Pieter Abbeel for CS188 Intro to AI at UC Berkeley (ai.berkeley.edu).
Introduction
• First question – what is the artificial intelligence (AI)?

► Definition?
► Can machines think?
► And if so, how?
► And if not, why not?
Introduction
• Before we try answering these questions, let’s have
a look at AI’s applications first -

► Open the link/ppt for applications

What is AI?
• Turing test: ultimate test for acting humanly
► Computer and human both interrogated by judge
► Computer passes test if judge can’t tell the difference
What is AI?
• Alan Turing (1912-1954), how much do you know
about him?
What is AI?
• John McCarthy, the father of AI
• who coined the phrase AI in 1956
What is AI?
• John McCarthy, the father of AI
• In 1956, the conference “Dartmouth Summer Research
Project on Artificial Intelligence.” was organized by him,
Marvin Minsky, Nat Rochester and Claude Shannon
• He named his field of study as “artificial intelligence” (AI)
• He has often said that if he had to baptize him again, he
would have preferred to call it “computational
intelligence”.
• Also thought about “machine intelligence”
• He proposed the study of the development of a new
programming language to equip the machines with
intelligence, LISP
• Fortran, a high-level language not very suitable for AI
What is AI?
• According to John McCarthy:

Q. What is artificial intelligence?

A. 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.
What is AI?
• According to John McCarthy:

Q. Yes, but what is intelligence?

A. 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.
What is AI?
• According to John McCarthy:

Q. Does AI aim at human-level intelligence?

A. Yes. The ultimate effort is to make computer programs that
can solve problems and achieve goals in the world as well
as humans. However, many people involved in particular
research areas are much less ambitious.

More questions from:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html
What is AI? – other definitions

• AI is a collection of hard problems which can be solved by

humans and other living things, but for which we don’t have
good algorithms for solving.
– e. g., understanding spoken natural language, medical
diagnosis, circuit design, learning, self-adaptation,
reasoning, chess playing, proving math theories, etc.

• Definition from R & N book, AI is a program or a machne

that
–… …
What is AI?
The science of making machines that:

Think like Think

people rationally

Act
Act like rationally
people
Rational Decisions
• We’ll use the term rational in a very specific,
technical way:
► Rationality only concerns what decisions are made (not
the thought process behind them)
► Rational: achieving pre-defined goals, maximally
• Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of outcomes

► Being rational means maximizing your

expected utility
What is the utility?
• Goals are expressed in terms of the utility of
outcomes. The meaning of ‘utility’ …
► from dictionary:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/utility
► from economics – about ‘money’
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/utility
What About the Brain?

• Brains (human minds) are very good at making

rational decisions, but not perfect
• Brains aren’t as modular as software, so hard to
reverse engineer!
• “Brains are to intelligence as wings are to flight”

• Lessons learned from the brain: memory and

simulation are key to decision making
What is AI? - Easy and Hard
• It’s been easier to mechanize many of the high-
level cognitive tasks we usually associate with
“intelligence” in people
– e. g., recognizing objects, playing chess, some
aspect of medical diagnosis, etc.

• Why some complex problems (e.g., solving

differential equations, database operations) are not
yet subjects of AI?
• https://www.quantamagazine.org/symbolic-mathematics-finally-
yields-to-neural-networks-20200520/
What is AI? - Easy and Hard

• It’s been very hard to mechanize tasks that

animals can do easily
–walking around without running into things
–catching prey and avoiding predators
–interpreting complex sensory information
(visual, aural, …)
–modeling the internal states of other animals
from their behavior
–working as a team (ants, bees)
Sciences related to AI
– computer science and engineering (hardware and
software)
– mathematics (logic, algorithms, optimization)
– cognitive science and psychology (modeling high
level human/animal thinking)
– neural science (model low level human/animal
brain activity)

– philosophy (rules of reasoning)

– linguistics
 History of AI
• The birth of AI (1943 – 1956)
– Pitts and McCulloch (1943): simplified
mathematical model of neurons (resting/firing
states) can realize all propositional logic
primitives

– Allan Turing: Turing machine and Turing test

(1950)
– Claude Shannon: information theory; possibility
of chess playing computers
–Tracing back to Boole, Aristotle, Euclid
(logics, syllogisms)
History of AI
• Early enthusiasm (1952 – 1969)

– 1956 Dartmouth conference

John McCarthy (Lisp);
Marvin Minsky (first neural network machine);
Alan Newell and Herbert Simon (GPS);

– Emphasize on intelligent general problem solving

Lisp (AI programming language);
Resolution by John Robinson (basis for automatic
theorem proving);
heuristic search (A*, game tree search)
History of AI
• Knowledge-based systems (1969 – 1999)
– DENDRAL: the first knowledge intensive (expert)
system (determining 3D structures of complex
chemical compounds)

– MYCIN: first rule-based expert system (containing

450 rules for diagnosing blood infectious diseases)

– PROSPECTOR: first knowledge-based system that

made significant profit (geological ES for mineral
deposits)
History of AI
• The timeline of AI’s birth and its development
AI Questions to think about

• Can we make something that is as intelligent as a

human?
• Can we make something that is as intelligent as a
bee?
• Can we make something that is evolutionary, self
improving, autonomous, and flexible?
• Can we save this bank $50M/year by automatic
fraud detection?
• …
What Can AI Do?
Quiz: Which of the following can be done at present?
1. Play a decent game of Jeopardy?
2. Win against any human at chess?
3. Win against the best humans at Go?
4. Play a decent game of tennis?
5. Grab a particular cup and put it on a shelf?
6. Unload any dishwasher in any home?
7. Drive safely along the highway?
8. Drive safely along Telegraph Avenue?
9. Buy a week's worth of groceries on the web?
10. Buy a week's worth of groceries at Berkeley Bowl?
11. Discover and prove a new mathematical theorem?
12. Perform a surgical operation?
13. Unload a know dishwasher in collaboration with a person?
14. Translate spoken Chinese into spoken English in real time?
15. Write an intentionally funny story?