CSEN2031 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MODULE 1

INTRODUCTION TO AI, INTELLIGENT AGENTS

CONTENTS
1 What is AI?
2 The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
3 Agents and Environments
4 Good Behaviour:The concept of Rationality
5 The Nature of Environments
6 The Structure of Agents
7 Empiricist Approaches in Artificial Intelligence
8 Applications of Artificial Intellience
9 Limitations of Artificial Intelligence

1 What is AI?
Artificial intelligence is defined as methods and techniques used for implementing human
intelligence in computer.

Definitions of Artificial Intelligence organized into 4 categories.

The definitions on top are concerned with thought processes and reasoning.
The ones on the bottom address behavior.
The definitions on the left measure success in terms of fidelity to human performance.
The ones on the right measure against an ideal performance measure, called rationality.
A system is rational if it does the ―right thing,‖ given what it knows.

Thinking humanly: The cognitive modeling approach

If we are going to say that a given program thinks like a human, we must have some way of
determining how humans think. We need to get inside the actual workings of human minds.

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There are three ways to do this:

1) through introspection—trying to catch our own thoughts as they go by;
2) through psychological experiments—observing a person in action;
3) through brain imaging—observing the brain in action.

Once we have a sufficiently precise theory of the mind, it becomes possible to express the
theory as a computer program. If the program’s input–output behavior matches
corresponding human behavior, that is evidence that some of the program’s mechanisms
could also be operating in humans.
For example, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, who developed GPS, the ―General Problem
Solver‖ (Newell and Simon, 1961), were not content merely to have their program solve
problems correctly. They were more concerned with comparing the trace of its reasoning
steps to traces of human subjects solving the same problems.
The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science brings together computer models from AI
and experimental techniques from psychology to construct precise and testable theories of
the human mind.

Acting humanly: The Turing Test approach

The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing TURING TEST (1950), was designed to
provide a satisfactory operational definition of intelligence. A computer passes the test if a
human interrogator, after posing some written questions, cannot tell whether the written
responses come from a person or from a computer.
The computer would need to possess the following capabilities:
1) natural language processing to enable it to communicate successfully in English;
2) knowledge representation to store what it knows or hears;
3) automated reasoning to use the stored information to answer questions and to draw
new conclusions;
4) machine learning to adapt to new circumstances and to detect and extrapolate
patterns.
The Total Turing Test includes a video signal so that the interrogator can test the subject’s
perceptual abilities, as well as the opportunity for the interrogator to pass physical objects
―through the hatch.‖
To pass the total Turing Test, the computer will need
1) computer vision to perceive objects,
2) robotics to manipulate objects and move about.

Thinking rationally: The “laws of thought” approach

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to codify ―right thinking,‖
that is, irrefutable reasoning processes. His syllogisms provided patterns for argument
structures that always yielded correct conclusions when given correct premises.
For example, ―Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.‖
These laws of thought were supposed to govern the operation of the mind; their study
initiated the field called logic.
Logicians in the 19th century developed a precise notation for statements about all kinds of
objects in the world and the relations among them.
By 1965, programs existed that could, in principle, solve any solvable problem described in

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logical notation. The so-called logicist tradition within artificial intelligence hopes to build
on such programs to create intelligent systems.
There are two main obstacles to this approach.
1) First, it is not easy to take informal knowledge and state it in the formal terms
required by logical notation, particularly when the knowledge is less than 100%
certain.
2) Second, there is a big difference between solving a problem ―in principle‖ and
solving it in practice.

Acting rationally: The rational agent approach

An agent is just something that acts.
Computer agents are expected to:
 Operate autonomously,
 perceive their environment,
 persist over a prolonged time period,
 adapt to change, and
 create and pursue goals.
A rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the best outcome or, when there is
uncertainty, the best expected outcome.
In the ―laws of thought‖ approach to AI, the emphasis was on correct inferences. Making
correct inferences is sometimes part of being a rational agent, because one way to act
rationally is to reason logically to the conclusion that a given action will achieve one’s goals
and then to act on that conclusion. On the other hand, correct inference is not all of
rationality; in some situations, there is no provably correct thing to do, but something must
still be done. There are also ways of acting rationally that cannot be said to involve
inference.
For example, recoiling from a hot stove is a reflex action that is usually more successful
than a slower action taken after careful deliberation.
All the skills needed for the Turing Test also allow an agent to act rationally.
1) Knowledge representation and reasoning enable agents to reach good decisions. We
need to be able to generate comprehensible sentences in natural language to get by in
a complex society.
2) We need learning not only for erudition, but also because it improves our ability to
generate effective behavior.
The rational-agent approach has two advantages over the other approaches.
1) First, it is more general than the ―laws of thought‖ approach because correct
inference is just one of several possible mechanisms for achieving rationality.
2) Second, it is more amenable to scientific development than are approaches based on
human behavior or human thought. The standard of rationality is mathematically
well defined and completely general, and can be ―unpacked‖ to generate agent
designs that provably achieve it. Human behavior, on the other hand, is well adapted
for one specific environment and is defined by, well, the sum total of all the things
that humans do.

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2 The Foundations of Artificial Inteligence:

Philosophy
• Can formal rules be used to draw valid conclusions?
• How does the mind arise from a physical brain?
• Where does knowledge come from?
• How does knowledge lead to action?

Aristotle was the first person to formulate a precise set of laws governing the mind's rational
part. He developed an informal system of syllogisms for proper reasoning, which allowed
one to generate conclusions with the given initial premises.
[Syllogism: It is a Logical Argument consisting of two premises and a conclusion]
 At that time, the study of human intelligence began with no formal expression.
 They Initiated the idea of the mind as a machine and its internal operations.

Mathematics
• What are the formal rules to draw valid conclusions?
• What can be computed?
• How do we reason with uncertain information?

Mathematics formalizes the three main areas of AI: computation, logic, and probability.
Boole introduced formal language for making logical inference and used formal logic
methods such as Boolean Logic & Fuzzy Logic. At the same time, we consider these bases
for most modern approaches that handle uncertainty in AI Applications. Besides logic and
computation, another contribution of mathematics to AI is the theory of probability used to
deal with uncertain measurements and incomplete theories.
Economics
• How should we make decisions so as to maximize payoff?
• How should we do this when others may not go along?
• How should we do this when the payoff may be far in the future?
Most people think that economics is being money, but it will say that they study how people
make choices that lead to preferred outcomes. So, the mathematical treatment of the
preferred outcome, "Utility", was first formalized. Here they considered a "Decision
Theory" that combines the Probability Theory & Utility Theory for making decisions.

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Neuroscience
• How do brains process information?
It is the study of the Nervous System, particularly the brain. More recent studies used
accurate sensors to correlate brain activity to human thought. This is done by monitoring
individual neurons. As we know, there are 1000 times more neurons in a typical human
brain than the gates in the CPU of a typical high-end computer. Moore's Law predicts that
the CPU gate count will be equal to brains neuron count around 2020.
Psychology
• How do humans and animals think and act?
The origins of scientific psychology are usually traced to the German physicist Hermann
von Helmholtz's work and his student Wilhelm Wundt. He applied some scientific methods
to the study of human vision. He also used his view on humans' behaviourism movement
and the brain's view as an Information-Processing-Device, Which is a principle
characteristic of cognitive psychology.
Computer engineering
• How can we build an efficient computer?
We need two things: intelligence and an artifact for artificial intelligence to succeed. AI also
requires the software side of Computer Science, which has supplied the operating systems,
Programming Languages, Tools, etc.…
Control theory and cybernetics
• How can artifacts operate under their own control?
The artifacts adjust their actions:
 To do better for the environment over time
 Based on an objective function and feedback from the environment
Machines can modify their behaviour in response to the environment (Sense/Action). These
machines are called self-controlling machines. The goal is to build systems that transition
from initial state to goal state with minimum energy. Examples of self-regulating feedback
control systems include the steam engine, created by James Watt and the thermostat,
invented by Colnelis Drebbel, who also invented the submarine.

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Linguistics
• How does language relate to thought?
Modem linguistics and AI, then, were "born" at about the same time and grew up together,
intersecting in a hybrid field called computational linguistics or natural language processing.
The speech demonstrates so much of human intelligence. Children can create sentences they
have never heard before. So language and thought are believed to be tightly intertwined.

3 Agents and Environments

An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and
acting upon that environment through actuators.
Example:
1) A human agent has eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors and hands, legs, vocal
tract, and so on for actuators.
2) A robotic agent might have cameras and infrared range finders for sensors and
various motors for actuators.
3) A software agent receives keystrokes, file contents, and network packets as sensory
inputs and acts on the environment by displaying on the screen, writing files, and
sending network packets.
Percept refers to the agent’s perceptual inputs at any given instant.
An agent’s percept sequence is the complete history of everything the agent has ever
perceived.
In general, an agent’s choice of action at any given instant can depend on the entire percept
sequence observed to date, but not on anything it hasn’t perceived.

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Mathematically speaking, we say that an agent’s behavior is described by the agent

function that maps any given percept sequence to an action.
Given an agent to experiment with, we can construct a table by trying out all possible
percept sequences and recording which actions the agent does in response.
The table is of course an external characterization of the agent.
Internally, the agent function for an artificial agent will be implemented by an agent
program.
The agent function is an abstract mathematical description;
the agent program is a concrete implementation, running within some physical system.

Vaccum cleaner world with two locations

Partial tabulation of a simple agent function for the vacuum-cleaner world

This particular world has just two locations: squares A and B.
The vacuum agent perceives which square it is in and whether there is dirt in the square.
It can choose to move left, move right, suck up the dirt, or do nothing.
One very simple agent function is the following: if the current square is dirty, then suck;
otherwise, move to the other square.

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4 Good Behaviour:The concept of Rationality

A rational agent is one that does the right thing.
When an agent is plunked down in an environment, it generates a sequence of actions
according to the percepts it receives. This sequence of actions causes the environment to go
through a sequence of states. If the sequence is desirable, then the agent has performed well.
This notion of desirability is captured by a performance measure that evaluates any given
sequence of environment states.

Consider, for example, the vacuum-cleaner agent.

 We might propose to measure performance by the amount of dirt cleaned up in a
single eight-hour shift. With a rational agent, of course, what you ask for is what you
get. A rational agent can maximize this performance measure by cleaning up the dirt,
then dumping it all on the floor, then cleaning it up again, and so on.
 A more suitable performance measure would reward the agent for having a clean
floor. For example, one point could be awarded for each clean square at each time
step.

As a general rule, it is better to design performance measures according to what one

actually wants in the environment, rather than according to how one thinks the agent should
behave.

Rationality
What is rational at any given time depends on four things:
• The performance measure that defines the criterion of success.
• The agent’s prior knowledge of the environment.
• The actions that the agent can perform.
• The agent’s percept sequence to date.
This leads to a definition of a 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.”.
Consider the simple vacuum-cleaner agent that cleans a square if it is dirty and moves to the
other square if not. First, we need to say what the performance measure is, what is known
about the environment, and what sensors and actuators the agent has. Let us assume the
following:
o The performance measure awards one point for each clean square at each
time step, over a ―lifetime‖ of 1000 time steps.
o The ―geography‖ of the environment is known a priori but the dirt
distribution and the initial location of the agent are not. Clean squares stay
clean and sucking cleans the current square. The Left and Right actions move
the agent left and right except when this would take the agent outside the
environment, in which case the agent remains where it is.
o The only available actions are Left , Right, and Suck.
o The agent correctly perceives its location and whether that location contains
dirt.
We claim that under these circumstances the agent is indeed rational.

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Omniscience:
An omniscient agent knows the actual outcome of its actions and can act accordingly; but
omniscience is impossible in reality. Our definition of rationality does not require omniscience, then,
because the rational choice depends only on the percept sequence to date.Therefore a Rational agent
is not Omniscient.
Learning:
Doing actions in order to modify future percepts—sometimes called information gathering is an
important part of rationality.
A second example of information gathering is provided by the exploration that must be undertaken
by a vacuum-cleaning agent in an initially unknown environment.
Our definition requires a rational agent not only to gather information but also to learn as much as
possible from what it perceives. The agent’s initial configuration could reflect some prior knowledge
of the environment, but as the agent gains experience this may be modified and augmented.
Autonomy:
To the extent that an agent relies on the prior knowledge of its designer rather than on its own
percepts, we say that the agent lacks autonomy. A rational agent should be autonomous—it should
learn what it can to compensate for partial or incorrect prior knowledge.
For example, a vacuum-cleaning agent that learns to foresee where and when additional dirt will
appear will do better than one that does not.

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5 The Nature of Environments

Specifying the Task Environment
We group the performance measure, the environment, and the agent’s actuators and sensors
as the task environment. For the acronymically minded, we call this the PEAS
(Performance, Environment, Actuators, Sensors) description. In designing an agent, the first
step must always be to specify the task environment as fully as possible.

Examples of Agent types and their PEAS Descriptions.

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Properties of task environments:

1) Fully observable vs. partially observable:
If an agent’s sensors give it access to the complete state of the environment at each
point in time, then we say that the task environment is fully observable. A task
environment is effectively fully observable if the sensors detect all aspects that are
relevant to the choice of action; relevance, in turn, depends on the performance
measure. Fully observable environments are convenient because the agent need not
maintain any internal state to keep track of the world.
An environment might be partially observable because of noisy and inaccurate
sensors or because parts of the state are simply missing from the sensor data—for
example, a vacuum agent with only a local dirt sensor cannot tell whether there is
dirt in other squares, and an automated taxi cannot see what other drivers are
thinking. If the agent has no sensors at all then the environment is unobservable.
2) Single agent vs. multiagent:
The distinction between single-agent and multiagent may seem simple enough.
For example, an agent solving a crossword puzzle by itself is clearly in a single-
agent environment, whereas an agent playing chess is in a two agent environment.
The chess is a competitive multiagent environment.
In the taxi-driving environment, on the other hand, avoiding collisions maximizes
the performance measure of all agents, so it is a partially cooperative multiagent
environment. It is also partially competitive because, for example, only one car can
occupy a parking space.
3) Deterministic vs. stochastic:
If the next state of the environment is completely determined by the current state and
the action executed by the agent, then we say the environment is deterministic;
otherwise, it is stochastic.
For example:
A game can be deterministic even though each agent may be unable to predict the
actions of
the others. If the environment is partially observable, however, then it could appear
to be stochastic. Most real situations are so complex that it is impossible to keep
track of all the unobserved aspects; for practical purposes, they must be treated as
stochastic.
For Example:
Taxi driving is clearly stochastic in this sense, because one can never predict the
behavior of traffic exactly; moreover, one’s tires blow out and one’s engine seizes
up without warning.
The vacuum world as we described it is deterministic, but variations can include
stochastic elements such as randomly appearing dirt and an unreliable suction
mechanism.

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4) Episodic vs. sequential:

In an episodic task environment, the agent’s experience is divided into atomic
episodes. In each episode the agent receives a percept and then performs a single
action. Crucially, the next episode does not depend on the actions taken in previous
episodes. Many classification tasks are episodic. For example, an agent that has to
spot defective parts on an assembly line bases each decision on the current part,
regardless of previous decisions; moreover, the current decision doesn’t affect
whether the next part is defective.
In sequential environments, on the other hand, the current decision could affect all
future decisions. Chess and taxi driving are sequential: in both cases, short-term
actions can have long-term consequences.
Episodic environments are much simpler than sequential environments because the
agent does not need to think ahead.
5) Static vs. dynamic:
If the environment can change while an agent is deliberating, then we say the
environment is dynamic for that agent; otherwise, it is static.
Static environments are easy to deal with because the agent need not keep looking at
the world while it is deciding on an action, nor need it worry about the passage of
time.
Dynamic environments, on the other hand, are continuously asking the agent what it
wants to do; if it hasn’t decided yet, that counts as deciding to do nothing. If the
environment itself does not change with the passage of time but the agent’s
performance score does, then we say the environment is semidynamic.
Taxi driving is clearly dynamic: the other cars and the taxi itself keep moving while
the driving algorithm dithers about what to do next.
Chess, when played with a clock, is semidynamic.
Crossword puzzles are static.
6) Discrete vs. continuous:
The discrete/continuous distinction applies to the state of the environment, to the
way time is handled, and to the percepts and actions of the agent.
For example, the chess environment has a finite number of distinct states (excluding
the clock). Chess also has a discrete set of percepts and actions.
Taxi driving is a continuous-state and continuous-time problem: the speed and
location of the taxi and of the other vehicles sweep through a range of continuous
values and do so smoothly over time. Taxi-driving actions are also continuous
(steering angles, etc.). Input from digital cameras is discrete, strictly speaking, but is
typically treated as representing continuously varying intensities and locations.
7) Known vs. unknown:
This distinction refers not to the environment itself but to the agent’s (or designer’s)
state of knowledge about the ―laws of physics‖ of the environment.
In a known environment, the outcomes (or outcome probabilities if the environment
is stochastic) for all actions are given. Obviously, if the environment is unknown, the
agent will have to learn how it works in order to make good decisions.
The distinction between known and unknown environments is not the same as the
one between fully and partially observable environments. It is quite possible for a
known environment to be partially observable.

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For example, in solitaire card games, I know the rules but am still unable to see the
cards that have not yet been turned over. Conversely, an unknown environment can
be fully observable—in a new video game, the screen may show the entire game
state but I still don’t know what the buttons do until I try them.

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6 The Structure of Agents:

The job of AI is to design an agent program that implements the agent function:the
mapping from percepts to actions.
We assume this program will run on some sort of computing device with physical sensors
and actuators—we call this the architecture:
agent = architecture + program .
The architecture might be just an ordinary PC, or it might be a robotic car with several
onboard
computers, cameras, and other sensors. The architecture makes the percepts from the
sensors available to the program, runs the program, and feeds the program’s action choices
to the actuators as they are generated.

Agent programs
The agent programs that we design in this book all have the same skeleton: they take the
current percept as input from the sensors and return an action to the actuators.
The agent program takes just the current percept as input because nothing more is available
from the environment; if the agent’s actions need to depend on the entire percept sequence,
the agent will have to remember the percepts.

The TABLE-DRIVEN-AGENT program is invoked for each new percept and returns an
action each time.
It retains the complete percept sequence in memory.
The Table Driven Agent Program has the following disadvantages:
(a) no physical agent in this universe will have the space to store the large sized table,
(b) the designer would not have time to create the table,
(c) no agent could ever learn all the right table entries from its experience, and
(d) even if the environment is simple enough to yield a feasible table size, the designer still
has no guidance about how to fill in the table entries.
Despite all this, TABLE-DRIVEN-AGENT does do what we want: it implements the
desired agent function.
The key challenge for AI is to find out how to write programs that, to the extent possible,
produce rational behavior from a smallish program rather than from a vast table.

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Simple reflex agents

The simplest kind of agent is the simple reflex agent.
These agents select actions on the basis of the current percept, ignoring the rest of the
percept history.
For example, the vacuum agent whose agent function is tabulated is a simple reflex agent,
because its decision is based only on the current location and on whether that location
contains dirt.
Simple reflex behaviors occur even in more complex environments.
Example:
Imagine yourself as the driver of the automated taxi. If the car in front brakes and its brake
lights come on, then you should notice this and initiate braking. In other words, some
processing is done on the visual input to establish the condition we call ―The car in front is
braking.‖ Then, this triggers some established connection in the agent program to the action
―initiate braking.‖ We call such a connection a condition–action rule, written as
if car-in-front-is-braking then initiate-braking.

Schematic Diagram of a simple Reflex agent

Simple reflex agent Program

The INTERPRET-INPUT function generates an abstracted description of the current state
from the
Percept.
The RULE-MATCH function returns the first rule in the set of rules that matches the
given state description.

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Limitations of simple Reflex agents

Simple reflex agents have the admirable property of being simple, but they turn out to be of
limited intelligence. The agent will work only if the correct decision can be made on the
basis of only the current percept—that is, only if the environment is fully observable.
Even a little bit of unobservability can cause serious trouble.
For example, the braking rule given earlier assumes that the condition car-in-front-is-
braking can be determined from the current percept—a single frame of video. This works if
the car in front has a centrally mounted brake light. Unfortunately, older models have
different configurations of taillights,brake lights, and turn-signal lights, and it is not always
possible to tell from a single image whether the car is braking. A simple reflex agent driving
behind such a car would either brake continuously and unnecessarily, or, worse, never brake
at all.

Model-based reflex agents

The most effective way to handle partial observability is for the agent to keep track of the
part of the world it can’t see now. That is, the agent should maintain some sort of internal
state that depends on the percept history and thereby reflects at least some of the
unobserved aspects of the current state.
For example:
For the braking problem, the internal state is not too extensive— just the previous frame
from the camera, allowing the agent to detect when two red lights at the edge of the vehicle
go on or off simultaneously. For other driving tasks such as changing lanes, the agent needs
to keep track of where the other cars are if it can’t see them all at once. And for any driving
to be possible at all, the agent needs to keep track of where its keys are.
Updating this internal state information as time goes by requires two kinds of knowledge
to be encoded in the agent program:
1. First, we need some information about how the world evolves independently of the
agent—for example, that an overtaking car generally will be closer behind than it
was a moment ago.
2. Second, we need some information about how the agent’s own actions affect the
world—for example, that when the agent turns the steering wheel clockwise, the car
turns to the right, or that after driving for five minutes northbound on the freeway,
one is usually about five miles north of where one was five minutes ago.
This knowledge about ―how the world works‖—whether implemented in simple Boolean
circuits or in complete scientific theories—is called a model of the world. An agent that
uses such a model is called a model-based agent.

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A model based reflex agent

A model-based reflex agent prgram. It keeps track of the current state of the world, using an internal model.
It then chooses an action in the same way as the reflex agent.
The function UPDATE-STATE,is responsible for creating the new internal state description.

Goal-based agents
Knowing something about the current state of the environment is not always enough to
decide what to do.
For example, at a road junction, the taxi can turn left, turn right, or go straight on. The
correct decision depends on where the taxi is trying to get to.
In other words, as well as a current state description, the agent needs some sort of goal
information that describes situations that are desirable—for example, being at the
passenger’s destination.
The agent program can combine this with the model (the same information as was used in
the model based reflex agent) to choose actions that achieve the goal.

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A model-based, goal-based agent. It keeps track of the world state as well as a set of
goals it is trying to achieve, and chooses an action that will (eventually) lead to the
achievement of its goals.

Sometimes goal-based action selection is straightforward—for example, when goal

satisfaction results immediately from a single action.
Sometimes it will be more tricky—for example, when the agent has to consider long
sequences of twists and turns in order to find a way to achieve the goal.
Search and planning are the subfields of AI devoted to finding action sequences that
achieve the agent’s goals.

A goal-based agent, in principle, could reason that if the car in front has its brake lights on,
it will slow down. Given the way the world usually evolves, the only action that will
achieve the goal of not hitting other cars is to brake.
Advantage of Goal based agents over Reflex agents:
Although the goal-based agent appears less efficient, it is more flexible because the
knowledge that supports its decisions is represented explicitly and can be modified. If it
starts to rain, the agent can update its knowledge of how effectively its brakes will operate;
this will automatically cause all of the relevant behaviors to be altered to suit the new
conditions.
For the reflex agent, on the other hand, we would have to rewrite many condition–action
rules. The goal-based agent’s behavior can easily be changed to go to a different destination,
simply by specifying that destination as the goal. The reflex agent’s rules for when to turn
and when to go straight will work only for a single destination; they must all be replaced to
go somewhere new.

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Utility-based agents
Goals alone are not enough to generate high-quality behavior in most environments.
For example, many action sequences will get the taxi to its destination (thereby achieving the goal)
but some are quicker, safer, more reliable, or cheaper than others.
Goals just provide a crude binary distinction between ―happy‖ and ―unhappy‖ states.
A more general performance measure should allow a comparison of different world states according
to exactly how happy they would make the agent. Because ―happy‖ does not sound very scientific,
economists and computer scientists use the term utility instead.
A performance measure assigns a score to any given sequence of environment states, so it can easily
distinguish between more and less desirable ways of getting to the taxi’s destination.
An agent’s utility function is essentially an internalization of the performance measure. If the
internal utility function and the external performance measure are in agreement, then an agent that
chooses actions to maximize its utility will be rational according to the external performance
measure.
Advantage of Utility based agents over goal based agents
A utility-based agent has many advantages in terms of flexibility and learning.
Furthermore, in two kinds of cases, goals are inadequate but a utility-based agent can still make
rational decisions.
1. First, when there are conflicting goals, only some of which can be achieved (for example,
speed and safety), the utility function specifies the appropriate tradeoff.
2. Second, when there are several goals that the agent can aim for, none of which can be
achieved with certainty, utility provides a way in which the likelihood of success can be
weighed against the importance of the goals.
A rational utility-based agent chooses the action that maximizes the expected utility of the action
outcomes—that is, the utility the agent expects to derive, on average, given the probabilities and
utilities of each outcome.

A model-based, utility-based agent. It uses a model of the world, along with a utility function that measures
its preferences among states of the world. Then it chooses the action that leads to the best expected utility,
where expected utility is computed by averaging over all possible outcome states, weighted by the
probability of the outcome.

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Learning agents
Learning has an advantage: it allows the agent to operate in initially unknown environments and to
become more competent than its initial knowledge alone might allow.
A learning agent can be divided into four conceptual components:
the learning element, which is responsible for making improvements,
performance element, which is responsible for selecting external actions. It takes in percepts and
decides on actions.
The learning element uses feedback from the critic on how the agent is doing and determines how
the performance element should be modified to do better in the future.
The critic tells the learning element how well the agent is doing with respect to a fixed performance
standard. The critic is necessary because the percepts themselves provide no indication of the agent’s
success.
For example, a chess program could receive a percept indicating that it has checkmated its opponent,
but it needs a performance standard to know that this is a good thing; the percept itself does not say
so. It is important that the performance standard be fixed. Conceptually, one should think of it as
being outside the agent altogether because the agent must not modify it to fit its own behavior.
The last component of the learning agent is the problem generator. It is responsible for suggesting
actions that will lead to new and informative experiences. The point is that if the performance
element had its way, it would keep doing the actions that are best, given what it knows. But if the
agent is willing to explore a little and do some perhaps suboptimal actions in the short run, it might
discover much better actions for the long run.

A general learning agent

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7 Empiricist Approaches in Artificial Intelligence:

Empiricist approaches in artificial intelligence (AI) are based on the philosophy of
empiricism, which emphasizes the importance of observation, evidence, and experience in
acquiring knowledge. These approaches rely heavily on data-driven methods and learning
from real-world experiences to build intelligent systems. Here are some key characteristics
and examples of empiricist approaches in AI:

1. Data-Driven Learning: Empiricist AI methods heavily rely on data to train machine

learning models. The more data these models have access to, the better they can learn and
generalize from real-world examples.

2. Inductive Reasoning: Inductive reasoning is a fundamental aspect of empiricism, and it

plays a significant role in empiricist AI. By observing specific instances or examples, AI
systems attempt to infer general rules and patterns.

3. Machine Learning: Many machine learning techniques fall under the umbrella of
empiricist approaches. Supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement
learning are common examples, where models learn from labeled data, patterns, or rewards
and punishments, respectively.

4. Big Data: Empiricist AI benefits from large-scale datasets. These datasets contain diverse
and representative samples of real-world scenarios, enabling AI models to generalize well
and make accurate predictions.

5. Pattern Recognition: Empiricist AI excels in tasks that involve recognizing patterns and
correlations within data. For example, image recognition, natural language processing, and
speech recognition are areas where data-driven approaches have shown significant success.

6. Deep Learning: Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that employs neural
networks with multiple layers to learn hierarchical representations of data. Deep learning
models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks
(RNNs), are widely used in empiricist AI due to their ability to process large amounts of
data and learn complex patterns.

7. Reinforcement Learning: This type of learning is often used in empiricist AI when

dealing with tasks where an agent interacts with an environment and learns from the
feedback received in the form of rewards and penalties.

8. Online Learning: Empiricist AI can adapt to changing data and environments through
online learning, where the system updates its knowledge continuously as new data becomes
available.

9. Data Augmentation: In order to further improve generalization, data augmentation

techniques are used, creating variations of existing data to augment the training dataset.

10. Bayesian Inference: Bayesian methods are also considered part of empiricist

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approaches in AI, as they involve updating probabilities based on evidence and observed
data.

One of the main advantages of empiricist approaches is their ability to handle complex and
real-world tasks by learning from vast amounts of data. However, they may require
substantial computational resources and data to achieve optimal performance. Additionally,
they might not always provide transparent explanations for their decisions, which can be a
concern in critical applications.

It's important to note that empiricist approaches are just one paradigm in AI, and there are
other philosophies and methodologies, such as symbolic or logic-based approaches, which
emphasize the use of formal rules and knowledge representation. In practice, a combination
of various approaches is often employed to create robust and intelligent AI systems.
8 Applications of Artificial Intelligence:

Robotic vehicles: A driverless robotic car named STANLEY sped through the rough terrain
of the Mojave dessert at 22 mph, finishing the 132-mile course first to win the 2005
DARPA Grand Challenge. STANLEY is a Volkswagen Touareg outfitted with cameras,
radar, and laser rangefinders to sense the environment and onboard software to command
the steering, braking, and acceleration (Thrun, 2006). The following year CMU’s BOSS
won the Urban Challenge, safely driving in traffic through the streets of a closed Air Force
base, obeying traffic rules and avoiding pedestrians and other vehicles.
Speech recognition: A traveler calling United Airlines to book a flight can have the entire
conversation guided by an automated speech recognition and dialog management system.
Autonomous planning and scheduling: A hundred million miles from Earth, NASA’s
Remote Agent program became the first on-board autonomous planning program to control
the scheduling of operations for a spacecraft (Jonsson et al., 2000). REMOTE AGENT
generated plans from high-level goals specified from the ground and monitored the
execution of those plans—detecting, diagnosing, and recovering from problems as they
occurred. Successor program MAPGEN plans the daily operations for NASA’s Mars
Exploration Rovers, and MEXAR2 did mission planning—both logistics and science
planning—for the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission in 2008.
Game playing: IBM’s DEEP BLUE became the first computer program to defeat the world
champion in a chess match when it bested Garry Kasparov by a score of 3.5 to 2.5 in an
exhibition match (Goodman and Keene, 1997). Kasparov said that he felt a ―new kind of
intelligence‖ across the board from him. Newsweek magazine described the match as ―The
brain’s last stand.‖ The value of IBM’s stock increased by $18 billion. Human champions
studied Kasparov’s loss and were able to draw a few matches in subsequent years, but the
most recent human-computer matches have been won convincingly by the computer.
Spam fighting: Each day, learning algorithms classify over a billion messages as spam,
saving the recipient from having to waste time deleting what, for many users, could
comprise 80% or 90% of all messages, if not classified away by algorithms. Because the
spammers are continually updating their tactics, it is difficult for a static programmed
approach to keep up, and learning algorithms work best.
Logistics planning: During the Persian Gulf crisis of 1991, U.S. forces deployed a
Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool, DART , to do automated logistics planning and

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scheduling for transportation. This involved up to 50,000 vehicles, cargo, and people at a
time, and had to account for starting points, destinations, routes, and conflict resolution
among all parameters. The AI planning techniques generated in hours a plan that would
have taken weeks with older methods. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
(DARPA) stated that this single application more than paid back DARPA’s 30-year
investment in AI.
Robotics: The iRobot Corporation has sold over two million Roomba robotic vacuum
cleaners for home use. The company also deploys the more rugged PackBot to Iraq and
Afghanistan, where it is used to handle hazardous materials, clear explosives, and identify
the location of snipers.
Machine Translation: A computer program automatically translates from Arabic to
English, allowing an English speaker to see the headline ―Ardogan Confirms That Turkey
Would Not Accept Any Pressure, Urging Them to Recognize Cyprus.‖ The program uses a
statistical model built from examples of Arabic-to-English translations and from examples
of English text totaling two trillion words. None of the computer scientists on the team
speak Arabic, but they do understand statistics and machine learning algorithms.

These are just a few examples of artificial intelligence systems that exist today.
9 Limitations of Artificial Intelligence:
AI, while incredibly powerful and promising, has its limitations. Some of the main
limitations include:

1. Lack of common sense: AI systems lack innate common sense and understanding of
the world that humans possess. They can perform specific tasks extremely well
within their programmed scope, but they struggle with generalizing knowledge and
applying it in novel situations.
2. Data dependency: AI models require large amounts of high-quality data to be
trained effectively. Without sufficient data, their performance can be subpar, and
they may even produce inaccurate or biased results.
3. Bias and fairness issues: AI systems can inherit biases from the data they are trained
on, reflecting the biases present in society. This can lead to discriminatory or unfair
outcomes, especially in applications like hiring, lending, and law enforcement.
4. Lack of creativity: While AI can generate content like text, images, and music, it is
still far from being truly creative in the way humans are. AI-generated content is
typically based on patterns in the data it was trained on, lacking genuine inspiration
or understanding.
5. Interpretability and explainability: Many AI models, especially deep learning ones,
are often seen as "black boxes" because they can be challenging to interpret and
explain. This lack of transparency raises concerns in critical applications, like
healthcare or autonomous vehicles, where understanding the decision-making
process is crucial.
6. Security and privacy concerns: AI systems are susceptible to attacks, and malicious
actors can exploit vulnerabilities for harmful purposes. Moreover, the collection and

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use of vast amounts of personal data by AI systems raise significant privacy

concerns.
7. Contextual limitations: AI often performs well in specific contexts and struggles to
adapt to changes in the environment or tasks it was not designed for. This
limitation hampers its ability to handle complex and dynamic real-world scenarios.
8. Lack of emotional intelligence: AI lacks emotional intelligence and understanding of
human emotions. While AI can analyze emotions based on data, it does not truly
comprehend emotions and may struggle to respond appropriately to emotionally
charged situations.
9. Energy and computational resources: Many AI models are computationally intensive
and require significant energy consumption, limiting their accessibility in resource-
constrained environments and contributing to environmental concerns.
10. Dependence on human input: AI systems still require human guidance, validation,
and continuous monitoring. They are not entirely autonomous and can't replace
human expertise in many critical tasks.

Despite these limitations, AI continues to advance rapidly, and ongoing research

and development aim to address these challenges and unlock its full potential while
mitigating risks.

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