MCA IV Sem 2011 AI Home Assignment 1

1. What is intelligence? How do we measure it? Are these measurements useful? 2. How good are machines at playing chess? If a machine can consistently beat all the best human chess players, does this prove that the machine is intelligent? 3. When a computer adds up numbers, is it thinking? When you add up numbers, are you thinking? Is there any fundamental dierence? Are these useful questions? 4. List the four sub-elds of AI that you think are most important. For each, give a representative goal or sub-goal or system that has been achieved so far. 5. Explain carefully the distinction between a state space graph and a search tree. Discus the potential trade-o between short solutions and good solutions, and between computational costs and other costs. 6. Depth First Iterative Deepening Search (DFIDS) is a good search algorithm, but it appears to be wasteful because many states are expanded many times. Is it possible to prevent that waste? If so, is it always worth the eort? 7. What does it mean to say that a search algorithm is uninformed? What kinds of information could be useful for an informed search algorithm? 8. With Hill Climbing or Gradient Descent algorithms, is it possible to end up stuck in a non-optimal state? If so, what strategies could we employ to avoid that happening? Is it possible to end up in a nal state and not know if better solutions are possible? If so, is there anything we can do to improve our chances of nding an optimal solution? 9. Represent the following axioms in predicate logic: a. All hounds howl at night. b. Anyone who has any cats will not have any mice. c. Light sleepers do not have anything which howls at night. d. John has either a cat or a hound. 10. . Consider the following axioms, and prove if the entire statement is true or not. 1

a.Every investor bought [something that is] stocks or bonds. b.If the Dow-Jones Average crashes, then all stocks that are not gold stocks fall. c.If the T-Bill interest rate rises, then all bonds fall. d.Every investor who bought something that falls is not happy. e.(Conclusion) If the Dow-Jones Average crashes and the T-Bill interest rate rises, then any investor who is happy bought some gold stock. Submission deadline: 19/05/2011.