1.

Which man is credited with coining the term 'artificial intelligence' in 1955 and
is considered one of the early pioneers in the field? (Perhaps he was a relative of
Tail Gunner Joe.)
Your Answer: John McCarthy

Tail Gunner Joe is a reference to Senator Joseph McCarthy of McCarthyism fame and
hopefully a helpful clue. John McCarthy was no relation to the man. John spent his life in the
field of AI and championed mathematical logic as the basis for AI. He is credited with
developing the Lisp programming language while at MIT and heavily influenced the ALGOL
programming language. He was a professor in the field at Stanford University from 1962 until
his retirement in 2000.
38% of players have answered correctly.

2. Which Hanover, New Hampshire Ivy league university held the first
artificial intelligence conference in 1956?
The correct answer was Dartmouth

The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence is considered to

be the foundational beginnings of the subject. The term artificial intelligence was
first introduced at this conference. The conference was organized by John
McCarthy, who was a professor at Dartmouth at the time. Early AI champions and
researchers Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon joined him
in the proposal offered at the conference. Other notable attendees were Ray
Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, Arthur Samuel, Herbert A. Simon,
and Allen Newell.
48% of players have answered correctly.

3. Which US government department was a major early funder of

artificial intelligence research for its own ulterior motives?
The correct answer was Department

of Defense

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is the agency within
the Department of Defense (DoD) responsible for the development of new
technologies that can be exploited by the military. In the 1960s with the Vietnam
War raging, DARPA funneled large amounts of money into AI research. With the
end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the lack of practical applications for AI,
the funding eventually dried up for about a decade.
74% of players have answered correctly.

4. What was the trembling name of the first general-purpose mobile

robot that employed AI and was developed by the Artificial Intelligence
Center of Stanford Research Institute in the late 1960s?
Your Answer: Shakey the Robot

Shakey the Robot was developed between 1966 and 1972. At the time robots
merely followed the step by step instructions given by the programmer or operator.
What made Shakey different was it could analyze the command and break it down
by itself rather than having to be given step by step instructions. The project was
funded by DARPA. The robots main programming (operating system) was done in
Lisp and STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver) was the software it
ran to carry out its tasks.
47% of players have answered correctly.

5. One of the early artificial intelligence programming languages was

one that sounds like it might have a speech impediment. Which
language is this?
Your Answer: Lisp programming language

The Lisp programming language was designed by John McCarthy in 1958 and is
the second oldest high-level programming language still in use today, Fortran is
one year older. There are now dialects within the Lisp language with Common Lisp
and Scheme being two of the most widely-known general purpose ones. This
language has always been closely linked to and utilized by AI research.
56% of players have answered correctly.

6. Deep Blue was the first computer to beat a reigning world chess
champion. Which Russian did Deep Blue beat in May 1997?
The correct answer was Gary

Kasparov

IBM set out to develop a computer that could beat a world chess champion and so
Deep Blue was born. Deep Blue first played Kasparov in 1996, losing 4-2 to him in
a six game match. The programs developers went back to work to fine tune the
program and continued to use chess Grandmaster Joel Benjamin as their
knowledge source. During the rematch in 1997, the programmers were allowed to
make adjustments to Deep Blue between matches. Again it was a six game match
and going into the sixth and final game it was tied 2 1/2-2 1/2. Deep Blue defeated
Kasparov in spectacular fashion in just 19 moves. The match became a media
sensation.

78% of players have answered correctly.

7. Watson was the natural outgrowth of the success of Deep Blue in the
realm of chess. But this time the realm was the TV trivia game show
"Jeopardy!". Which "Jeopardy!" champion's string of 74 wins inspired
IBM executives to seek to develop a computer program that could beat
him, a feat Watson accomplished in 2011?
The correct answer was Ken

Jennings

In 2004, IBM Research manager Charles Lickel caught a glimpse of Jennings on

TV during his famous run and decided that IBM should develop a computer that
could beat him. At first no one wanted to take on the task until finally David
Ferrucci stepped up to the challenge. The biggest problem facing the team was to
get Watson to understand questions that were asked in common language in a
relatively short amount of time and then to be able to answer those questions. By
2011, Watson was regularly beating "Jeopardy!" champions. That year Watson
faced off against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the two biggest winners on
"Jeopardy!". Watson won the three game cumulative match handily.
62% of players have answered correctly.

8. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has

sponsored challenges starting in 2004 for teams to autonomous ground
vehicles that can navigate a course on their own. Three of the four listed
below have been or are focuses of these challenges. Which one is
INCORRECT?
The correct answer was Water

borne

The DARPA Grand Challenge started in 2004 with an off-road competition but no
vehicles were able to finish the course that year. In 2005, 5 out of 23 completed the
off-road course with Stanford Racing winning. In 2007, the challenge was changed
to an urban environment. This time six teams finished the course with Tartan
Racing from Carnegie Mellon winning. In 2013 and 2014, humanoid robots will be
the featured forms of transport.
In all of these competitions the goal is to get AI to make the vehicles be able to
finish the course and so advance the research into the field. Cash prizes are
awarded in each competition.
36% of players have answered correctly.

9. Computer games employ a form of artificial intelligence that mimics

human decision-making capabilities. What is the name for these 'skillful'
systems?
The correct answer was Expert

systems

Expert systems are knowledge based systems that seek to emulate human
decision-making processes based on a database and reasoning derived from that
knowledge rather than procedures put in place by a develop as happens with
conventional programming. In the 1970s and 1980s computer games made vast
use of this technology since the game programmer can set parameters upon which
the software will base its decisions. Expert systems have moved far beyond just
gaming since then and are employed in many fields such as law, medicine, and
accounting, to name a few. The process by which the knowledge needed for a
specific application is gathered and employed is called knowledge engineering.
33% of players have answered correctly.

10. One of the biggest problems still facing artificial intelligence

researchers is the human ability to think and reason intuitively because
this cannot yet be duplicated in a computer environment.
Your Answer: True

Many challenges still face AI research and one of the biggest is attempting to
duplicate human intuition. The problems facing AI research are broken down into
about ten sub-problems. These are:
1) Deduction, reasoning, problem solving - of which human intuition is chief
2) Knowledge representation - this is where knowledge engineering plays a large
role
3) Planning - being able to make its own plans to accomplish goals without being
told
4) Learning - this problem has existed from the beginning
5) Natural language processing - Watson made huge strides in this area
6) Motion and manipulation - robots and AI are closely linked
7) Perception - includes but is not limited to speech recognition, facial recognition
and object recognition
8) Social intelligence - much of human communication is nonverbal and this
encompasses that
9) Creativity - during Kasparov's 1997 match he attributed a certain move to highly
developed intelligence that a programmer later discovered was probably just a
random glitch
10) General intelligence - also known as strong AI.