Chapter 1

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence:

Contents:
 Definition of AI
 Foundation and History of AI
 How AI systems differ from Human
 Application of AI …
Objective of the Lesson:

 Understand the definition of AI

 Discuss the different faculties involved with intelligent behavior

 Examine the different ways of approaching AI

 Look at some example systems that use AI

 Trace briefly the history of AI

On taking this lesson you should be:

 Familiar with the deferent ways of defining AI

 Understand what are the different components of intelligent behavior

 Develop an approach of the vast scope of AI and the intellectual challenges in this field

 Have a fair idea of the types of problems that can be currently solved by computers and
those that are as yet beyond its ability

Definition of AI:

What is AI? There are too many definitions for AI

Artificial intelligence is the study and design of intelligent agents

Intelligent agents are systems that perceive their environment and take actions that can
maximize its chance of success.

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 Reaching a goal

AI is concerned with the design of intelligence in an artificial artifacts and artificial devices. The
artificial devices are designing by integrating intelligence into them (according to McCarthy ,
1956).

AI is a branch of computer science which aims in creating intelligence

Intelligence is a computational part of machines to achieve goals.

The term AI was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy.

He defined AI in his work “as the science and engineering of making machines intelligent with
the help of intelligent agents programs”

Mainly intelligent AI programs

The aim of AI is to make machines (example: Computers) do tasks which currently human
beings do better

Intelligence is related to tasks demanding higher mental processes such as; creativity,
problem solving pattern recognition, classification, learning, induction deduction,
language understanding…etc…

Some intelligent behaviors include

 Perceiving environment,  discover hidden knowledge,

 acting in a complex world,  thinking abstractly using

analogies (comparison of
 reasoning to solve problems,
similarity and differences)

Generally, the concern of AI is to enable computers behave like human beings and imitate the
reasoning power of human beings.

AI as a field of study is attempting to understand and build of intelligent agents

Intelligence: something that characterize humans, hence intelligence means having behavior
which like human beings. In fact there are two schools of thoughts which describe as:

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Intelligence is rather hard to define in terms. Intelligence is often defined in terms of what we
understand as intelligence in humans. It can be defined as the ability to bring all the knowledge a
system has at its disposal to bear in the solution of a problem. A more practical definition that
has been used in the context of building artificial systems with intelligence is to perform better
on tasks that humans currently do better.

The different approaches in defining artificial intelligence are:

1. Thinking Rationally

2. Acting Rationally

3. Thinking like human

4. Acting like human

1. Behave as intelligent as a human: The idea is to have a machine or system which

behaves like human beings, as human beings sometimes are not behaving intelligently,
hence humans may not behave intelligently sometimes.

2. Behave in the possible manner (behave rationally):

 Thinking: Thinking intelligently and come up with a solution for problems

 Acting: This deals with how the system actually behaves or acts

Based on this, intelligent is a thought and act.

Thought / Reasoning
1. System that think
like human
(Cognitive Science
Human like performance
3. System that act
like humans (Turing
Test)
2. System that think
rationally (Laws of thought or
Logic)
Ideal Performance
(Rationality)
4. System that act rationally
(Rational Agents)

Behavior
)

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 1. The exciting new effort to make computers think machines with minds, in the full and
literal sense. The automation of activities that we associate with human thinking,
activities such as decision-making, problem solving and learning.

2. The study of mental faculties through the use of computational models. The study of
the computations that make it possible to perceive, reason, and act

3. The art of creating machines that performs functions that require intelligence when
performed by people. The study of how to make computers do things at which, at the
moment, people are better.

4. A field of study that seeks to explain and emulate intelligent behavior in terms of
computational processes. The branch of computer science that is concerned with the
automation of intelligent behavior.

Intelligence: - It is related to tasks involving higher mental processes such as creativity, problem
solving, pattern recognition, classification, learning, induction, deduction, building analogies,
optimization, language processing, knowledge and many more. Intelligence is the computational
part of machines that enables them to achieve goals.
AI Philosophical Implications (School of thought):-
AI systems fall either in strong AI or weak AI.
Hard (Strong) AI: Artificial intelligence research aims to create AI that can replicate human
intelligence completely.

Strong AI aims to build machines that can truly reason and solve problems which is self aware
and whose overall intellectual ability is indistinguishable from that of a human being.
Strong AI refers to a machine that approaches or supersedes human intelligence.

 If it can do typical human tasks,

 If it can apply a wide range of background knowledge and

 If it has some degree of self-consciousness

 Aims to create AI called mind

 If it is very close or similar to human beings mind

 It can do typical human tasks

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Strong AI maintains that suitably programmed machines are capable of cognitive mental states.

According to Strong AI, any system that implements the right computer program with the
right inputs and outputs has cognition in exactly the same sense that human beings have
understanding, thought, memory, etc.

According to Strong AI, the correct simulation really is a mind.

Strong AI aims in building machines whose overall intellectual ability is indistinguishable

from that of human beings

Soft (Weak) AI: Weak AI refers to the use of software to study or accomplish specific problem
solving or reasoning tasks that do not encompass the full range of human cognitive abilities.
Weak AI deals with the creation of some form of computer-based artificial intelligence that
cannot truly reason and solve problems, but can act as if it were intelligence. Weak AI holds true
that well programmed machines can simulate human beings cognition.

Refers to software which solves specific problems by reasoning

According to Weak AI, the correct simulation is a model of the mind.

Example: a chess program such as Deep Blue. Weak AI does not achieve self-awareness; it
doesn’t demonstrates wide range of human-level cognitive abilities; it is merely an intelligent, a
specific problem-solver.

Turing Test:

 The computer is interrogated by a human via a teletype

 It passes if the human cannot tell whether there is a computer or human at the other end

Goals of AI: The definition of AI gives four possible goals to pursue:

1. Systems that think like humans
2. Systems that think rationally
3. Systems that act like humans
4. Systems that act rationally

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Traditionally, all four goals have been followed and the approaches were:
Human-like Rationally
Think Cognitive science Approach Laws of thought Approach
Act Turing Test Approach Rational agent Approach
Most of AI work falls into the categories of Laws of thought Approach and Rational agent
Approach.
General AI Goals:

 Replicate human intelligence: still a distant goal.

 Solve knowledge intensive tasks.

 Make an intelligent connection between perception and action.

 Enhance human-human, human-computer and computer to computer interaction /

communication
AI Approaches:
The approaches followed are defined by choosing goals of the computational model, and basis
for evaluating performance of the system.
1. Cognitive science (Think human-like)
 An exciting new effort to make computers think; that is, the machines with minds,
in the full and literal sense.

2. Laws of Thought (Think Rationally ):

 The study of mental faculties through the use of computational models; that is, the
study of the computations that make it possible to perceive, reason, and act.

 Focus is on inference mechanisms that are probably correct and guarantee an

optimal solution.

3. Turing Test (Act Human-like):

 The art of creating machines that performs functions requiring intelligence when
performed by people; that is, the study of how to make computers do things which at the
moment people do better.

 Focus is on action, and not intelligent behavior centered on representation of the

world.

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A Behaviorist approach is not concerned with how to get results but to the similarity to what
human results are.

After careful examination of the two sets, if the interrogator cannot definitely tell which set has
come from the computer and which from the human, the computer has passed the Turing test for
intelligent behavior.
Example: Turing Test:

 2 rooms contain: a person, a computer, and an interrogator (evaluator).

 The interrogator can communicate with the other 2 by teletype (to avoid the
machine imitate the appearance or voice of the person).

 The interrogator tries to determine which the person is and which the machine is.

 The machine tries to fool the interrogator to believe that it is the human, and the
person also tries to convince the interrogator that it is the human.

 If the machine succeeds in fooling the interrogator, then conclude that the machine
is intelligent.

 Goal is to develop systems that are human-like (in acting).

Challenges of Turing Test:

 Even though computers are able to answer questions like human beings, it does not
really mean AI has mind.

The Chinese Room Argument was developed to disproof the Turing test

 The Chinese Room argument, devised by John Searle, is an argument against the
possibility of true artificial intelligence

 The Chinese Room Argument aims to refute a certain conception of the role of
computation in human cognition

The Chinese Argument:-

 There was a person in the room who didn’t know Chinese Language.

 There was also a big Chinese literature book

 Chinese people were outside the room

 Communicating with the person inside the room by a written text of Chinese.

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  Therefore, people outside the room were assuming that, the person inside the room
knows Chinese language, because feedbacks were given in Chinese language.

 However, there was no semantic understanding of the specified language with this
person.

 There was only a simple translation of the input query from the Chinese literature and
without semantically understand the meaning of the queries.

 Therefore, in Turing test, it doesn’t mean that there is a semantic understanding of the
language with the computer (AI system).

 Rather, the cognitive and understanding are different from simple translation of the
language

4. Rational Agent (Act Rationally):

 Focus is on systems that act sufficiently if not optimally in all situations;

 It is possible to have imperfect reasoning if the job gets done.

 Goal is to develop systems that are rational and sufficient.

Q. Suppose you design a machine to pass the Turing test. What are the capabilities such
a machine must have?
 Natural language processing
 Knowledge representation
 Automated reasoning
 Machine learning
 Computer vision
 Robotics

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Foundation and History of AI: - AI takes ideas, concepts, views and techniques from many
field of studies.

1. Philosophy:

Forma rules which are used to draw valid conclusion

Where does knowledge come from

Example: Aristotle had argued that actions are justified by logical connection between goals and
knowledge

2. Mathematics:

 How are the formal rules used to draw conclusion

 How do we reason with uncertainties

Using probabilities

3. Economics:

 How should we decide?

Decision theory (probability + Utility)

 How should we do things when others do not involve in it?

By game theory

 How should we do tasks when the payoff is far in the future ?

By prediction of payoffs

4. Neuroscience

How do the brain processes information

This deals with the study of nervous system

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 5. Computer Engineering

How can we build an efficient computers for AI to succeed, intelligence and

artifact of choice

6. Linguistics

 How does language relates to thought

 How can we represent knowledge

Natural language

AI Development:-

AI became dominant at the end of WW-II

The name AI was first used by John McCarthy in 1956

1. The Conception of AI (1943-1955)

Due to the introduction of Turing test and the domination of computing

machinery and intelligence

The idea first was to produce child mind

Which can learn from the environment as a result of experience

like that of child human being

Example: color identifying by associating different concepts, such as what is a

red, blue, white etc…

2. The birth and Great expectations (1952-1969):

The birth of AI goes to the time when the name AI was coined by John McCarthy

GPS (General Problem Solving )

Think humanly (reasoning humanly)

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 3. Dose of reality (1966-1973):

Visible future is to mean the future is bright with AI

The promise was have machines which will think, learn and create

This is not to surprise or to shock the generation

4. Knowledge Base systems (the Key to power) (1969-1980)

Knowledge is power

General purpose KBS and Expert systems came into being

6. AI became industry (1980-present)

KBS and ES were pushed to be commercialized

7. The age of neural networks (1986-present)

Supervised learning model

AI system Vs Human Intelligence:-

AI system

Focus is on designing machines that can mimic human behavior.

AI researches are successful so far on designing and implementing weak AI

Implemented programs are syntactical processes

Human Intelligence

The depth and the powers of the human mind are enormous to represent in AI model

Revolves around adapting to the environment using several cognitive processes

Minds have semantic contents

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Application of AI:-
Computer vision
Image recognition
Face recognition
Robotics
Natural language processing and natural language understanding
Speech processing
Applied AI: Aims to produce commercially viable and smart systems such as; security systems
that are able to recognize the face of people who are permitted to enter a particular building.
Applied AI has already enjoyed considerable success. It may not necessarily useful to build
complete intelligent system.
AI Topics:

 Core areas
Knowledge representation
Reasoning
Machine learning

 Perception:
Vision
Natural Language processing
Robotics

 Uncertainty
Probabilistic approach

 General Algorithms
Searching
Planning
Constraint satisfaction

 Applications
Game playing
AI and Education

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