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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VIVA QUESTIONS

1. Definitions: 2. A*: A search algorithm to find the shortest path through a search space to a goal state using a heuristic. See 'search', 'problem space', 'Admissibility', and 'heuristic'. 3. Admissibility: An admissible search algorithm is one that is guaranteed to find an optimal path from the start node to a goal node, if one exists. In A* search, an admissible heuristic is one that never overestimates the distance remaining from the current node to the goal. 4. Agent: "Anything that can can be viewed a perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors." [Russel, Norvig 1995] Agent Blackboard Architectures Constraint Satisfaction Expert Systems Game Playing Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming Knowledge Acquisition Knowledge Representation Logic Programming, Prolog Machine Learning Natural Language Processing Robotics Simulated Annealing Uncertainty Vision Search and Game Playing Logic Planning Probabilistic Reasoning Non monotonic Reasoning and Truth Maintenance Systems (TMS) Blackboard Architectures

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5. AI: A three-toed sloth of genus Bradypus. This forest-dwelling animal eats the leaves of the trumpet-tree and sounds a high-pitched squeal when disturbed. (Based on the Random House dictionary definition.)

6. Alpha-Beta Pruning: A method of limiting search in the MiniMax algorithm. The coolest thing you learn in an undergraduate course. 7. Backward Chaining: In a logic system, reasoning from a query to the data. See Forward chaining. 8. Belief Network (also Bayesian Network): A mechanism for representing probabilistic knowledge. Inference algorithms in belief networks use the structure of the network to generate inferences effeciently (compared to joint probability distributions over all the variables). 9. Breadth-first Search: An uninformed search algorithm where the shallowest node in the search tree is expanded first. 10. Case-based Reasoning: Technique whereby "cases" similar to the current problem are retrieved and their "solutions" modified to work on the current problem. 11. Closed World Assumption: The assumption that if a system has no knowledge about a query, it is false. 12. Open World assumption: If there is no idea about a query it is assumed to be

unknown.

13. Computational Linguistics: The branch of AI that deals with understanding human language.Also called natural language processing.

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14. Data Mining: Also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) was been defined as "The nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data" in Frawley and Piatetsky-Shapiro's overview. It uses machine learning, statistical and visualization techniques to discover and present knowledge in a form which is easily comprehensible to humans. 15. Depth-first Search An uninformed search algorithm, where the deepest non-terminal node is expanded first. 16. Evaluation Function: A function applied to a game state to generate a guess as to who is winning. Used by Minimax when the game tree is too large to be searched exhaustively.

17. Forward Chaining: In a logic system reasoning, from facts to conclusions. 18. Fuzzy Logic: In Fuzzy Logic, truth values are real values in the closed interval [0..1]. The definitions of the boolean operators are extended to fit this continuous domain. By avoiding discrete truth-values, Fuzzy Logic avoids some of the problems inherent in either-or judgments and yields natural interpretations of utterances like "very hot". Fuzzy Logic has applications in control theory. 19. Heuristic: The dictionary defines it as a method that serves as an aid to problem solving. It is sometimes defined as any 'rule of thumb'. Technically, a heuristic is a function that takes a state as input and outputs a value for that state- often as a guess of how far away that state is from the goal state. See also: Admissibility, Search. 20. Information Extraction: Getting computer-understanable information from human-readable (ie natural language) documents. 21. Iterative Deepening: An uninformed search that combines good properties of Depth-fisrt and Breadth-first search.

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22. Iterative Deepening A*: The ideas of iterative deepening applied to A*. 23. Language Acquisition: A relatively new sub-branch of AI; traditionally computational linguists tried to make computers understand human language by giving the computer grammar rules. Language acquisition is a technique for the computer to generate the grammar rules itself. 24. Machine Learning: A field of AI concerned with programs that learn. It includes Reinforcement Learning and Neural Networks among many other fields. 25. Mini Max: An algorithm for game playing in games with perfect information. See alpha-beta pruning. 26. Modus Ponens: An inference rule that says: if you know x and you know that 'If x is true then y is true' then you can conclude y. 27. Nonlinear Planning: A planning paradigm which does not enforce a total (linear) ordering on the components of a plan.

28. Natural Language (NL): Evolved languages that humans use to communicate with one another. 29. Natural Language Queries: Using human language to get information from a database. 30. Partial Order Planner: A planner that only orders steps that need to be ordered, and leaves unordered any steps that can be done in any order. 31. Planning: A field of AI concerned with systems that constuct sequences of actions to acheive goals in real-world-like environments. 32. Problem Space (also State Space): The formulation of an AI problem into states and operators. There is usually a start state and a goal state. The problem space is searched to find a solution.

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33. Search: The finding of a path from a start state to a goal state. See 'Admissibility', 'Problem Space', and 'Heuristic'. 34. Strong AI: Claim that computers can be made to actually think, just like human beings do. More precisely, the claim that there exists a class of computer programs, such that any implementation of such a program is really thinking. 35. Unification: The process of finding a substitution (an assignment of constants and variables to variables) that makes two logical statements look the same. Validation: The process of confirming that one's model uses measureable inputs and produces output that can be used to make decisions about the real world. Verification: The process of confirming that an implemented model works as intended. Weak AI: Claim that computers are important tools in the modeling and simulation of human activity.

36. Turing test: A. Alan Turing's 1950 article Computing Machinery and Intelligence discussed conditions for considering a machine to be intelligent. He argued that if the machine could successfully pretend to be human to a knowledgeable observer then you certainly should consider it intelligent. This test would satisfy most people but not all philosophers. The observer could interact with the machine and a human by teletype (to avoid requiring that the machine imitate the appearance or voice of the person), and the human would try to persuade the observer that it was human and the machine would try to fool the observer. The Turing test is a one-sided test. A machine that passes the test should certainly be considered intelligent, but a machine could still be considered intelligent without knowing enough about humans to imitate a human.

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37. Problem solving Problem solving, particularly in artificial intelligence, may be characterized as a systematic search through a range of possible actions in order to reach some predefined goal or solution. Problem-solving methods divide into special purpose and general purpose. A special-purpose method is tailor-made for a particular problem and often exploits very specific features of the situation in which the problem is embedded. In contrast, a general-purpose method is applicable to a wide variety of problems. One general-purpose technique used in AI is means-end analysisa step-by-step, or incremental, reduction of the difference between the current state and the final goal. The program selects actions from a list of meansin the case of a simple robot this might consist of PICKUP, PUTDOWN, MOVEFORWARD, MOVEBACK, MOVELEFT, and MOVERIGHTuntil the goal is reached. 38. Perception In perception the environment is scanned by means of various sense-organs, real or artificial, and processes internal to the perceiver analyse the scene into objects and their features and relationships. Analysis is complicated by the fact that one and the same object may present many different appearances on different occasions, depending on the angle from which it is viewed, whether or not parts of it are projecting shadows, and so forth.

39. Language-understanding A language is a system of signs having meaning by convention. Traffic signs, for example, form a mini-language, it being a matter of convention that, for example, the hazard-ahead sign means hazard ahead. This meaning-by-convention that is distinctive of language is very different from what is called natural meaning, exemplified in statements like 'Those clouds mean rain' and 'The fall in pressure means the valve is malfunctioning'. 40. Learning Learning is distinguished into a number of different forms. The simplest is learning by trial-and-error. For example, a simple program for solving mate-in-one chess problems might try out moves at random until one is found that achieves mate. The program remembers the successful move and next time the computer is given the same problem it is able to produce the answer immediately. The simple memorising of individual items-solutions to problems, words of vocabulary, etc.--is known as rote learning.

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Role learning is relatively easy to implement on a computer. More challenging is the problem of implementing what is called generalization. Learning that involves generalization leaves the learner able to perform better in situations not previously encountered. A program that learns past tenses of regular English verbs by rote will not be able to produce the past tense of e.g. "jump" until presented at least once with "jumped", whereas a program that is able to generalise from examples can learn the "added" rule, and so form the past tense of "jump" in the absence of any previous encounter with this verb. Sophisticated modern techniques enable programs to generalise complex rules from data. 41. Reasoning To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the situation in hand. Inferences are classified as either deductive or inductive. An example of the former is "Fred is either in the museum or the caf; he isn't in the caf; so he's in the museum", and of the latter "Previous accidents just like this one have been caused by instrument failure; so probably this one was caused by instrument failure". The difference between the two is that in the deductive case, the truth of the premisses guarantees the truth of the conclusion, whereas in the inductive case, the truth of the premiss lends support to the conclusion that the accident was caused by instrument failure, but nevertheless further investigation might reveal that, despite the truth of the premiss, the conclusion is in fact false. There has been considerable success in programming computers to draw inferences, especially deductive inferences. However, a program cannot be said to reason simply in virtue of being able to draw inferences. Reasoning involves drawing inferences that are relevant to the task or situation in hand. One of the hardest problems confronting AI is that of giving computers the ability to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant. 42.Heuristic Search (Heuristics - Heuristic Search - Best-First Search - Hill Climbing - Minimizing Cost - A* Search [A-star Search] - Other Search Techniques)

43. Generate and Test: A search technique which proposes possible solutions and then tests them for their feasibility 44. Heuristic Search: an informed method of searching a state space with the purpose of reducing its size and finding one or more suitable goal states. 45. Means-Ends Analysis: An AI technique which tries to reduce the "difference" between a current state and a goal state.