Principles of AI

Lecturer: Gunjan Mansingh

Outline

Course overview
What is AI?
A brief history
The state of the art

ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE

It does not occur naturally, it is

created by human effort

It is the ability to THINK, REASON

and UNDERSTAND instead of
doing things automatically

Alan Turing - Machine Intelligence

(1935)

Alan Turing invented Computer Science around 1935

leading rapidly to interest in creating machine intelligence

During the war and after Turing began testing a claim that
a machine intelligence is possible.

Designing and testing his own chess program

Then arguing with psychologists & philosophers, however without
resolution because intelligence could not be pinned down.

Leading him to formulate his famous test for intelligence

in his Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Mind
1950).

Newell and Simon GPS (1959)

General Problem Solver or G.P.S. was a computer
program created in 1959 by Herbert A. Simon, J.C. Shaw,
and Allen Newell intended to work as a universal problem
solver machine.

Any problem that can be expressed as a set of well-formed

formulas (WFFs) or Horn clauses, and that constitute a
directed graph with one or more sources (viz., axioms) and
sinks (viz., desired conclusions), can be solved, in principle, by
GPS.

It is based on the principles that

Problem-solving behaviour involves means-ends-analysis, i.e.,

breaking a problem down into subcomponents (subgoals) and
solving each of those.

Dreyfuss
Hubert Dreyfuss (1965, 1993) has pushed many
objections to the possibility of an Artificial Intelligence.
The three most notable are:

1.
2.
3.

The embodiment objection

Context objection
Skill Objection

Objection 1
Human thinking is embodied, the essence of computation
is universality i.e. disembodied

nowadays we think of uploading/downloading intelligence

Dreyfuss
Objection 2
Human thinking has a holistic context, computer rules are
context free

A person has some context which guides their thinking.

Objection 3
Human intellect is an inarticulable skill and computers
intellect involves following rules, e.g.

Bike riding
Chess rules comes first skills come second

Human implicit understanding trumps explicit

representation in almost all domains
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Definitions
The exciting new effort to
make computers think
machines with minds, in the
full and literal sense
(Haugeland, 1985)

The study of mental

faculties through the use of
computational models
(Charniak and McDermott,
1985)

[The automation of]

activities that we associate
with human thinking,
activities such as decision
making, problem solving,
learning (Bellman, 1978)
The art of creating machines
that perform functions that
require intelligence when
performed by people
(Kurzweil, 1990)

The study of computations

that make it possible to
perceive, reason, and act
(Winston, 1992)

The study of how to make

computers do things at
which, at the moment, people
are better (Rich and Knight,
1991)

AI is concerned with
intelligent behaviour in
artifacts. (Nilsson, 1998)

Computational Intelligence
is the study of the design of
intelligent agents (Poole et
al. 1998)

Definitions (cont)

These definitions are organised into four categories:

Systems that think
like humans

Systems that think

rationally

Thinking humanly Thinking rationally

Systems that act like Systems that act
humans
rationally
Acting humanly

Acting rationally

Acting humanly: Turing Test

Turing (1950) "Computing machinery and intelligence":

"Can machines think?" "Can machines behave intelligently?"
Operational test for intelligent behavior: the Imitation Game

Predicted that by 2000, a machine might have a 30% chance of fooling a lay
person for 5 minutes

Acting Humanly

The Turing Test (Alan Turing 1950).

Suggested major components of AI . To pass this test

systems would need:

11

Turing defined intelligent behaviour as the ability to achieve

human-level performance in all cognitive tasks, sufficient to fool
an interrogator.

Natural Language Processing

Knowledge Representation
Automated Reasoning
Machine Learning

Problem: Turing test is not reproducible, constructive, or

amenable to mathematical analysis

Thinking Humanly: cognitive modelling

1960s cognitive revolution: information-processing psychology.

Requires scientific theories of internal activities of the brain

What level of abstraction? Knowledge or Circuits?

How to validate? Requires
1.
2.
3.

Introspection trying to catch your own thoughts

Psychological experiments observing person in action
Brain imaging observing brain in action

Newell & Simons GPS (general problem solver) sought to solve

problems the way humans did.
Cognitive Science = AI computer models + psychology experimental
techniques

Problems: the available theories do not explain anything

resembling human-level general intelligence
12

Thinking Rationally: Laws of Thought

Aristotle: What are correct arguments/thought processes?
Several Greek schools developed various forms of logic:
notation and rules of derivation for thoughts;
Logic
Stating knowledge in formal terms so that, given correct
premises, correct conclusions can be drawn.

Direct line through mathematics and philosophy to modern

AI
Problems:

1.

2.

13

Not all intelligent behavior is mediated by logical deliberation

What is the purpose of thinking? What thoughts should I have out of
all the thoughts that I could have?

Acting Rationally: rational agent

Rational behaviour: doing the right thing

The right thing: that which is expected to maximize goal
achievement, given the available information
Doesn't necessarily involve thinking e.g., blinking reflex but
thinking should be in the service of rational action
Agent

something that perceives and acts.

A rational agent acts to achieve goals, given beliefs.

More general than thinking rationally, since a correct inference
is not always possible, but an action is still needed.
More agreeable to scientific development than approaches
based on human thought or behaviour.
14

AI prehistory?

Philosophy

Can formal rules be used to draw conclusions?

How does the mind arise from a physical brain?
Where does knowledge come from?
How does it lead to action?
Mathematics
Formal representation and proof algorithms (what
are the formal rules?),
computation (what can be computed?),
(un)decidability, probability
(How do we reason with uncertain information)
Economics
Utility, decision theory
How and when to make decisions to get maximum Payoff?
Neuroscience
Physical substrate for mental activity.
How do brains process information?
Psychology
Phenomena of perception and motor control,
How do humans think and act?
Computer engineering Building efficient computers
Control theory
How can artifacts operate under their own control?
Linguistics
Knowledge representation, grammar (How does language
relate to thought)

Abridged history of AI

1943
1950
1956
1952-69
1950s

McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain

Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
Dartmouth meeting: "Artificial Intelligence" adopted
Look, Ma, no hands!
Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers
program, Newell & Simon's Logic Theorist,
Gelernter's Geometry Engine
1965
Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning
1966-73
AI discovers computational complexity
Neural network research almost disappears
1969-79
Early development of knowledge-based systems
1980-AI becomes an industry
1986-Neural networks return to popularity
1987-AI becomes a science
1995-The emergence of intelligent agents
2001-Present Availability of very large datasets

State of the art

Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry

Kasparov in 1997
Proved a mathematical conjecture (Robbins conjecture)
unsolved for decades
No hands across America (driving autonomously 98% of the
time from Pittsburgh to San Diego)
During the 1991 Gulf War, US forces deployed an AI logistics
planning and scheduling program that involved up to 50,000
vehicles, cargo, and people
NASA's on-board autonomous planning program controlled
the scheduling of operations for a spacecraft
Proverb solves crossword puzzles better than most humans
Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system capable of
answering questions posed in natural language