IT406

Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Harris Chikunya

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 Objectives
• Understand the definition of AI
• Understand the different faculties involved with intelligent behaviour
• Examine the different ways of approaching AI
• Look at example systems that use AI
• Trace briefly the history of AI
• Types of problems that can be solved by computers and those that are still beyond its ability

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 What is AI?
• Definition of AI
The exciting new effort to “The study of mental faculties
make computers thinks … through the use of computational
machine with minds, in the full models”
and literal sense” (Charniak et al. 1985)
(Haugeland 1985)
Systems that think like humans Systems that think rationally

“The art of creating machines A field of study that seeks to

that perform functions that explain and emulate intelligent
require intelligence when behavior in terms of
performed by people” computational processes”
(Kurzweil, 1990) (Schalkol, 1990)
Systems that act like humans Systems that act rationally
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 Acting humanly:
The Turing test approach
• Alan Turing's 1950 article Computing Machinery and Intelligence
discussed conditions for considering a machine to be intelligent
• “Can machines think?”  “Can machines behave intelligently?”

• ” A computer passes the test if a human interrogator, after posing

some written questions, cannot tell whether the written responses
come from a person or from a computer

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 Acting humanly:
The Turing test approach
• In order to pass the Test the machine would need the following
capabilities:
 natural language processing to communicate successfully in a human
language;
 knowledge representation to store what it knows or hears;
 automated reasoning to answer questions and to draw new
conclusions;
 machine learning to adapt to new circumstances and to detect and
extrapolate patterns.
• However, other researchers have proposed a total Turing test, which
requires interaction with objects and people in the real world. To
pass the total Turing test, a robot will need
 computer vision and speech recognition to perceive the world;
 robotics to manipulate objects and move about.
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Thinking humanly: The cognitive modeling
approach
• This view involves trying to understand human thought and an effort
to build machines that emulate the human thought process.
• To say that a program thinks like a human, we must know how
humans think.
• We can learn about human thought in three ways:
 introspection—trying to catch our own thoughts as they go by;
 psychological experiments—observing a person in action;
 brain imaging—observing the brain in action

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 Thinking rationally: The “laws of thought”
approach
• The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to codify “right thinking”—
that is, irrefutable reasoning processes.
• Logicians of the 19th century also developed logic and laws of thought that deals with studies
of ideal or rational thought process and inference
• The emphasis in this case is on the inferencing mechanism, and its properties
• That is how the system arrives at a conclusion or the reasoning behind its selection of actions
• What is important here is the soundness and completeness of the inference mechanisms

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 Acting rationally: The rational agent
approach
• This approach deals with building machines that act rationally.
• Of course, all computer programs do something, but computer agents are expected to do
more:
 Operate autonomously,
 perceive their environment,
 persist over a prolonged time period,
 adapt to change, and
 create and pursue goals.
• A rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the best outcome or, when there is
uncertainty, the best expected outcome.

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AI History

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AI History

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 The state of the Art
• (Stone et al., 2016; Grosz and Stone, 2018) in their 2016 report concluded that “Substantial
increases in the future uses of AI applications, including more self-driving cars, healthcare
diagnostics and targeted treatment, and physical assistance for elder care can be expected”
and that “Society is now at a crucial juncture in determining how to deploy AI-based
technologies in ways that promote rather than hinder democratic values such as freedom,
equality, and transparency.”

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 What AI can do Today
• Perhaps not as much as some of the more optimistic media articles might lead one to
believe, but still a great deal.
• Here are some examples:
 ROBOTIC VEHICLES (Drones, self driving vehicles)
 Legged locomotion (BigDog)
 AUTONOMOUS PLANNING AND SCHEDULING (NASA`s Mars rovers)
 MACHINE TRANSLATION (Online machine translation systems)
 SPEECH RECOGNITION (Skype, Cortana, Google)
 RECOMMENDATIONS (Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, youtube)
 Game Playing
 Image understanding
 Medicine
 Climate Science (detailed infor about extreme weather events)
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 What AI Cannot do yet
• Understand natural language robustly (e.g read and understand articles in a newspaper)
• Interpret an arbitrary visual scene
• Learn a natural language
• Construct plans in dynamic real-time domains
• Exhibit true autonomy and intelligence

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 Risks and benefits of AI
• LETHAL AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS: These are defined by the United Nations as
weapons that can locate, select, and eliminate human targets without human
intervention.
• SURVEILLANCE AND PERSUASION: security personnel to monitor phone lines,
video camera feeds, emails, and other messaging channels
• BIASED DECISION MAKING: Careless or deliberate misuse of machine learning
algorithms for tasks such as evaluating parole and loan applications can result in
decisions that are biased by race, gender, or other protected categories.
• IMPACT ON EMPLOYMENT: Concerns about machines eliminating jobs
• SAFETY-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS:As AI techniques advance, they are increasingly
used in high-stakes, safety-critical applications such as driving cars and managing
the water supplies of cities.
• CYBERSECURITY: AI techniques are useful in defending against cyberattack, for
example by detecting unusual patterns of behavior, but they will also contribute
to the potency, survivability, and proliferation capability of malware.

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End

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