AI Definitions

• The study of how to make programs/computers do

things that people do better
• The study of how to make computers solve problems Thinking
which require knowledge and intelligence machines or
• The exciting new effort to make computers think … machine
machines with minds intelligence
• The automation of activities that we associate with
human thinking (e.g., decision-making, learning…)
• The art of creating machines that perform functions
that require intelligence when performed by people Studying
• The study of mental faculties through the use of cognitive
computational models faculties
• A field of study that seeks to explain and emulate
intelligent behavior in terms of computational
processes Problem
• The branch of computer science that is concerned Solving and
with the automation of intelligent behavior CS
 What is Intelligence?
• Is there a “holistic” definition for intelligence?
• Here are some definitions:
– the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from
experience
– a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason,
plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and
language, and learn
– is effectively perceiving, interpreting and responding to the
environment
• None of these tells us what intelligence is but we can
enumerate a list of elements that intelligence must perform
– perceive, reason, solve problems, learn/adapt, common
sense, analogy, recall, intuition, emotional states,
achieve self-awareness
• Which of these are necessary for intelligence? Which are
sufficient?
• Artificial Intelligence – should we define this in terms of
human intelligence?
Physical Symbol System Hypothesis
• A physical symbol system (PSS)
– consists of symbols (patterns) which are combinable into
expressions
– there are processes which operate on these symbols to create
new symbols and expressions
• English is a physical symbol system: symbols are the alphabet,
expressions are words and sentences
• The PSS Hypothesis states that a PSS has the necessary
and sufficient means for intelligent action
– a computer is a PSS
– if the PSS Hypothesis is true, then it should be
possible to program a computer to produce
intelligent actions
– this is the (or a) goal of AI
• if the PSS Hypothesis is not true, what are the consequences for AI?
 The Turing Test
• 1950 – Alan Turing
devised a test for
intelligence called the
Imitation Game
– Ask questions of two
Questions
entities, receive answers Answers Answers
from both
– If you can’t tell which of
the entities is human and
which is a computer
program, then you are Which is the person?
fooled and we should Which is the computer?
 Solving the Turing Test: Eliza
• Created by Joseph Weizenbaum
• This system would act like a Rogerian
psychoanalyst by holding a dialog with a person
– the dialog would be consist of the doctor (Eliza)
asking questions, the human responding, and the
doctor using the response to ask another question
• Weizenbaum wrote the program so that it would
generate an English response/question based on
a group of patterns
– If the user sentence matched a pattern, this pattern
would be used to generate the next sentence/question
– A more recent, and much superior version is called
– H: Men are all alike
– E: In what way?
– H: They’re always bugging us about something or
another.
– E: Can you be more specific? Example
– H: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.
– E: Your boyfriend made you come here? Eliza
– H: He says I’m depressed much of the time.
– E: I am sorry to hear you are depressed.
Dialog
– H: It’s true. I am unhappy.
– E: Do you think coming here will help you not to be
unhappy?
– H: I need some help, that much seems certain.
– E: What would it mean to you if you got some help?
– H: Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.
– E: Tell me more about your family
(?* ?x) hello (?* ?y) 
(How do you do. Please state your problem.)
(?* ?x) I want (?* ?y) 
(What would it mean if you got ?y)
(Why do you want ?y)
(Suppose you got ?y soon)
(?* ?x) if (?* ?y)  Eliza
(Do you really think its likely that ?y)
(Do you wish that ?y) Rules
(What do you think about ?y) (Really-- if ?y)
(?* ?x) no (?* ?y)  (Why not?)
(You are being a bit negative) Eliza also has a
(Are you saying "NO" just to be negative?) rule to swap
(?* ?x) I was (?* ?y)  (Were you really?) ‘I’ and ‘my’
(Perhaps I already knew you were ?y) to ‘you’ and ‘your’
(Why do you tell me you were ?y now?)
(?* ?x) I feel (?* ?y)  (Do you often feel ?y ?)
(?* ?x) I felt (?* ?y) 
(What other feelings do you have?)
 Eliza Pattern Syntax
pat  var match any one expression to a variable
constant or to a constant (see below)
segment-pat match against a sequence
single-pat match against one expression
(pat . pat) match the first and the rest of a list
single-pat 
(?is var predicate) test predicate on one expression
(?or pat1 pat2 …) match on any of the patterns
(?and pat1 pat2 …) match on every of the expressions
(?not pat) match if expression does not match
segment-pat 
((?* var) …) match on zero or more expressions
((?+ var) …) match on one or more expressions
((?? var) …) match zero or one expression
((?if expr) …) test if expression is true
var  ?chars variables of the form ?name
constant  atom symbols, numbers, chars
 Scripts
• The other structured representation developed by Schank
(along with Abelson) is the script
– a description of the typical actions that are involved in a
typical situation
• they defined a script for going to a restaurant
– scripts provide an ability for default reasoning when
information is not available that directly states that an action
occurred
– so we may assume, unless otherwise stated, that a diner at a
restaurant was served food, that the diner paid for the food, and
that the diner was served by a waiter/waitress
• A script would contain
– entry condition(s) and results (exit conditions)
– actors (the people involved)
– props (physical items at the location used by the actors)
– scenes (individual events that take place)
• The script would use the 11 ACTs from CD theory
Restaurant Script
• The script does not
contain atypical actions
– although there are options
such as whether the
customer was pleased or
not
• There are multiple paths
through the scenes to
make for a robust script
– what would a “going to the
movies” script look like?
would it have similar
props, actors, scenes? how
about “going to class”?
 Knowledge Groups
• One of the drawbacks of the knowledge
representations demonstrated thus far is that all
knowledge is grouped into a single, large
collection of representations
– the rules taken as a whole for instance don’t denote what
rules should be used in what circumstance
• Another approach is to divide the representations
into logical groupings
– this permits easier design, implementation, testing and
debugging because you know what that particular group is
supposed to do and what knowledge should go into it
• it should be noted that by distributing the knowledge, we
might use different problem solving agents for each set of
knowledge so that the knowledge is stored using different
representations
 Knowledge Sources and Agents
• Which leads us to the idea of having multiple
problem solving agents
– each agent is responsible for solving some specialized
type of problem(s) and knows where to obtain its own
input
– each agent has its own knowledge sources, some
internal, some external
• since external agents may have their own forms of
representation, the agent must know
– how to find the proper agents
– how to properly communicate with these other agents
– how to interpret the information that it receives from these
agents
– how to recover from a situation where the expected agent(s)
is/are not available
 What is an Agent?
• Agents are interactive problem solvers that have these
properties
– situated – the agent is part of the problem solving environment
– it can obtain its own input from its environment and it can
affect its environment through its output
– autonomous – the agent operates independently of other agents
and can control its own actions and internal states
– flexible – the agent is both responsive and proactive – it can go
out and find what it needs to solve its problem(s)
– social – the agent can interact with other agents including
humans
• Some researchers also insist that agents have
– mobility – have the ability to move from their current
environment to a new environment (e.g., migrate to another
processor)
– delegation – hand off portions of the problem to other agents
– cooperation – if multiple agents are tasked with the same
problem, can their solutions be combined?