overview of AI

What is AI?
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of Science which deals with helping machines find solutions to complex problems in a more human-like fashion.
• This generally involves borrowing characteristics from human intelligence, and applying them as algorithms in a computer friendly way.
• A more or less flexible or efficient approach can be taken depending on the requirements established, which influences how artificial the intelligent behavior appears
• Artificial intelligence can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.
? From the perspective of intelligence artificial intelligence is making machines "intelligent" -- acting as we would expect people to act.
o The inability to distinguish computer responses from human responses is called the Turing test.
o Intelligence requires knowledge
o Expert problem solving - restricting domain to allow including significant relevant knowledge
? From a business perspective AI is a set of very powerful tools, and methodologies for using those tools to solve business problems.
? From a programming perspective, AI includes the study of symbolic programming, problem solving, and search.
o Typically, AI programs focus on symbols rather than numeric processing.
o Problem solving - achieve goals.
o Search - seldom access a solution directly. Search may include a variety of techniques.
o AI programming languages include:
? LISP, developed in the 1950s, is the early programming language strongly associated with AI. LISP is a functional programming language with procedural extensions. LISP (LISt Processor) was specifically designed for processing heterogeneous lists -- typically a list of symbols. Features of LISP are run- time type checking, higher order functions (functions that have other functions as parameters), automatic memory management (garbage collection) and an interactive environment.
? PROLOG, PROLOG was developed in the 1970s. PROLOG is based on first order logic. PROLOG is declarative in nature and has facilities for explicitly limiting the search space.
? Object-oriented languages are a class of languages more recently used for AI programming. Important features of object-oriented languages include: concepts of objects and messages, objects bundle data and methods for manipulating the data, sender specifies what is to be done receiver decides how to do it, inheritance (object hierarchy where objects inherit the attributes of the more general class of objects). Examples of object-oriented languages are Smalltalk, Objective C, C++. Object oriented extensions to LISP (CLOS - Common LISP Object System) and PROLOG (L&O - Logic & Objects) are also used.