Thoughts Over AI
AI in General
Here I'm going to give a short explanation what AI (short for Artificial Intelligence) is. I won't be too specific nor philosophical, but point out what is AI in my experience and show some of the fields of AI that I'm interested in most. For a brider and in many ways more detailed view on artificial intelligence I refer to Artificial Intelligence: A modern Approach [RN03] or to Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving [L02]. Never the less I'd like to spent some thoughts about what AI is.
What is AI?
To give an answer on this question we have to define what intelligence is whether it is artificial or not. Unfortunately this isn't very easy. Philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and AI-researchers have searched for decades and longer to provide an answer to what intelligence is.
The problem of defining intelligence can easily be seen if we look at living creatures. We all would consider us humans as generally intelligent. Although we have to admit that we are not perfect in solving problems that require intelligence. Not everybody is a chess grandmaster nor does everybody understand the theory of relativity. Inferring logical conclusions is not everybody's strength, but none the less we would consider also an irrational acting person as intelligent (there maybe a few exceptions). We would also consider a chimpanzee intelligent. And if we see how crows on islands for New Zealand make complex tools to get their food, we cannot deny to see a certain amount of intelligence in the way they act. Probably nobody would see intelligence in the behaviour of flies. But what about bees? They communicate by complex dances with the members of their hive. Is this intelligence or instinct (a "programmed" behaviour)? Or what about fish. Most people would not think of fish as an intelligent being. But an experienced angler might well see signs of intelligence in the behaviour of fish. And marine biologists can probably tell us about a lot intelligent behaving fish species. So where is the border between intelligent life and unintelligent?
Since I don't have a good answer to this question, too, I will leave this question open. None the less I will discuss some ideas howto define (artificial) intelligence.
In literature we find definitions of artificial intelligence that
can be classified by four different categories:
1. Systems thinking like humans.
2. Systems acting like humans.
3. Systems thinking rational.
4. Systems acting rational.
Machine Learning
Subsymbolic Methods
Genetic Programming
Artificial Neural Networks
Literature
[L02] George F. Luger. Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving. 4th edition. Perason Education Limited. 2002.
[RN03] Stuart Russel, Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A modern Approach. 2nd edition. Pearson Education Inc. 2003.