Artificial Intelligence - ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.

Human intelligence is characterized by a combination of many diverse abilities:

• learning
• reasoning
• problem solving
• perception
• language

Reasoning

• ability to draw inferences appropriate to the situation

  • deductive - common in mathematics and logic, where elaborate structures of irrefutable theorems are built up from a small set of basic axioms and rules

    Fred must be in either the museum or the cafe. He is
    not in the cafe; therefore he is in the museum.
    

  • inductive - common in science where data is collected and tentative models are developed to describe and predict future behaviour

    Previous accidents of this sort were caused by
    instrument failure; therefore this accident was caused by
    instrument failure.
    

Problem Solving

• is a systematic search through a range of possible actions in order to reach some predefined goal or solution
  • special purpose: tailor-made for a particular problem, often exploits very specific features of the situation in which the problem is embedded
  • general purpose: is applicable to a wide variety of problems

Examples of problems solved:

• finding the sequence of moves in a board game
• devising mathematical proofs
• manipulating “virtual objects” in a computer generated world

Perception

• the environment is scanned and the scene is decomposed into separate objects in various spatial relationships.
• analysis is complicated because an object may appear different depending on:
  • the angle from which it’s viewed
  • the direction and intensity of illumination in the scene
  • how much the object contrasts with the surrounding field

Able to identify individuals, autonomous vehicles to drive at moderate speeds on the open road, and robots to roam through building collecting empty soda cans

Language

• a system of signs having meaning by convention
• a productive language can formulate an unlimited variety of sentences