Portal:Artificial intelligence
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial (non-natural, man-made) entity. Although "AI" has a strong sci-fi connotation, it forms a vital branch of computer science, dealing with intelligent behavior in machines. When an AI system is embodied in its working environment and interacts with and learns from it, it becomes known as an Intelligent Agent (IA).
AI divides into two schools of thought. Many definitions describe this segregation differently, but all roughly convey the same idea:
- Conventional AI (symbolic AI / logical AI / neat AI): distinguished by formalism, statistical analysis, definitions and proof. Machine learning has become associated primarily with conventional AI. It includes expert systems and case based reasoning. Also see semantics.
- Computational Intelligence (CI) (non-symbolic AI / scruffy AI, soft computing): recognized for its informal, non-statistical and often trial-and-error approaches. Learning is usually an iterative process of connectionist system parameter tuning, based on empirical data. CI subdivides into 3 main sections: Neural networks, Fuzzy systems and Evolutionary computation. This research overlaps with a-life, cognitive science, cybernetics & robotics. Many hybrid intelligent systems have also appeared. Read more...
As with any attempt by the (human) mind to understand itself, Artificial Intelligence ('AI') has enough confusing questions at the fundamental, conceptual level to warrant philosophical as well as scientific work. Much of this work, of course, intersects with topics from the philosophy of mind, but there are also philosophical topics more particular to AI. For example:
- What is intelligence? How would we recognize whether something inhuman had it (or something human, for that matter?)?
- What kind of material and organization is required? Is it even possible for a creature made of metal, for example, to have intelligence comparable to a human's?
- Even if non-organic creatures had problem-solving capabilities like a human's, could it have consciousness and emotions?
A common theme in science fiction, AI is often portrayed as a burgeoning force vying for power against humanity as in The Terminator, Colossus: the Forbin Project, or The Matrix; or as subservient race like C-3PO, Data, AI, Bicentennial Man, I Robot & Marvin. See fictional computers & fictional robots.
The inevitability of the emergence of AI as a global and/or universal force has also been suggested and portrayed by writers such as Asimov, Warwick, Iain Banks, Vernor Vinge and more.
See the work of Turing and his Turing test, Wiener & Minsky of MIT, IBM's Deep Blue, and headings under Artificial intelligence. Read more...
Researchers who have made a considerable contribution through multiple significant publications (which are not listed elsewhere) are listed here:
Hinton - McCarthy - Aleksander - Papert - Zadeh - Selfridge - Pearl - Brooks - Schank - Winograd - Pfeifer - Hendler - Pal - Boden - Kasabov
An artificial neural network (ANN), also called a simulated neural network (SNN) (but the term neural network (NN) is grounded in biology and refers to very real, highly complex plexus), is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical or computational model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation. There is no precise agreed definition among researchers as to what a neural network is, but most would agree that it involves a highly complex network of simple processing elements (neurons), where the global behaviour is determined by the connections between the processing elements and element parameters. Since anything approaching a full appreciation of neuronal function remains a distant dream, and since the factors producing global output result from many non-linear, modulating, and poorly understood real-time feedback signals within a single neuron, the highly linear artificial networks (where 'neurons' are modeled as input/output nodes) are perceived as academic research tools rather than even a distant representation of brain function. Read More...
- December 13 : A Southampton University team has created an artificial hand emulating an improved sense of touch - that allows it to seize an object without dropping or crushing it.
- November 25 : A spider-like robot built by University of Vermont researchers manages to adapt to new conditions - like physical damage - by maintaining a real-time model of itself.
...that Richard Wallace is the creator of the AIML language, a XML variant which powered the three-time Loebner prize-winning A.L.I.C.E chatterbot?
...that Belle was the first chess computer that was built - by Bell Labs - only for that particular purpose, and was also the first machine to achieve a 2200 Elo rating, therefore being the very first chess master-level computer?
...that the tendency to deprecate the usefulness of some human abilities after advances in artificial intelligence and robotics allows embodied agents to master these abilities is called the AI effect?
