ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

"cogito, ergo sum"

("I think, therefore I am.")

- Descartes

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. A person's notion of himself as a living, conscious being is intimately

linked to his notion of brains and thought. "Cogito, ergo sum," said Descartes -

"I think, therefore I am" - basing the proof of his very existence on his

awareness of his own mental processes.

2. The debate over the essence of human rationality is literally thousands

of years old. Plato and Aristotle were among the first to divide human

capabilities into two distinct areas: the physical body and the rational mind.

3. What is the nature of the brain? Can thought, feelings and emotions

be represented by a set of rules that can be reproduced in a machine? Is the

brain nothing more than an incredibly sophisticated computer?

4. The mechanistic view is the belief that the workings of the mind can

be described in terms of the electro-chemical functioning of the brain.

Containing about 100 billion cells with complex interrelations that are still only

dimly understood, the brain would have to be considered an extraordinarily

intricate machine composed of living material.

5. Is the development of intelligent machines just a matter of achieving a

 2
more complete understanding of the workings of this "living" machine and

programming a computing machine accordingly? Will a computer so

programmed not just simulate intelligence - not just appear to be intelligent -

but actually be intelligent in the same sense that people are intelligent? Will a

computer someday be able to say "Computo, ergo sum"?

6. No matter what the scientists may say, many people instinctively feel

that the workings of the human mind can never be programmed into a machine

and that no computer will ever have a mind of its own. While conceding that

someday it may be possible to programme a computer so that it appears to be

intelligent, it is difficult to accept the proposition that a machine can actually be

made to think in the sense that people think, to understand information rather

than just process data.

 CHAPTER II

METHODOLOGY

1Statement of the Problem

7. This paper seeks to study the feasibility of creating intelligence

artificially and to examine to what extent current developments in the field

have been successful.

2Justification for the Study

8. The last few decades have witnessed extremely rapid growth in

computer sciences. Human beings have already excelled at creating machines

that have out-performed them in terms of physical ability, and have greatly

enhanced their capabilities. Man's quest for developing more and more

sophisticated machines, would reach its ultimate goal if he were able to create

machines that could actually think for themselves. Intelligent machines would

be able to perform tasks hitherto beyond his imagination. This dream of being

able to make a thinking machine, coupled with the invention of computers, has

led to a lot of research into developing artificial intelligence. It has also led to

speculation, some of it based on fact and some verging on fantasy, as to what

the limits of man's achievements in this field might be. This study has been

prompted by an interest to understand the developments that have taken place

in this field and make a realistic assessment of the feasibility of creating

intelligence artificially.
1Scope

9. This study concentrates on the various interpretations of what

artificial intelligence means; the concepts, developments and applications, and

whether computers have the potential to be intelligent. Mathematical

representations and derivations of various concepts have been deliberately

excluded.

2Operational Definitions

10. The special terms used in this dissertation are defined below :-

(a) Algorithm. A step-by-step procedure with well defined

starting and ending points, which is guaranteed to reach a solution to a

specific problem.

(b) Heuristic. A rule-of-thumb approach that provides a

procedure for attempting to solve a problem. Heuristic approaches do

not guarantee solutions to specific problems. The use of heuristics

drastically limits the search for solutions in large problem spaces.

(c) Robot. An electro-mechanical device that can be

programmed to perform manual tasks.

(d) Expert System. A computer system designed to emulate the

reasoning processes of human experts in a particular domain.

(e) Knowledge Engineer. An artificial intelligence specialist

who is skilled in the art of developing expert systems.

(f) Domain Expert. An individual who has significant expertise

in the domain of the expert system being developed.

1Methods of Data Collection

11. The sources of information for this dissertation were reference

books, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, books on artificial intelligence, pamphlets,

computer magazines and newspaper articles. A bibliography of the sources

referred to is appended at the end of the dissertation.

2Organisation of the Dissertation

12. It is proposed to study the subject in the following manner :-

(a) Chapter III: The Meaning of Artificial Intelligence. Chapter

III analyses some of the accepted definitions of artificial intelligence in

an attempt to arrive at an understanding of its scope and meaning as a

subject.

(b) Chapter IV: Research in Artificial Intelligence. Chapter IV

examines the various areas in which research in artificial intelligence has

taken place so as to understand what goals researchers have set for

themselves and assess what the goals of research in the field have been.

(c) Chapter V: Criteria for Judging Artificial Intelligence. In

Chapter V an attempt is made to examine some of the criteria that have

been laid down for judging any success that may be achieved in the

field of artificial intelligence. This is essential if artificial intelligence is

to be recognised if and when it is developed.

(d) Chapter VI: Potential Techniques and Theories. Chapter VI

examines some of the techniques and theories that currently seem to

show promise of lying on the path to future success.

(e) Chapter VII: Developments in the Field of Artificial

Intelligence. Chapter VII looks at the major projects that have been

undertaken world-wide, and their goals.

(f) Chapter VIII: Military and Civil Applications. In Chapter

VIII an attempt has been made to look into the future and visualise the

potential for artificial intelligence to be applied in, both, military and

civilian fields.

(g) Chapter IX: Conclusion. The dissertation concludes by

taking stock of the aspects already discussed, summing up what

actually qualifies as intelligence and trying to assess whether machines

will ever possess this faculty.

 CHAPTER III

THE MEANING OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

1The Meaning of Intelligence

13. The Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary defines the word,

'intelligent', as "having intellect (the mind, in reference to its rational powers:

the thinking principle): endowed with the faculty of reason: alert, bright, quick

of mind: well informed: cognisant: bringing intelligence (intellectual skill or

knowledge: mental brightness)".

14. The word 'intelligence' is defined as "the ability to reason, to trigger

new thoughts and to perceive and learn".1

15. Scientists carrying out research in the field of artificial intelligence

are trying to develop machines that will posses these attributes. This requires a

clear understanding of what is meant by intelligence and what it is that makes

human beings intelligent. The following characteristics are suggested by

Douglas Hofstadter in a list of "essential abilities for intelligence"2

(a) To respond to situations very flexibly. (This implies not

responding the same way every time. If the response were to be the

same every time that would be mechanical rather than intelligent

behaviour.)

(b) To make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages.

(Knowledge and experience are essential ingredients that allow them to

be placed in context.)

(c) To recognise the relative importance of different elements of

1
Janakiraman, V.S. et al. Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. New Delhi,

Macmillan India Limited, 1993, p.4.

2
Godel, et al. An Eternal Golden Braid, New-York, Vintage,1980, p.26.
 a situation.

(d) To find similarities between situations despite differences

which may separate them. (Two situations do not have to be identical

for the lessons of experience to be applicable.)

(e) To draw distinctions between situations despite similarities

which may link them. (These differences lead to reactions being

adjusted accordingly.)

16. These abilities all come very easily to people. In fact, they are often

grouped under the heading of common sense, implying that there is nothing

special about them and they are in fact common.

2Some Definitions of Artificial Intelligence

17. It would be easier to understand artificial intelligence if a concise

and generally accepted definition were available; unfortunately there is

disagreement within the field itself as to exactly what constitutes artificial

intelligence. Some definitions of artificial intelligence are discussed in the

subsequent paragraphs.

18. One of the most widely accepted definitions of artificial intelligence

is that it is:

"The study of how to make computers do things which, at

the moment, people do better."3

19. As per this definition, the constituents of artificial intelligence are

not constant but are linked to the current state of computer science. The

phrase, "at the moment...", in this definition, implies that, when an artificial
3
Rich, Elaine et al. Artificial Intelligence. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company

Limited, 1991, p. 3.
 intelligence technology is developed to an extent that humans no longer out-

perform computers, that technology ceases to fall under its purview.

20. A look at the activities in which computers can out-perform human

beings shows that these are all mechanical mental activities. They include:

(a) Numerical computation.

(b) Information storage and processing.

(c) Repetitive operations.

21. On the other hand, the activities in which human beings can, at the

moment, out-perform computers include:

(a) Activities involving intelligence.

(b) Understanding information (as opposed to processing it).

22. Living beings that display intelligence "make sense out of what they

see and hear; and come up with new ideas seemingly out of thin air, using

common sense to make their way through a world that sometimes seems highly

illogical".4 It is, therefore, these activities that researchers in the field of

artificial intelligence try to analyse.

4
Mishkoff, Henry C. Understanding Artificial Intelligence. New Delhi, B.P.B. Publications, 1986, p.4
 23. Another definition states that :

"Artificial Intelligence is the part of computer science

concerned with designing intelligent computer systems, that is,

systems that exhibit the characteristics we associate with

intelligence in human behaviour."5

24. According to this definition, the goal is to develop intelligent

computers or, in other words, computers that emulate intelligent behaviour in

humans. The definition does not specify whether this demonstration of

characteristics associated with intelligence in human behaviour must be

modelled on the same processes as followed by the human mind or whether it

is enough to simulate intelligent behaviour by any means. There is considerable

debate and disagreement on this aspect.

25. There is a school of researchers who believe that the approach

should be to determine the process used by humans to produce a particular

type of intelligent behaviour, and then simulate that process on a computer.

This is called modelling or simulation.

26. One definition that takes this approach is that artificial intelligence

is:

"Developing computer programmes to solve complex

problems by applications of processes that are analogous to human

reasoning processes."6

27. On the other hand, there is a school of thought that says that, even if

the processes are different, if intelligent behaviour is simulated by any means, it

qualifies as artificial intelligence.

5
Ibid.

6
Janakiraman. Loc.cit.
 28. The definitions discussed so far have concentrated on the

comparison between the abilities of humans and the abilities of computers.

Some definitions focus on the difference between programming techniques

used in artificial intelligence and more conventional methods of programming.

It is proposed to consider two of these definitions. The first is:

"Artificial Intelligence is that branch of computer science

dealing with symbolic, nonalgorithmic methods of problem

solving."7

29. This definition focuses on two characteristics of computer

programmes:

(a) Numeric Vs Symbolic. Computers were originally

designed to process numbers. As opposed to this humans tend to think

symbolically rather than numerically; and human intelligence seems to

be based, in part, on the mental ability to manipulate symbols, rather

than just numbers.

(b) Algorithmic Vs Non-algorithmic. Computers are good at

solving problems that can be reduced to an algorithm. Many human

reasoning processes tend to be non-algorithmic.

30. Another definition is:

"Artificial Intelligence is the branch of computer

science that deals with ways of representing knowledge using

symbols rather than numbers and with rules-of-thumb, or

heuristic, methods for processing information."8

31. This definition introduces the concept of heuristic processing.

Human beings use heuristics to help them decide what to do. This precludes
7
Bruce G. Buchanan et al. Rule-Based Expert Systems. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley, 1984, p.3.
8
Bruce G Buchanan, The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
 the requirement of having to completely rethink every problem with which one

is faced. Heuristic programming incorporates this same rule-of-thumb

approach into the process of using artificial intelligence to solve problems with

computers.

32. Yet another definition states:

"In simplified terms, artificial intelligence works with

pattern matching methods which attempt to describe

objects, events, or processes in terms of their qualitative

features and logical and computational relationships." 9

33. Computers can collect information about objects, events, or

processes; and can organise large amounts of information more efficiently than

people can. People, however, instinctively discover relationships between

things. This definition focuses on the fact that this is the essence of intelligence.

It is very difficult to programme this into a computer.

34. In the absence of an accepted definition of artificial intelligence, one

useful way to understand it is to look at the areas of research that are being

conducted by people who consider themselves to be working in this field.

9
Brattle Research Corporation. Artificial Intelligence and Fifth Generation Computer Technologies,
Boston, p.5.
 CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

1Areas of Research

35. The activities that come most naturally to people are actually the

most difficult to simulate on a computer. This is because, if an activity comes

so naturally that people don't have to think about it at all, they may have great

difficulty in describing exactly how they did it. The more difficult a task is for

human beings, the more deliberate and conscious thought has to be devoted to

it. If the precise steps that are necessary to produce a certain result are known;

as they are in most cases of conscious thought, it may not be difficult to

programme those steps into a computer. Research in the field of cognitive

science is of great interest to researchers trying to simulate intelligence on a

computer.

36. Some of the areas in which artificial intelligence related research is

being carried out include:

(a) Expert Systems.

(b) Natural Language Processing.

(c) Speech Recognition.

(d) Computer Vision.

(e) Robotics.

(f) Intelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction.

(g) Automatic Programming.

(h) Planning and Decision Support.

2EXPERT SYSTEMS
 2

37. Expert systems have begun to attract an enormous amount of

attention because of their practical applications and commercial potential. They

are currently designed to assist experts and not to replace them. Subjects like

medical diagnosis, chemical analysis, geological exploration and computer

system configuration are suitable areas for the development of expert systems.

38. They usually consists of a sizeable knowledge base, consisting of

facts, and heuristics for applying those facts. As opposed to a database

programme which merely retrieves facts, an expert system uses reasoning to

draw conclusions from stored facts. Although they vary in their design, most

expert systems have a knowledge base, an inference engine and a user

interface.

(a) Knowledge Base. It is considered vital that, if an expert

system is to give intelligent advice about a particular domain, it must

have access to as much domain knowledge as possible. The component

of an expert system that contains the system's knowledge is called it's

knowledge base.10

(b) Inference Engine. Since just having a knowledge base does

not make an expert system intelligent, the system must have a

component that directs the implementation of knowledge. This is

known as the inference engine. The inference engine controls how and

when the information in the knowledge base is applied, by deciding

which heuristic search techniques are used to determine how the rules

in the knowledge base are to be applied to the problem. It also

determines when an acceptable solution has been found.

(c) User Interface. This is the component of the

expert system that communicates with the user. The user must be able

10
A knowledge base contains both declarative knowledge (facts about objects, events and situations)
and procedural knowledge (information about courses of action). Depending on the form of
knowledge representation chosen, the two types of knowledge may be separate or integrated.
 to describe his problem to the expert system, and the system must be

able to respond with its recommendations. The user may also want to

ask the system to explain its "reasoning," or the system may request

additional information from the user.

(d) Most user interfaces make heavy use of natural language

processing techniques, allowing the user and the computer to

communicate in a commonly understood language, such as English.

Typically, communication with an expert system is in a question and

answer format, which makes the system easy to use.

39. Knowledge engineers and domain experts work together for the

development of an expert system. The domain expert provides the information

for the knowledge base11 and the knowledge engineer selects the development

techniques to be used for the expert system. If a rule-based system is being

developed, the knowledge engineer develops a set of rules for the domain

expert to review.12 A prototype of the expert system is then developed and

tested to see if the correct techniques were chosen. The knowledge engineer

11
To facilitate formalisation, researchers are looking for ways to reduce the amount of time required
to enter the information into the knowledge base. This however remains a relatively complex process.
The goal of simpler development tools is to enable the domain expert to create the knowledge base
himself. With automatic knowledge acquisition, the computer may one day be able to include
information from books in the knowledge base automatically, and with computer learning a computer
could discover and add new facts to its knowledge base.
12
Rule-based vs. Model-based Expert Systems. Most expert systems are rule-based, i.e.,
knowledge is represented as a series of production rules. This is because this technology is relatively
well developed. However, other approaches to expert systems are being investigated, and one of the
most promising is the model-based expert system. Model-based expert systems are especially useful
in diagnosing equipment problems or "troubleshooting". Unlike rule-based systems which are based
on human expertise, model-based systems are based on knowledge of the structure and behaviour of
the devices they are designed to "understand". In effect, a model-based expert system includes a
"model" of a device that can be used to identify the causes of the device's failure. Although it remains
largely experimental, the model-based approach looks very promising for expert systems designed for
diagnosis and repair.
40. revises the structure and implementation of the expert system until

the system provides solutions as valid as those of a human expert.

41. Expert systems have been developed in a variety of domains, such as

medical diagnosis, teaching arithmetic, analysing chemicals, solving

mathematical problems, planning experiments in molecular genetics, searching

for mineral and oil deposits, developing rule-based expert systems and

producing job shop schedules for factories.

2NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

42. The goal of natural language processing is to enable people and

computers to communicate in a "natural" (human) language, such as English,

rather than in a computer language. The words would however still be typed

on paper or displayed on screen. This field is divided into two parts:

(a) Natural language understanding.

(b) Natural language generation.

2Natural Language Understanding

43. The goal of natural language understanding is to enable computers

to understand people well enough to perform an intended appropriate action.

Programming a computer to understand a natural language, such as English, is

difficult to accomplish because computers require more precision in

communicating than people do.

44. Research is also being conducted to make computers capable of

understanding printed text. While the technology for recognising scanned text

is already fairly well developed, computers are not very good at understanding

what it means and still cannot understand natural language as well as a typical
four-year-old child. Four problems that cause difficulties in natural language

understanding are:

(a) Ambiguity. Many of the things people say can be interpreted

in more than one way. This sometimes results in miscommunication

between people as well and is one of the primary problems in

programming computers to understand natural language. Some of the

problems leading to ambiguity are:

(i) Multiple Word Meanings. It is not uncommon for a

single word to have more than one meaning.

(ii) Syntactic Ambiguity. Problems are caused by

peculiarities in syntax, e.g., consider the sentence, "He hit the

man with the hammer." This could mean that the man he hit had

a hammer; or it could mean that he used a hammer to hit him.

Both interpretations are equally correct.

(iii) Unclear Antecedents. Pronouns are frequently

used in place of previously used nouns. This can create an

occasional ambiguity, as in the sentence, "John hit Bill because

he sympathised with Mary." Either John or Bill could be the

antecedent of "he". Either could be the one who sympathised

with Mary.

(b) Imprecision. People often express concepts with

vague and inexact terminology. For example, how long is "a long time".

Consider
 (c) the following sentences:

(i) "He has been waiting in the doctors office for a long

time."

(ii) "The crops died because it hadn't rained for a long

time."

(iii) "The dinosaurs ruled the earth a long time ago."

The phrase remains the same, and yet, the duration of time

represented in each is very different. Without the conceptual familiarity

that human beings possess, a computer would not be able to

differentiate between the three different lengths of time represented by

the same phrase. Concepts are often not described with precision. Ones

ability to understand what is being said may rely on ones familiarity

with a situation.

(d) Incompleteness. One does not always say all of what one

means. Because one shares common experiences with other people, one

can usually omit many details without fear of being misunderstood; one

assumes that one's listeners can "read between the lines". Consider the

following example:

"John went out to a restaurant last night. He ordered

steak. When he paid for it, he noticed that he was

running out of money."

Did John eat the steak? Although it is not stated explicitly in the

story, one would assume that he did. After all, why else should he pay

for it? To be able to comprehend incomplete information, a computer

must possess the same kind of situational expectations.

(e) Inaccuracy. Adding to the problems inherent in

 understanding correctly structured natural language is the problem that

natural language may often contain errors. People can usually

understand what they are told even if it does not adhere to certain rules

they know. A computer designed to understand natural language must

be able to understand inaccurate uses of language at least as well as a

person.

45. People overcome natural language problems through an

understanding of context, familiarity with situations, and expectations. One

important conclusion that can be drawn from investigating the ways in which

people understand natural language is that a great deal of knowledge is

frequently involved. The problems of natural language solving can only be

solved when these vast amounts of knowledge are put into computers and

computers develop the ability to handle this information at speeds that permit

them to communicate in real time.

46. Natural Language Understanding Techniques. Several

techniques are used to analyse text as preliminary steps in natural language

understanding. A programme may use one or more of these methods:

(a) Lexical Analysis. Words are looked up in a "dictionary" to

determine their meaning.

(b) Keyword Analysis. Key words in the text are found using

pattern-matching techniques. This is the simplest but most shallow

method of analysing the content of a sentence. Many important details

may be overlooked.

(c) Syntactic Analysis. Sentences are separated into their

component parts in order to analyse their form. This may be done

following a number of different parsing techniques.

(d) Semantic Analysis. Sentences are analysed based on their

meaning. One approach is to use grammars that describe how sentences

 can be constructed. This involves determining the grammatical meaning

of the sentence as a whole, rather than the meaning of its component

parts.

(e) Pragmatic Analysis.Possibly the most difficult task facing

researchers is determining what people really mean when they say

something. The real meaning of a sentence need not always be its

simple grammatical meaning.

2Natural Language Generation

47. Natural language generation is the area of natural language

processing research that is concerned with making it easier for people to

understand a computers output. There has been relatively little research

conducted in this area; possibly because it does not seem to be as pressing a

problem as natural language understanding.

48. A natural language generation programme has three basic

components:

(a) The programme must decide when to say something.

(b) The programme must decide what to say.

(c) The programme must decide how to say it.

49. All this makes natural language generation programmes even more

difficult to develop than natural language understanding ones.

50. Machine Translation. Machine translation is the area of

artificial intelligence research that is concerned with using a computer to

translate from one language to another, incorporating, both, natural language

understanding and natural language generation.

51. Early attempts at machine translation failed dismally because they

failed to recognise the fact that a machine cannot translate without first

understanding. They assumed that if the computer had access to lexical and

syntactic information about two different languages it would not be difficult to

translate text from one language to the other. One famous result of this

approach was that when the sentence, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is

weak.", was translated from English into Russian and back to English again by

the same programme, the resulting sentence was "The vodka is good, but the

meat is rotten."

52. The realisation that the machine has to "understand" what it is

translating has led to the following method being adopted:

(a) First, a natural language understanding programme reads and

analyses the text.

(b) Next, a natural language generation programme creates a

summary or paraphrase of the text.

(c) If the generation programme is designed to produce text in a

language other than English, the summary or paraphrase becomes the

translation of the original material.

1SPEECH PROCESSING

53. Research in speech processing aims at making computers

understand human speech. While natural language processing deals with

communication with computers by typing and reading in natural language,

speech recognition aims at making it possible to communicate with computers

by speaking to them. Speech processing consists of two fields:

(a) Speech Recognition. The recognition and

understanding of spoken language by a computer.

(b) Speech Synthesis. The generation of speech by a computer.

1Speech Recognition

54. Research is being conducted in the area of speech recognition so

that a computer can recognise the words one speaks and understand what they

mean. By synthesising speech, computers can speak to people. Determining

what is to be said is part of natural language processing research. Before

speech can be analysed by a speech recognition programme, it must be

converted from sound waves into speech patterns. Due to differences in

speakers and in context, speech patterns vary considerably. There is , therefore,

more to speech recognition than comparing pattern templates to words in a

dictionary to obtain their meaning.

55. Speech recognition researchers have developed two approaches to

research based on speaker dependence:

(a) Speaker-Dependant Recognition. A system designed to

recognise the speech of a particular person.

(b) Speaker-Independent Recognition.A system designed to

recognise the speech of any speaker. These are considerably more

difficult to implement.
56. Researchers have developed three approaches to speech recognition

based on differences in the way words are pronounced in different contexts:

(a) Isolated Word Recognition. A technique that uses

pattern-matching techniques to recognise words only when they are

spoken with short but distinct pauses between them, thus "isolating"

each word from any context. This is the easiest and, so far, the most

successful technique.

(b) Connected Word Recognition. A system designed to

recognise words spoken in normal context without noticeable pauses

between words. This requires more sophisticated techniques and

research in this technique is less advanced.

(c) Continuous Speech Recognition. A system designed to

understand speech in typical conversations of normal duration. In

addition to having to cope with all the problems faced in Connected

Word Recognition, Continuous Speech Recognition faces the "real-

time" problem of trying to process speech quickly enough to keep up

with the rapid pace of normal conversation. This is the most difficult

approach to speech recognition, and research has a long way to go

before this is achieved.

57. To help analyse speech signal patterns, words can be broken into

sounds based on syllables, phonemes or allophones.

1Speech Understanding

58. For computers to understand speech, they must select the most

likely meaning of what has been said from several possible interpretations.

Several techniques are used to make the selection. Some speech understanding

programmes begin with the first word in a sentence and attempt to interpret the

words in a sequence. Although this technique has been used successfully, it can
lead to problems if the first word happens to be misinterpreted. In another

technique, called island driving, the programme selects the words within a

sentence that are most likely to have been interpreted correctly. The

programme then tries to connect these "word islands" by selecting the most

likely interpretations of the remaining words in context with the previously

interpreted words. This approach is useful because some words (often the most

important ones, fortunately) are enunciated clearly, while other parts of the

sentence may be slurred.

1COMPUTER VISION

59. It is simple to attach a camera to a computer so that it can receive

images. It is far more difficult to make a computer that can understand what it

is seeing. The goal is to make computers that can see and understand their

surroundings. Currently one of the major uses for computer vision is in the

field of robotics.

60. A visual image received by a camera can be digitised and stored in a

computer as a matrix of individual dots called pixels. The accuracy of a

computer image can be increased by using a larger density of pixels, a process

that requires more computer memory. The main problem, however remains

making the computer recognise these pictures as images. While the human

brain interprets a densely arranged pattern of dots as a recognisable shape, e.g.,

the pictures one sees printed in newspapers; to a computer, a digitised image is

always just a group of dots. No matter how many pixels are used to form an

image, a computer cannot "step back" to gain a better perspective and

somehow recognise patterns.

61. To overcome this problem, artificial intelligence techniques are being

developed, in which computer vision systems analyse patterns to find visual

clues, that can help determine various features of an image. The clues include:

(a) Colour. Patterns of colour, or shades of grey, can help

identify the features of objects in a visual image. A computer has to be

made to analyse the shades of colour, the purity of colour and the

intensity of colour to get clues as to the nature of the object being

"seen".

(b) Depth. Humans perceive depth because of their

binocular vision. Using a similar process, images captured by two

cameras can be analysed by a computer to provide three-dimensional

information that is not available when a single camera is used.

(c) Texture. Changes in texture of a surface may be indicated

by variations in colour and, if the texture is sufficiently coarse, by

changes in depth. These changes may help to identify surfaces of

objects.

(d) Motion. Additional clues may be provided by motion of

either the camera or the object. A moving camera gets images of the

object from different angles. These can be analysed in the same way as

images from two cameras are analysed to get a three-dimensional

image. If the object is moving and the camera is stationary, the

foreground can be separated from the background and the features of

each can be analysed.

 62. Interpreting Visual Images. Once a digitised image has been

analysed, the difficult task of identifying the components of the image begins.

Several techniques are used. Of these the most common are:

(a) Edge Detection. In edge detection, a computer needs to

determine where an objects edges are in order to identify it; however

various factors make it difficult to recognise the edges:

(i) Some edges are not entirely distinct, and actually may

be quite blurred.

(ii) The boundary between colours on the same surface

of an object may be so distinct that a computer may have

difficulty distinguishing it from an edge.

(iii) A shadow may cause a change in shading without

necessarily signalling the edge of an object.

(iv) An object may include different planes at various

angles to the camera. Each plane may reflect a different shading

depending on the direction and strength of the light source.

(v) All the edges of an object may not be visible. All

portions of any three-dimensional object usually are not visible

from any one vantage point, and parts of objects are often

hidden from view by other objects.

(vi) Determining the orientation of a point where edges

meet is also a challenge.

The most successful artificial intelligence edge detection

techniques are those that have been developed for specific domains,

where the types of objects likely to be encountered are well

known in advance.
 (b) Model-Based Vision. In model-based vision systems,

the computer may use templates or descriptions of features to identify

an object. It has proven to be more effective in limited domains where

the vision system is expected to recognise a restricted number of

objects, however, even in limited domains model-based vision presents

several problems as the object must still be isolated using edge

detection and other techniques.

2ROBOTICS

63. Not all robotics is part of artificial intelligence. A robot that

performs only those actions that it has been programmed to perform is a

"dumb" robot. An "intelligent" robot includes some kind of sensory apparatus,

such as a camera, that allows it to respond to changes in the environment,

rather than just follow instructions "mindlessly".

64. Robotics is one of the technologies in which the most advances have

been made in terms of actual implementation in applications that solve real

problems. The vast majority of present-day robots have been programmed to

perform a variety of industrial tasks, such as spot welding, riveting, assembling,

spray painting, material handling and inspecting, testing and sorting of

products. They have proven to be most useful in the electronics and

automotive industries. Over half the world's industrial robots are in Japan.

65. Most robots consist of only an "arm" and a "hand". An intelligent

robot also includes a sensor device to tell it about its environment.

66. There are several different methods of controlling the trajectory

(motion) of a robot. Depending on the nature of its control technique, a robot

is classified as a non-servo robot or a servo robot. Non-servo robots may move

in a straight path until something physically blocks that path. Servo robots can

be given a path to follow by moving them along the path or by controlling

them with a computer. A number of computer languages have been developed

specifically for robotics. A servo robot is considered to be intelligent only if it

can alter its own trajectory in response to feedback from a sensing device, such

as a camera.

1INTELLIGENT COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION

67. This is an attempt to create computerised "tutors" that shape their

teaching techniques to fit the learning patterns of individual students.

1AUTOMATIC PROGRAMMING

68. The goal of automatic programming is to create special programmes

that act as intelligent tools to assist programmers and expedite the

programming process of design, writing, testing, debugging and evaluation.

The ultimate aim is to have a computer system that could develop programmes

by itself in response to specifications given by the user.

1PLANNING AND DECISION SUPPORT

69. The realisation of a complex goal may require the construction of a

formal and detailed plan. Intelligent planning programmes are designed to

provide active assistance in the planning process and are expected to be

particularly useful to managers with decision making responsibilities.

 1AN ASSESSMENT

70. All the research being carried out is an attempt to make computers

perform tasks that are presently considered to require human intelligence.

These include activities that are considered to require the senses of sight,

hearing and touch. An attempt is, therefore, being made to incorporate sensors

into computers so as to provide them with the appropriate inputs. Machines

then have to be programmed to process these inputs and respond to them in an

intelligent manner. There are also a number of activities that involve the

application of a vast amount of everyday knowledge, something which human

minds are quite adept at handling; but is difficult to programme into computers.

Activities such as natural language understanding and generation fall in this

category. As already covered, there are obstacles that have to be overcome

before machines can achieve a reasonable degree of proficiency in these fields.

71. The most striking aspect that emerges from most of the research

carried out, is that machines can only do what they are programmed to do.

Researchers are engaged in thinking of brilliant ways to make machines, which

posses neither human senses nor human brains, demonstrate human behaviour.
 CHAPTER V

CRITERIA FOR JUDGING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

2The Requirement for Criteria

72. So as to be able to recognise artificial intelligence if a machine that

is intelligent should ever be constructed, it is essential that suitable criteria be

established.

1The Turing Test

73. In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a method for determining whether a

machine can think. His method has since become known as the Turing test. To

conduct this test, one requires two people and the machine to be evaluated.

One person plays the role of the interrogator, who is in a separate room from

the computer and the other person. The interrogator can ask questions of

either the person or the computer by typing questions and receiving typed

responses. However, the interrogator knows them as only A and B and aims to

determine which is the person and which is the machine. The goal of the

machine is to fool the interrogator into believing that it is the person. If the

machine could succeed at this, then one would conclude that the machine could

think.

74. The more serious issue, though, is the amount of knowledge that a

machine would need to pass the Turing test. It will be a long time before a

computer passes this test. Some people believe that no machine ever will.
1Criticism of the Turing Test

75. A number of criticisms of the Turing test have been raised. These

include:

(a) Even if a machine were to pass the Turing test, there are

people who question the level of intelligence it has demonstrated. They

say it would be more correct to say that the intelligence demonstrated

was the intelligence of the programmer, as the machine would merely

be doing what it was programmed to do.

(b) An artificial intelligence researcher, Searle, proposed an

argument called the Chinese room argument to illustrate a major flaw in

the Turing test. According to this, Searle, who did not know Chinese

was to be locked into a room with a set of the Chinese alphabet. He

was to be provided with a small piece of text in Chinese, with

instructions in English that would correlate the first and second set of

symbols. Lastly, he was to be provided with a set of questions to be

answered; supported by instructions in English. Searle claimed that he

could manipulate the Chinese symbols in a very formal way and provide

satisfactory answers to people outside, thereby creating the illusion that

he knew Chinese. Actually what would be done would be a mere

manipulation of symbols without understanding what they were. Searle

argued that if a machine passes the Turing Test, and is assumed to be

intelligent, it would be behaving in the same fashion and manipulating

formal symbols without any understanding of what they meant.

1Other Criteria for Judging Successful Artificial Intelligence

76. While it may be a long time before a computer passes the Turing

test, it may often be possible to measure the achievement of artificial

intelligence in more restricted domains; provided one is willing to settle for a

less than complete imitation of a person. Some examples are :-

 (a) A programme that plays chess can be rated in the same way

as a human player. The rating is based on the ratings of players whom

the programme can beat.

(b) Some other programmes can be given ratings, even though

less precisely. DENDRAL is a programme that analyses organic

compounds to determine their structure. While it is hard to give such a

programme a precise rating, it has produced analyses that have been

published as original research results.

(c) In other technical domains it is possible to compare the time

it takes for a computer to complete a task to the time it takes for a

person to do the same thing. Such programmes are usually evaluated by

looking at whether they save (or make) money.

77. For many everyday tasks though it may be harder to measure a

programme's performance. For example, if one asks a programme to

paraphrase a newspaper story, the best way to rate its level of artificial

intelligence is usually just whether the programme responded in a way that a

person could have.

78. "While it may be difficult to say precisely whether a machine has

intelligence or can think, it is often possible to construct a computer

programme that meets some performance standard for a particular task. When
 79. one sets out to design an artificial intelligence programme, one

should attempt to specify, as well as possible, the criteria for success for that

particular programme functioning in its restricted domain. For the moment,

that is the best that can be done."13

13
Rich et al. op cit. pp. 25-26.
 CHAPTER VI

POTENTIAL TECHNIQUES AND THEORIES

"One principle of methodology upon which philosophers and technologists

should agree, is that a person does not have a very good chance of simulating
behaviour which he does not understand. And the fact of the matter is that no one,
regardless of professional training, has an especially clear conception of what is
involved in the function of pattern recognition, in artistic creation, or in the insightful
decision-making exemplified in the behaviour of even an amateur chess player."

(The Modelling of Mind, Computers and Intelligence, Edited by Kenneth M

Sayre and Frederick J Crosson, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1963, p. ix)

1KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

80. Artificial intelligence problems span a very broad spectrum. They

appear to have very little in common except that that they are hard. However,

one feature common to all artificial intelligence programmes is that they all

involve knowledge. Knowledge seems to be an essential ingredient of

intelligent behaviour.

81. Methods are required to help in solving artificial intelligence's

serious dilemma:

(a) An artificial intelligence system must contain a lot of

knowledge if it is to handle anything but trivial toy problems.

(b) As the amount of knowledge grows, it becomes harder to

access the appropriate things when needed, so more knowledge must

be added to help. But now there is even more knowledge to manage, so

more must be added and so forth.

82. One is forced to conclude that the kinds of techniques that will be

useful for solving artificial intelligence problems must exploit knowledge that

should be represented as follows:-

 (a) Use of Generalisations. The knowledge should capture

generalisations. It should not be necessary to represent each individual

situation separately. Situations that share important properties have to

be grouped together. If this is not done, inordinate amounts of updating

and memory will be required. Anything without this property would be

called data rather than knowledge.

(b) Clarity of Knowledge. In many artificial intelligence

domains, most of the knowledge a programme has must ultimately be

provided by people. It should, therefore, be in a form that is understood

by the people who have to provide it.

(c) Extensibility. The knowledge must be easily modified

to correct errors and to reflect changes.

(d) The knowledge should be usable in a great variety of

situations even if it is not totally accurate or complete. For very small

problems this may be less efficient than a variety of more direct

methods, however, it can be used in situations where those methods

would fail.

(e) The knowledge must be used to help overcome its own sheer

bulk by helping to narrow the range of possibilities that must usually be

considered. This could be by the use of heuristic search techniques.

83. There are two types of knowledge that need to be represented in a

computer:

(a) Declarative Knowledge. Facts about objects, about events

and about how they relate to each other.

(b) Procedural Knowledge. How to do things, how to use its

declarative knowledge and how to figure things out.

84. The problem of how best to represent knowledge in a computer has

been a key question throughout the history of artificial intelligence. A number

of techniques have been tried, with different ones proving to be better for

different applications. Some common knowledge representation schemes are:

(a) Logic. Symbolic systems of mathematical logic have

proved to be relatively straightforward to implement on computers but

logic has proved to be somewhat limited as a method of knowledge

representation. Essentially, an artificial intelligence programme that

uses logic to represent knowledge views its domain as a group of

logical formulae. By applying a strict set of inference rules to its

knowledge base, the programme may be able to draw the desired

conclusions. Less formal systems are also used in artificial intelligence.

Fuzzy logic, for example, is designed to handle concepts that are

relative and approximate, like tall, expensive and normal. Fuzzy logic

seems to be more analogous to human thinking.

(b) Semantic Networks. Declarative knowledge can be

represented graphically by a semantic network, where related facts are

connected by links in the network. This allows deductions to be made

based on property inheritance between linked facts. For a domain that

includes a great deal of knowledge with complex interrelations, a

semantic net can provide the foundation of a sophisticated inference

system. Semantic networks have been used for knowledge

representation in expert systems.

(c) Production Systems. While logic and semantic

networks are declarative or object oriented systems of knowledge

representation, production systems are procedural. They use heuristics

represented formally as production rules that specify the actions to be

taken in
 (d) certain circumstances. Production rules consist of a

condition clause and an action clause. (IF_______ THEN_______.)

(e) Natural language understanding research includes developing

ways to represent the knowledge needed by the computer to enable it

to understand peoples instructions. The two schemes, that currently

enjoy the greatest popularity are frames and scripts.

(i) Frames. Frames represent an object as a group of

attributes. Each attribute in a particular frame is stored in a

separate slot. The concept is based on the assumption that one

has a set of expectations about the nature of an object.

(ii) Scripts. Scripts represent a situation as a sequence

of scenes. Each event in a particular scene is stored in a

separate slot. The concept of scripts assumes that one expects

certain sequences of events to occur in particular places or

times.

1THE SEARCH PROCESS

85. When solving a problem, artificial intelligence programmes start

with an initial state and attempt to reach some goal state. To determine which

path to follow to a goal, a search technique is used.

86. All artificial intelligence programmes have to go through a process

of searching as the steps to achieve the solution to an artificial intelligence

problem are not explicitly laid down. A search has the following prerequisites:

(a) The initial state description of the problem, e.g., the initial

positions of all pieces on the chess board.

(b) A set of legal operators that change the state. In chess, this

would be the set of rules.

 (c) The final or the goal state. This is the final position that a

problem solver has to reach in order to succeed.

87. Searching yields the sequence of steps that transforms the initial

state to the goal state. The types of search process are:

(a) Brute Force Search.

(i) Depth-First Search.

(ii) Breadth-First Search.

(b) Heuristic Search.

88. Brute Force Search. In this type of search, all possible

solutions are scanned. Assuming that the possible solutions can be represented

as an inverted tree branching out from an initial node, with each possible step

forming a separate branch from the node and each subsequent step branching

out from a node on the branch representing the first step and so on; a search

can be breadth first, where all of one level is evaluated before the next level is

searched, or depth first, where the search starts at the top and goes to a

position at the bottom. In either type, the search ends when a goal state is

reached.

89. Two important factors to be considered are:

(a) Time-complexity. This refers to the amount of time taken

to generate the nodes.

(b) Space-complexity. This refers to amount of memory needed.

90. Depth-first search stores only the current path that it is pursuing.

Space-complexity thus becomes a linear function of the depth to which the

search is to proceed. The major drawback of this technique lies in having to

decide upon this depth. The point at which the search along a particular path is

abandoned is called cut-off depth. the value of cut-off depth is critical because,
if not specified, the search will go on and on increasing the time-complexity

and if kept too small, the solution may not be found.

91. In breadth-first search, the time-complexity is a function of the

number of branches and the depth to which the search proceeds. The major

problems here are:

(a) Time-complexity is high.

(b) Space-complexity is high because every node generated has

to be remembered.

(c) The search process remembers all unwanted nodes as well.

this is of no practical use for the search.

92. Forward Chaining vs. Backward Chaining. The search can go

forward from the initial state to the goal state or backward from the goal state

to the initial state. Forward chaining is usually considered a sensible approach

when there are fewer possible initial states than goal states. In the reverse

situation, where there are few goal states and many initial states, it may make

more sense to resort to backward chaining. Some programmes use bi-

directional search, starting at both ends and meeting in the middle.

93. Since a search tree can be very large, heuristic strategies have been

developed to reduce the size of a tree by pruning it .

94. Heuristic Search. The use of heuristics can drastically reduce the

amount of searching required. Heuristics are approximations used to minimise

the searching process. Generally two categories of problems use heuristics:

(a) Problems for which no exact algorithms are known and one

needs to find an approximate and satisfying solution, e.g., computer

vision, speech recognition, etc.

(b) Problems for which exact solutions are known, but

computationally unfeasible, e.g., Rubik's cube, Chess, etc.

 95. The heuristics which are used for solving problems generally consist

of a heuristic function which assigns numerical values to various problem

states. These numbers are then used to guide the search process.

96. By their very nature, heuristic techniques are not foolproof: they do

not guarantee the best solution - or even any solution at all. What heuristic

searches do provide are intelligent methods of approaching problems, methods

that are considerably more likely to bear fruit than the "trial-and-error"

approach of a blind search.

2The Degree of Modelling / Simulation Required

97. There are two approaches14 to simulating or modelling intelligence,

both of which have been the basis for artificial intelligence programmes:

(a) Producing programmes that perform tasks in the same way

as people do.

(b) Producing programmes that perform tasks in whatever way

appears easiest.

98. Several early systems attempted to produce intelligent behaviour by

imitating people. These devices were designed on the basis of functioning of

individual neurons and failed to produce even minimally intelligent behaviour.

More recently, several new neural net architectures have been proposed. These

overcome the theoretical limitations of the earlier models. These new

architectures are loosely called connectionist, and they have been used as the

basis for several learning and problem-solving programmes. They support

widely distributed parallel processing and could provide a solution to the

problem that the skills easiest for the human mind are the most difficult for a

computer to acquire using symbolic processing. Much work remains to be

14
Cf ante p. 10.
 done before any predictions can be made as to the potential of these theories.

99. One must also consider the fact that while human brains are highly

parallel devices, most current computing systems are essentially serial engines.

A highly successful parallel technique may be computationally intractable on a

serial computer. Recently, partly because of the existence of the new family of

cognitive models, as well as because of the general promise of parallel

computing, there has been substantial interest in the design of massively

parallel machines to support artificial intelligence programmes.

100. Human cognitive theories have also influenced artificial intelligence

researchers to look for higher level (i.e., far above the neuron level) theories

that do not require massive parallelism for their implementation. This approach

can be seen in much current work in natural language understanding.

1Symbolic Processing Languages

101. Digital computers were designed for numeric processing based on

the binary number system. If they are to display intelligence, digital computers

must be able to process symbols. The languages designed for artificial

intelligence programming are referred to as symbolic processing programming

languages.15 The first of these was Information Processing Language (IPL).

Created in the early 1950s, it was a fairly low level language and, hence,

difficult to use. It has since been supplanted by higher level, more convenient

artificial intelligence languages, such as LISP16 (List Processing), developed in

1957, and PROLOG17 (Programming in Logic), developed in 1970.

15
The human mind relates groups of symbols to each other in various ways. An intelligent
programme must also be able to establish associations between symbols, not merely store them as
unrelated pieces of data. Symbolic processing languages associate symbols by representing them as a
list. A list is represented in a computer's memory as a series of cells. Each cell can contain two parts,
or fields. In a simple list, one field contains a symbol and the other field contains a pointer to the next
cell in the list, thus associating the symbols to each other.
16
A LISP programme can actually modify its own programme instructions - or add entirely new
instructions to itself. It is even possible for a LISP programme to write an entirely new LISP
programme. This is especially useful in an artificial intelligence programme that is learning to
perform a new task.
17
PROLOG is the only artificial intelligence programming language other than LISP that is widely
used.
1Developments in Computer Technology

102. Advances in artificial intelligence have always been limited by

existing computer technology. Artificial intelligence programmes generally

require more computing resources than other programmes. The major artificial

intelligence projects are not limiting their research to artificial intelligence

software; they are all trying to develop more sophisticated computing

technology as well. Two areas of this research are:

(a) Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). Modern

techniques of very large scale integration allow several hundred

thousand electronic components to be combined on a single chip. A

higher level of integration increases processing speeds and reduces

costs at the same time. Advanced very large scale integration

techniques may allow computers to feature the large memory and high

processing speeds that are essential for many artificial intelligence

applications.

(b) Parallel Processing.Since John von Neumann outlined his

theories of information-processing in 1945, the logical structure of

processing information with a computer has been based on the concept

of sequential processing. Computers, which may seem to be doing

many things at once, actually perform actions one at a time, in

sequence. One method of increasing computing speeds is to abandon

sequential processing and have more than one process executing at a

time. Now that the economics of very large scale integration have

reduced the prices of microprocessors, multiple processors in parallel

are being used to develop faster computers for artificial intelligence

applications.
 CHAPTER VII

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FIELD OF ARTIFICIAL

INTELLIGENCE

1MAJOR PROJECTS

103. Three continuing large-scale efforts to develop technology that

may have profound implications for the future of artificial intelligence are:

(a) The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s

(DARPA’s) Strategic Computing Programme. A massive American

effort to develop military applications of artificial intelligence.

(b) The Fifth Generation Project. The Japanese research

project that is attempting to overtake the United States of America as

the world leader in high technology.

(c) Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation

(MCC). What many regard as the American response to the challenge

of the Japanese Fifth Generation Project.

1THE DEFENCE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY (DARPA)

STRATEGIC COMPUTING PROGRAMME

104. No single organisation has assumed greater financial responsibility

for artificial intelligence research in the USA than the Department of Defence.

Through the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, organised in 1958

to fund long-term scientific "high-tech" research projects, the Defence

Department has financed much of the artificial intelligence research that has

been conducted at American universities, research organisations and private

corporations.
 105. The Strategic Computing Programme, announced in 1983, is an

American effort to develop military applications of artificial intelligence. It is

one of the most ambitious scientific research projects ever attempted. It

actually contains a number of projects in a wide range of artificial intelligence

and other computing areas such as:

(a) Very large scale integration and other micro-electric

technology.

(b) Multiprocessors, signal processors and other avenues of

computer architecture technology.

(c) Artificial intelligence technologies such as expert systems,

natural language, computer vision, speech recognition and planning

systems.

106. Specifically, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency

plans for the Strategic Computing Programme to result in the development of

three military applications:

(a) Autonomous Systems.

(b) Pilot's Associate.

(c) Battle Management System.

107. Autonomous Systems. These are vehicles and other systems that

incorporate computer vision and expert system technologies so that they can

run by themselves without human operation. "Examples of autonomous

systems," according to the Strategic Computing Programme report, "include

certain 'smart' munitions, cruise missiles, various types of vehicles possessing

an autonomous navigation facility and a wide variety of mobile and fixed

robotic systems."18 The systems could perform a multitude of "intelligent" tasks

without endangering military personnel.

18
DARPA, Strategic Computing, 28 Oct 1983, p. 21.
 108. Pilot's Associate. Because military aircraft have become

increasingly complex, the Strategic Computing Programme plan reports that

"pilots in combat are regularly overwhelmed by the quantity of incoming data

and communications. They can be equally overwhelmed by the dozens of

switches, buttons and knobs that cover their control panels demanding precise

activation."19 In many military applications, technology is growing too quickly

for operators to keep up with; there soon may be more devices available on an

aircraft, for example, than a pilot can control intelligently.

109. The solution to this problem, the Pilot's Associate, is classified as a

"personal associate" in that it will be trained to respond to a pilot in certain

ways and to perform particular functions for that pilot. Using speech

recognition and expert system technologies, the pilot will be able to delegate

portions of certain tasks to the Pilot's Associate or to instruct the device to

initiate actions on its own.

110. Battle Management System. "Management of large scale

enterprises," notes the Strategic Computing Programme report "is

characterised by decision making under uncertainty."20 If the large scale

enterprise in question happens to be a battle, the consequences of making an

incorrect decision can be especially devastating. An intelligent Battle

Management System would provide welcome assistance to military decision

makers in battle situations.

19
Ibid.

20
Ibid.
111. The Battle Management System, as envisioned by the Defence

Advanced Research Projects Agency , would use expert system, speech

recognition and natural language technologies to assist in all phases of the

decision-making process.

1THE JAPANESE FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER PROJECT

112. In Japan, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) funded a

massive project in 1981. This project was announced at an international

conference in Tokyo. The conference was attended by over eighty overseas

participants and sent ripples through the entire research community and

industrial circles. The proposals were the outcome of research work done by

the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Institute for New Generation

Computer Technology (ICOT) and became popular as the Japan Information

Processing Development Centre (JIPDEC) Report.

113. The aims of the Fifth Generation Computer Project are to open up

the new fields of application that are referred to by the terms 'knowledge

processing systems' and applied 'artificial intelligence systems' and to create a

user-friendly interface between computer and user. It aims to combine the

power of a wide range of technologies, including Very Large Scale Integration

(VLSI), new computer architectures (Distributed Processing and Computer

Networks), software and artificial intelligence.

114. The Japanese have divided the project for development of fifth

generation computers into four parts:

(a) Data Access. Artificial intelligence programmes face a

particularly acute problem in retrieving data because of the unusually

large amounts of data required. The Fifth Generation Project has

 (b) already developed a prototype of a computer called the

"Relational Database Machine" that is designed specifically to facilitate

the storage and retrieval of information.

(c) Inference Engine. The Fifth Generation Project is

developing a prototype computer known as the "Personal Sequential

Inference Machine" to provide inference capabilities in PROLOG. After

that task is done, the Inference Machine will be used by researchers as a

tool to write programmes for other parts of the project.

(d) Ease of Use. The Fifth Generation Project includes

research into several areas of artificial intelligence that investigate ways

of making computers easier to use, including computer vision, speech

recognition and natural language processing.

(e) Intelligent Programming. Intelligent programming tools are

being developed to expedite the programming efforts in all phases of

the project.

115. Because the original goals of the project were stated in general and

imprecise terms, evaluating its progress is difficult. Everyone, however,

concedes that the Fifth Generation Project is having a positive effect on

artificial intelligence research everywhere. It led to a number of other countries

including Great Britain, Germany, The United States of America, France and

the European Community planning and funding projects related to artificial

intelligence research.

1THE AMERICAN RESPONSE: MICROELECTRONICS AND

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION (MCC)

116. In early 1982, representatives of several major American high-

technology companies met to discuss a proposal by William Norris, founder

and Chief Executive Officer of Control Data Corporation (CDC). Norris called
 the meeting to explore ways that the companies, normally competitors, could

combine their resources to achieve significant advances in computer

technology. Although there were some initial fears about such a co-operative

effort, Norris felt that the threat to American technological leadership posed by

programmes like the Japanese Fifth Generation Project demanded a co-

ordinated response.

117. This led to the formation of the Microelectronics and Computer

Technology Corporation in early 1983. Unlike the Fifth Generation Project, the

Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation is a private sector

initiative, receiving no financial support from the government.

118. The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation is

currently engaged in four long-term projects with the common goal of

"providing the technology necessary to make computers faster, more reliable

and capable of performing more complex tasks at a higher level of quality and

a much lower cost."21 By concentrating on long-term goals (six to ten years)

rather than seeking an immediate profit, the Corporation is free to follow a

long-range strategy that might have been difficult for its members to pursue

individually.

119. Its four major programmes are:

(a) Packaging. A six-year programme to advance state-of-the-

art semiconductor packaging and interconnect technology. Emphasis is

on technologies compatible with automatic assembly at both the circuit

and system level.

(b) Software Technology. A seven year programme to

develop new techniques, procedures and tools that can be used to

improve the productivity of the software development process by one

to two orders of magnitude.

21
Mishkoff. op.cit. p. 243.
 (c) Very Large Scale Integration / Computer-Aided Design. An

eight-year project to improve computer-aided design technology and to

develop an integrated set of tools that will have particular application

to complex systems and the very complex very large scale integration

chips from which they will be built.

(d) Advanced Computer Architecture. The most complex and

ambitious of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology

Corporation programmes, this 10-year effort focuses on the following

projects:

(i) Artificial Intelligence / Knowledge-Based Systems.

To realise the computers problem solving potential by

developing new ways to represent human knowledge and

thought concepts, as well as new engineering models and tools

to apply human expertise to a wide range of problems.

(ii) Database System Management. To improve

database design and storage methods and capacities to permit

more flexible storage and faster retrieval of a broader range of

more complex information.

(iii) Human Factors Technology. To improve the

relationship between man and computer by simplifying the use

of computers through techniques such as improved voice or

character recognition or use of natural languages.

(iv) Parallel Processing. To develop the languages

and architectures to allow computers to perform tasks

simultaneously instead of sequentially, with corresponding

increase in processing speed.

1IMPACT OF FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTER PROJECT ON UK AN

 EUROPE

120. The impact of the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Project in

UK and Europe was also tremendous. In the UK, the government set up a

committee under Mr John Alvey, Senior Director of Technology at British

Telecom. A report called the Alvey Report was submitted which proposed an

investment of 350 million pounds, over a period of five years, for development

of Advanced Information Technology. The areas identified for research were:

(a) Software Engineering.

(b) Very Large Scale Integration Systems.

(c) Man-machine Interfaces.

(d) Intelligent Knowledge-based systems.

121. Countries in Europe started a programme called the European

Strategic Programme for Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT) to

assist European Industry to develop indigenous technology for the

development of information technology products. The areas that it focuses on

are:

(a) Advanced Microelectronics.

(b) Software Technology.

(c) Advanced Information Processing.

(d) Office Systems.

(e) Computer-integrated Manufacturing.

2INDIAN RESEARCH

122. Though a late starter in the Fifth Generation Computer race,

various centres were established for research in Fifth Generation Computers in

India and quite a substantial amount of work has been done to improve the

user-friendliness of computers. Some of the centres involved in research are:

(a) Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (Research in artificial

intelligence, parallel architecture and graphics).

(b) Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai (Research in expert

systems).

(c) Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta (Research in pattern

recognition and vision).

(d) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (Research

in speech processing systems).

(e) National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai

(Research in software engineering and programming languages).

(f) Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune.

(g) Department of Electronics, Government of India, New Delhi.

(h) National Centre for Expert Systems, Institute of Public

Enterprise, Hyderabad.
 CHAPTER VIII

MILITARY AND CIVIL APPLICATIONS

"Can we prevent or contain bloody wars waged in battlefields crammed with 'virtual
realities,' 'artificial intelligence,' and autonomous weapons -- weapons that, once
programmed, will decide on their own when, and towards whom, to fire? Should the
world ban -- or embrace -- a whole new class of weapons designed for bloodless
war?"

- Alvin and Heidi Toffler ( in 'War and Anti-war')

1THE COMPUTER OF THE FUTURE

123. Knowledge processing systems are expected to assist people by

performing some of the activities such as inference and association required in

the process of decision-making and diagnosis of various systems and by acting

as experts to perform a wide range of human intellectual activities, specifically

work such as judgement and design. It is anticipated that such systems will

have to have the ability to understand languages and images, and will

progressively increase in learning ability. The applications of such systems

would be numerous. Some of them are discussed in this chapter.

1MILITARY APPLICATIONS

124. There is scope for numerous military applications of artificial

intelligence. Some possibilities are:-

(a) Autonomous vehicles that could be utilised in extremely

hazardous environments.

(b) Battle Management Systems.22

22
Cf ante p. 46.
(c) Expert systems for diagnosis and maintenance of

sophisticated weapon systems such as radars and missiles.

(d) Wargaming simulation for more effective training and

evaluation of field commanders.

(e) Image understanding for target identification and

classification. Artificial intelligence techniques could automate the

extraction of low level map features for imagery. Also, maps could be

generated from aerial photographs and satellite images.

(f) A hand-held personal computer based expert system to assist

junior commanders in carrying out more accurate appreciation in

different battle situations.

(g) Missile range and trajectory analysis and simulation to assist

in qualifying missile performance, as well as ensuring better

effectiveness of missiles in various environments.

(h) Logistic management is an important area, where new

technology will be able to contribute to making available the latest

status and various options for meeting the changing requirements of

battle.

(j) Guided bombs that can hit their targets unassisted, well after the

aircraft that has dropped them has escaped enemy anti-aircraft

measures.
 (k) Natural language and speech interface in weapons could have

wide applications in a country like India (with soldiers from different

parts of the country speaking different languages).

(l) A 'Pilot's Associate' such as the one being developed by the

Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) could be a

great help to pilots in handling sophisticated aircraft.23

(m) Both virtual reality and artificial intelligence could be used in

rehearsals. The capability to put a shooter in a room and create a

simulated reality already exists. In a few years it should be possible to

put a whole crew into a simulated reality. The rehearsal would make

actual combat seem like something already experienced and would

make present attempts at "battle inoculation" much more realistic.

With artificial intelligence added to the virtual reality one should be

able to change the way the situation develops each time.

2CIVIL APPLICATIONS

125. Civil applications of artificial intelligence include:

(a) Intelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction (ICAI). This type

of instruction is individualised to meet each of the individual student's

needs. Students read brief instructional material and are then presented

with short questions to test their comprehension. The programme

presents material based on the students responses to the problems

presented. If the students answer is incorrect, for example, the

computer might display remedial material and then pose a simpler

problem.

23
Cf ante p. 46.
(b) Software Development. Automated programming can

reduce the time and expense involved in writing computer programmes.

Continual advances in the automation of hardware development have

contributed greatly to the advancement of computer technology; to

prevent software development from becoming a limiting factor in that

advance, it too must be automated. This could initially be partially

achieved by the use of intelligent software development tools but the

eventual goal would be to have programmes that could develop

software automatically in response to a programmer's specifications.

(c) Planning and Decision Support. Specialised planning

programmes, known as decision support programmes, that help

managers make business decisions are becoming commercially

available. Some of these use artificial intelligence techniques to help

managers evaluate information, choose a goal or reach a conclusion.

Some examples of the spheres in which such systems could be used are:

(i) Financial Planning. Business plans, financial analysis,

pricing analysis and long range planning.

(ii) Marketing. Product introductions, corporate

redirection, resource and personnel deployment and strategic

planning.

(iii) Engineering. Risk evaluation and design

approach determination.

(iv) Law. Questions of "litigate versus settle".

(d) Factory Automation. Artificial intelligence research in

factory automation has led to programmes that help the computer

determine where decisions made in one part of the manufacturing

process can
(e) affect other parts of the process, thus helping to increase

productivity and raise profits.

(f) Office Automation. Artificial intelligence programmes to

automate offices are being developed. There are five potential areas for

artificial intelligence in office automation:

(i) Administration and Managerial Support. Artificial

intelligence programmes could help with budget preparation,

resource allocation and employee evaluations.

(ii) Job Training and Support. Intelligent Computer-

Assisted Instruction (ICAI) programmes might have an impact

on educating people at all levels.

(iii) Improved Man/Computer Dialogue. Natural

language interfaces could make it easier for managers to use

computers.

(iv) Intelligent Information Management and Text

Searching. Artificial intelligence programmes have the

potential to evaluate information and give managers only what

is pertinent.

(v) Speaker-Independent Speech Understanding

Systems. Speech understanding systems could be applied in

several areas of an office environment, some of which are,

information entry and access, processing commands, directory

assistance, message routing, scheduling, voice mail addressing

and dialling.
 CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

126. Before one can answer any question as to how successful attempts

at making intelligent machines have been, it is essential that a consensus be

reached as to the definition of artificial intelligence. The extent to which one

seeks to model or simulate human intelligence will decide how much success

can be claimed.

127. The fact that the processes underlying intelligent behaviour have

yet to be fully analysed makes the quest for artificial intelligence a difficult one.

Should this be fully understood, it would be easier to decide whether they

could be replicated and there would be little difficulty in recognising artificial

intelligence when one saw it.

128. A definition, such as Elaine Rich's, which seeks to define artificial

intelligence as, "the study of how to make computers do things which, at the

moment, people do better"24, can only add to the indefinite nature of this

subject as it implies that the scope of artificial intelligence is itself undergoing

constant change. Though widely accepted, this definition implies that

intelligence remains intelligent for as long as one fails to analyse it; should it be

reduced to something computable it would fail to remain intelligence.

129. It is possible, given a powerful and fast enough computer, to make

it do many things that were earlier thought to require intelligence. The question

of whether this amounts to a display of intelligence on the part of the machine

remains a controversial one. Some people seem to think that it is.

130. It is the contention of the author of this dissertation that, when one

dissects what the computer has actually done, by looking at the details of the

programme responsible for its "actions", one finds that there is really no

"intelligence" involved on the part of the computer. The software is brilliant

24
Cf ante p. 8.
and complex and so is the hardware. But they are, at their starting point, the

creations of the human mind. When one looks at most artificial intelligence

problems that have not yet been overcome, one finds that it is not that they are

conceptually impossible but that one has yet to develop computers that are

fast enough to process the amount of knowledge that would have to be

processed. There will also be a requirement for a shift in technology from

computers suited to numerical calculation to computers designed for symbolic

processing.

131. No matter how complex the software or the hardware gets, the

computer does not "understand" what it is doing; and surely an understanding

of what one is doing is a pre-requisite for the claim to intelligence.

132. This "understanding" is so crucial to intelligence that its absence

poses problems in making a computer "behave intelligently". Artificial

intelligence programmers have sought to overcome it by incorporating lines of

code in their programmes which cater for this, and make a computer "learn

from its mistakes". All that this really means is that the software is written in

such a manner as to be able to modify itself under certain pre-determined

circumstances. When these circumstances are met, the software gets modified

and the next time round, when the computer runs that part of the programme,

it is running on a slightly different set of instructions. Brilliant programming;

not an intelligent machine.

133. The only thing that differentiates artificial intelligence programmes

from simple programmes, is the fact that they are far more complex and that

they, therefore, make machines do things which one would have thought they

would be incapable of doing, unless they possessed intelligence. In the case of

simple programmes, one doesn't attempt to ascribe intelligence to the machine.

Instead, that tribute is reserved for its actual source: the human programmer. In

artificial intelligence programmes the intelligence required of the programmer

is far greater and disguised by the apparent "intelligence" displayed by the

machine.

134. One of the first revelations that one has, when one becomes

computer literate, is the fact that the computer "knows" nothing. It has a

tremendous capacity for storing and processing information, but it does not

"know" what it is storing or doing. This is something which people who are

not computer literate often fail to realise; looking instead on a computer as

some sort of magic wonder-machine. It is important to understand that, no

matter how much progress is made in various fields of artificial intelligence the

machine shall remain a dumb platform on which human beings will run brilliant

programmes.

135. Going back to the initial problem of deciding how to define

intelligence and artificial intelligence. It is possible to think of human

"intelligent behaviour" in terms of two components: the intelligence which

triggers behaviour, and behaviour which is the outward manifestation of the

intelligence. It would be pertinent to mention that intelligence can't be seen.

One only sees evidence of it when it manifests itself in behaviour. This seems to

have left people with the handicap of mistaking behaviour for intelligence.

When a machine displays "intelligent behaviour", one is seeing manifestations

of the intelligence of the programmer and the person who designed the

machine. If one fails to recognise this, it is because the human beings

responsible for the intelligent behaviour are detached from the machine and,

hence, not directly associated with what it does. It is, therefore, easy to ascribe

the "intelligence" to the machine rather than tracing it to where it came from.

People are not used to the idea of intelligence originating at a place far

removed from where it manifests itself.

136. And yet this should not seem so strange. One is well acquainted

with a more primitive form of "storing" intelligence. Ever since man learnt to

write, and later, to record sound and images, he has been able to communicate

"intelligently" with people far removed from him and in some cases long dead.

When one reads a book, the book serves as the medium by which intelligence

is carried from the author to the reader. One does not call the book intelligent;

and yet it can be the repository of a great deal of intelligence.

137. When one starts ascribing intelligence to machines that don't

"know" what they are doing and wouldn't "notice the difference" if they were

programmed to do something quite different, one is falling into the same trap

as the man who thought that the thermos flask was man's greatest invention

because he was baffled by the fact that it seemed to know what to keep hot and

what to keep cold.

138. If one takes the view that artificial intelligence should be akin to

intelligence, albeit artificially generated, one is forced to conclude that

computers fail to measure up on this score. Should one, however, consider that

a simulation of "intelligent behaviour" on the part of a machine makes it qualify

for being considered to possess a form of simulated intelligence, called artificial

intelligence, one is talking about something quite different. And, in that case,

computers could already be said to possess artificial intelligence.

139. This debate about artificial intelligence and whether computers are

"intelligent" or not does not in any way detract from the usefulness of the

research being carried out in the field, or of the applications that are expected

to be forthcoming as a result of this research. These applications promise to

change the life of the human race so radically that no speculation as to its

impact can be more than a partial vision of the future. An attempt has been

made, in the course of this dissertation, to look at what these applications

might be.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Books.

(a) Feigenbaum, Edward A. et al. The Fifth Generation: Artificial

Intelligence and Japan's Computer Challenge to the World. London, Michael
Joseph, 1983.

(b) Moto-oka, Tohru et al. The Fifth Generation Computer: The Japanese
Challenge. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons, 1985.

(c) Godel, et al. An Eternal Golden Braid, New-York, Vintage,1980,

(d) Penrose, Roger. The Emperor's New Mind. London, Vintage Books,
1990.

(e) Sayre, Kenneth M. et al. The Modeling of Mind. New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1963.

(f) Toffler, Alvin et al. War and Anti-war. London, Warner Books, 1994.

2. Reference Books.

(a) Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, New Delhi, Allied Publishers

Private Limited, 1976.

(b) The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ideas. Oxford, Helicon Publishing

Limited, 1994. pp. 35.

(c) Murthy, S.S. et al. Computers and Defence Applications. New Delhi,
Defence Scientific Information and Documentation Centre, 1987.

(d) Brattle Research Corporation. Artificial Intelligence and Fifth

Generation Computer Technologies, Boston, 1984.

3. Text Books.

(a) Janakiraman, V.S. et al. Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and

Expert Systems. New Delhi, Macmillan India Limited, 1993.

(b) Mishkoff, Henry C. Understanding Artificial Intelligence. New Delhi,

B.P.B. Publications, 1986.

(c) Rich, Elaine et al. Artificial Intelligence. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill
Publishing Company Limited, 1991.

(d) Townsend, Carl. Introduction to Turbo PROLOG, New Delhi, B.P.B.

Publications, 1988.

4. Newspapers and Magazines.

(a) The Hindu, January 2, 1997 pp. 26

(b) DARPA, Strategic Computing, 28 Oct 1983