AI Module 1

What is AI, what is an AI technique,

which problems need AI attention?

Introduction
AI or Artificial intelligence has many definitions associated with it. Read a new book and get a new
definition. The AI, in simplest terms, is a way of solving difficult problems. The meaning of difficult
problem is not which is difficult because of the logical requirements, but difficult because of the design
of the computer itself. For example, it is very easy for my four-year-old daughter to see a few samples of
cars and then classify a vehicle as a car but can a normal computer program do that? Many of us have
observed that when we meet a friend after years and find him grown in all dimensions, we are still in a
position to recognize him. Researchers are working on programs which can recognize simple photos and
take decisions based on the same. As long as the face is similar to the face they have seen to a large
extent, they do not have any issues. The problem starts when there is a significant difference between
two photos of the same person may be taken at the different age or under different backgrounds. The
researchers are finding difficulties in writing such programs due to obvious reasons as there is no
algorithm known for solving these problems. My definition of difficult programs is these programs which
are hard due to the design of the computer systems themselves. Humans can solve those problems as
their minds are better equipped at solving such problems.

Here are some more examples. When can a doctor examine and diagnose a disease in few minutes why
a robot (or a computer program) is not yet designed to do that? When an averagely intelligent person
can learn to play games like table tennis, why a robot is not yet designed to do so? If I tell you that I
went to the movie last night and I liked ShahRukh’s performance, will you conclude also that I went to a
theater, I bought tickets, took my seat, spend my time viewing the movie and return back? In fact, you
may also additionally conclude that I am a fan of Shahrukh and may be a movie is “Happy New Year” as
it is just released. What do you think if a computer program is told to listen to my statement and reason
from it? 1

The problems that need special attention

Why it is hard for computers to solve these problems? Let me repeat that the computers are not
designed to solve such problems. Humans have analog inputs, have a processor (the brain) which is very

1
One may conclude learning from the functioning of the brain and many intelligent people failing in designing the
machine which can mimics simplest of functions of the brain that the human brain is really a great invention and
only the God can construct that!
slow but runs highly parallel algorithms to solve problems (1010 neurons with on an average 1000
connections to other neurons, total 1014 connections) which are typically vision related, audio related
and requires highly parallel processing. They possess common sense (somebody said that common
sense is highly uncommon but is still possible for most to reason as I mentioned earlier in the text about
the movie), they can work with incomplete information (I did not mention the name of the movie or the
theater). They can also work with unstructured information (how have I recognized my friend after a
long duration? I do not really know that myself!) Human brain stores information in a way that it is
easier to have association and access information using that association. For example, if I ask you the
name of an actor who is tall, aged over 70 and with spectacles, all most all of you will immediately
respond that I am talking about Amitabh Bachchan. If I ask my daughter a KG question, name a TV serial
with a cat-like alien being a friend of a human boy, she may immediately recall him to be Doraemon. A
guest may play few bars of music of a popular song and you may immediately recall it to be “Awara
Hun” or “Indiawale”. All these are examples of how we use association in retrieving information. Our
brain stores information in a form that it is easier for us to retrieve information in this fashion.
Conventional databases, renowned for their ability to crunch data, are not good at accessing data using
associations.

The AI or Artificial Intelligence is to write computer programs which can mimic human brain problem-
solving capabilities. Elaine Rich, in her book "Artificial Intelligence" puts it as "AI is the study of programs
at which, at the moment, people are better". One more author puts it as “AI is about writing intelligent
programs”. One more definition is “AI is about building entities which can understand, perceive, predict
and manipulates like humans do”. The last definition is little more interesting as it is also talking about
entities which can act like humans and not merely programs. The robots which are confined in science
fictions till now, AI is a study of methods of bringing them to the real world. So far, we know, it is not
really possible. You may also wonder why that is so. In fact, to solve any problem, we, first of all, must
know what the real problem is. Let us try to understand this point little further. Let us again jump back
to the definitions of AI. I used the word "difficult programs" while somebody else used a word
"intelligent programs". Do you consider brushing the teeth or picking up a chalk stick is an intelligent
task? Unless you want your robot to do so, these tasks do not seem to require the use of intelligence. In
fact, when you start building your robot, you may have to decide the exact pressure to apply to pick up
the toothbrush or a choke stick, a slight miscalculation results into breaking it. The brushing process also
is required to decide the direction and pressure of the movement of the toothbrush, which, however,
trivial it look like, an extremely hard problem to solve even when the human head is considered
stationary. Thus, I stick to the word “difficult programs” and not “intelligent programs”.

To make the long story short, AI is about solving problems which are difficult to solve by conventional
methods of computing as those methods are not designed to act like a human brain. It is clear from
above discussion that if we ever want the computer programs or Robots (with computer programs
running within) to be successful in performing tasks that we have discussed so far, we need to design
our computer systems or programs differently. AI is the study of designing computer systems and
programs where they can perform more like humans and solve similar problems.
Why study AI
AI is not a new discipline. In fact, it begun in 60's when many researchers began to take an interest in
learning how human brain functions and try predicting the human behavior from their perceived model
of the brain and try mimicking human behavior using automated programs. Many models ae presented
till now and many research papers have given many researchers their Ph Ds and many people like me
earned their living by teaching AI as a subject. The ultimate objective of building a machine acting like a
human is not yet been fully met. It is not likely to be met in foreseeable future as well.

Does that mean that we should not study AI? Or AI is a dead discipline? No. Let us understand why.
Though the study of AI so far could not exactly achieve the goal it started with (and still perceives to
achieve), it has contributed revolutionary solutions in the field of computer science. For example, we
have programs which can find traffic related parameters from visual images and provide intelligent
traffic control. There are programs which can recognize people's faces to a certain extent and provide
search options like "Give me all photographs where this face appears in". Signature recognizing
programs are common. Solutions which look at PDF files and convert them to document files by
classifying each character of the PDF image are available. Access control systems which use biometric
measures like thumb impression, retina scanning or face recognition for authentication are already
available. Expert systems which may not be able to exactly work like a doctor but an assistant are
available. Thus, AI has achieved many things. Game playing programs are in huge demand today. Most,
if not all, use one or the other form of AI. Programs which can look at large volume of data and interpret
them for example looking at network logs (which happens to be in terabits/hour kind of a case)
analyzing Facebook posts and tweets to determine which party is going to win the election, predict
possibilities of disease for a given person by analyzing genes of that person (which demands even higher
level of volume and processing), processing astronomical data to learn interesting celestial objects and
their characteristics, looking at financial transactions, zero in on fraudulent transactions or transactions
carried out by potential terrorists etc. are seriously being carried out by AI programs right now.

All in all, AI has provided answers to many challenging problems and likely to provide even without
achieving what it set out to. Our aim in the series of discussion is to learn how AI attempts to solve
problems, what the obstacles are and how they are overcome, and why some problems are not yet
solved2.

AI techniques
The techniques that we need to use to solve the difficult problems are known as AI techniques. There
are a few common characteristics of AI problems and the AI techniques must attempt to handle them.
Here is a list.

1. In most cases, the AI problems have no algorithm. For example signature or face recognition
problems. We can recognize anybody’s face or signature but if asked how we have recognized
somebody’s face we cannot answer.

2
So you can solve one of them and get your Ph.D. degree or a patent!
 2. In many other cases, the process has simple algorithm but with many permutations and
combinations. For example, a traveling salesmen problem itself is not hard but getting an
optimum answer is beyond the scope of even the best of computer systems with a reasonable
number of cities to travel. Another example is the game of chess. A normal chess program has
on an average 50 moves from both sides. The average branching factor of the search tree is
about 35. Looking at this complexity, if a chess program checks for every conceivable option
once the opponent has played its first move, even with the best of the computing system in
place, cannot take its first step in the opponent’s lifetime. The human genome mapping
problem which is being handled by computer programs quite easily today was done by 13
countries together in 6 years for the first time. The speed up is based on AI algorithms popularly
known as machine learning. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is another project which collects multi-
filter imaging and spectrometric redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-meter wide-angle optical
telescope, collected photometric observations about 500 million celestial objects and spectra
for more than 3 million objects. It has covered almost 35% sky. The complete data is given to a
machine learning program and available to astronomers for free.
3. In many other cases, we do not want best answers but answers which are acceptable. For
example, if we are planning to go to a movie we do not decide the best movie or the best
theater or the best actor or actress. We would go to any movie with some of our expectations
(like a good reasonable story, or some entertainment etc) is satisfied. Such answers are harder
to get by conventional computing systems.
4. Conventional programs do not usually have the learning component. A human can learn
(almost) anything if taught properly. If we have such capacity in a programming system, we do
not need anything else3.
5. Another important requirement of many AI program is called explanation facility. If a human
doctor diagnoses me with malaria, for example, I would invariably ask "How can you say so,
doctor?" A doctor may respond back saying “because your red blood cell count is less than
required”. A computer program’s response can be quite interesting. If a computer program
respond like "You have malaria because the variable XYZ has value > 0.8 while QPR has value <
0.3 and all the values of ABC is below 0.5" probably none of us use that system again.

AI has tried to answer solutions to almost all of above problems and much more in a successful way. It
has to find its own techniques for solving these problems. Those techniques are called AI techniques. Let
us try to understand what these AI techniques are and how they can actually help solve these problems.

Heuristic based search

The AI technique that we discuss first is called heuristic-based search. Most of the problems humans
solve are of the kind where if an optimized solution is sought, it would be impossible to solve. For
example, a game like chess has many alternatives to considered in the true sense impossible for any
human being to explore in real time. A human player actually considers only a very small subset of all
the moves and evaluates them. Also, he does not consider more than a few moves down. For example,

3
It is good that such intelligence is not present in computer systems. Otherwise, programmers are not needed so
you won't be studying this and people like me who earn their living by teaching this become jobless.
he might think what opponent will do with the move that he is planning to play, how he will be
responding to that and so on for a few moves. He does not consider the entire game. A number of
moves (they are called plies in a game playing parlance) are decided based on the state of the game, the
possibilities of fork (when opponent Night can take two different directions, one which threatens the
King or Queen and another one can capture some other important piece. We can save only one of them
at any given point of time usually), the possibility of the check (when our king is under attack), and so
on. Human players develop their own rules (we call it heuristic knowledge) to play games like chess over
a period of time. They also use their knowledge to determine a better move from alternatives available
at any given point of time. Using these rules, they eliminate most of the not-so-useful options and can
avoid overwhelming combinations of moves to choose from.

Humans use this method of searching using heuristic in most of the problem solving that he does. For
example, when a doctor examines the patient, he does not check him for all possible cases of diseases
and does not offer all possible diagnostic tests to determine actual disease. A doctor may have some
knowledge about where the patient lives, the work that he does, other important attributes of a patient
(for example whether he is living a stressful like or leaves near a dirty place etc) and so on. He also has
some idea about the atmosphere when the patient is reporting, for example, if he is reporting in a rainy
season, a number of mosquitoes in the area, the predominant types of diseases in that area and so on.
He also is aware of the patient history and probably knows a bit about his family history to learn about
the probable disease the patient has. From this knowledge, he might have formed rules and use them to
try fixing his attention to testing if the most probable disease is the culprit. For example in the rainy
season and the patient leaving in an area with many mosquitoes, he might check for malaria first if the
patient complaints about body ache and headache. During summer, he might think the other way round
and check for a throat infection and so on. The rules formed by such experts help them zero in on the
right diagnosis quickly. They do not need to search systematically checking for all possible causes and
combinations of causes.

In fact, a human is considered expert if he has such domain knowledge. If one thinks little further about
any expert's working style, they can clearly see two different types of skill sets present with every
expert. One is, obviously general problem-solving skills by which all experts tackle the problem. The
other and much more important is this domain knowledge. The heuristics are the rules of thumb which
represent expert’s knowledge about the domain. An expert with better heuristics is a better expert.

Expert's heuristics represents their power and their ability to diagnose. Computer-based expert systems
which try to mimic experts must have these heuristics as part of their system. Not only storing heuristic
related information but to use them in making decisions is also an important part of every AI system.

So the first important attribute of an AI system is the set of heuristics which can help reduce the search
and solve the problem in real time. Any technique which enables incorporating heuristics into the
system and allows using them in the process of reducing the number of options and finding solutions in
real time is an AI technique.
Sometimes the heuristic is denoted by other names, for example in the domain of Genetic Algorithms,
the heuristic is known as a fitness function. A fitness function indicates how the solution is fit as per the
definition of the user. Fitter solutions are kept and others are thrown out. The process is repeated until
the final set of solutions with required attributes is found. In the process of simulated annealing, the
heuristic is known as the objective function. In game playing algorithms it is known as the static
evaluation function.

Knowledge representation and inference

Another important part of any AI system is the method to represent the knowledge about the system
and a process which allows the manipulation of that knowledge for decision making. For example, many
current systems, especially big data systems require processing text-based information coming from
social media websites like Facebook and Tweeter. Take an example of a product based company. The
company works hard to analyze tweets and posts their users make over the social media and guess if
any comment is about the product (or the rival product). Tweets like "This bike is awesome, I ran it for
18 hours and it had no problems!”, or “I feel very comfortable even after 12 hours of riding” can tell a
lot about the product than a conventional customer feedback form. On the contrary, “This washing
machine is awful, it breaks down every month", or "This service center always gives the busy response
to calls and do not respond to emails" are warning signs. A good program which can analyze the texts
the user is posting finds out if that post has any relation to the product of the company, and if so, find if
that comment is positive or negative can be extremely handy for the customer relationship department.
Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle, in this case, is a good method for analyzing text, storing it in a form
which can help us deduce something easily. There are many methods proposed which can solve it for
one problem but fails to take account another. For example, a human can read all these tweets and also
gather (looking at other information which an automated program is not designed to look at) that most
problems reported is about a typical washing machine model or associated with a typical branch of
service station (by finding out which washing machine that customer is using and which service branch is
providing service to that customer). Can an automated system do so? It is hard for any system to solve
the problem in a different way than it is originally designed to. One of the biggest challenges here is the
representation of the knowledge in a form where such processing is possible. In fact, this is also an
example of humans inferring from their knowledge to build on the knowledge that they have. For
example, they look at the details of the tweets by customers and infer that the brand Y model X has a
recurring problem called Z. This is an addition to the knowledge that they have. The knowledge
representation must also allow inferring and adding to the knowledge storage (called knowledgebase).
Any technique which allows the system to process and infer from existing knowledge is an AI technique.
Currently, a branch of AI, Machine Learning, is doing exactly like what we are describing above. It looks
at the huge amount of data, discover patterns from the data and infer like above.

This inference and storage and retrieval of knowledge abilities also indicate an important attribute of
human problem solvers, they learn from their experience and be better at any anything they practice
regularly. An AI technique which can help the system learn from the past experience is an AI technique.

There are quite a few AI techniques used for learning. A big class of systems uses neural network based
systems for learning. Neural network based systems mimic the function of the human brain using the
similar physical structure in which the brain is organized. The neural network system use methods are
known as BPNN (Backpropagation neural networks), Markov Models, Hopfield Networks and a few
more. Another area where the learning is equally important is known as genetic algorithms which are
based on patterns of solutions used for the ecosystem for survival. They also have a strong learning
component. Machine Learning, as its name suggests, is about methods for machines to learn
automatically.

One excellent tool to represent knowledge using these models is Matlab. Libraries to represent BPNN
and other neural network models are available in Matlab and a programmer can easily write programs
like signature recognition using Matlab.

The other learning approach used in practice use predicate logic based approach. A language called
Prolog was solely designed based on the predicate logic and is quite powerful in inferring from old
knowledge. It uses predicate logic form for storing the knowledge and thus enables the program to infer
from old data. Let us take an example to understand.

Suppose following predicates are given.

1. mother (Devaki, Krishna),

2. brother (Kansa, Devaki)
3. mama (X, Y) if the brother (X,Z) and mother(Z,Y)

One can prove mama(Kansa, Krishna) using prolog using three predicates defined above. There are two
types of knowledge in Prolog. The first two statements represent facts and the third represents a rule. A
fact is a simple knowledge about a relation (a relation called mother between two entities called Devaki
and Krishna for example) between a few (in our case two) entities. The rule is another type of
knowledge. A rule contains variables which can assume values (for example the rule mama(X, Y), both X
and Y are variables which can assume different values like Kansa and Krishna).

One more similar method for knowledge representation is called frames. They are the first version of
object-oriented knowledge representation. Many current languages, most notably Java and C++ can
support knowledge representation using frames. For example, we may have a class frame called Student
and object frame called Ramesh who is an actual student and can specify that Ramesh is an object of
type Student. A class frame has attributes (for example frame Student might have some attributes like
total number of objects (known as cardinality in AI) represented in object oriented programming
languages using static members. An object frame like Ramesh has attributes represented by non-static
non-global members of a class.

One of the growing areas of application of AI is the use of software robots. These robots (sometimes
called bots) are software mobile entities. They travel from one machine to another and gather
information and interpret them. The author of this module has developed a system during his Ph.D.
work which used mobile agents which can go to target machines, gather intrusion-related information
and come back. The sender collects information from all such mobile agents and deduces if there is an
intrusion somewhere in the system or not. Such systems are quite handy for using behavior-based
heuristics to figure out if the user has malicious intentions or not.

Another form of knowledge representation is to use some kind of entity relationship diagram. Semantic
net, conceptual dependency, and a few other methods are used to represent knowledge. In fact, the
object-based representation can also be used in conjunction with and actually used with such
knowledge representation schemes. Such knowledge is represented in a form of a graph where nodes
represent entities while the arcs represent the relations between them. Each node, as well as the
relation, can be represented as objects. In fact, special languages which provide direct representation
using frames where proposed and used to a small extent. However, most designers prefer to use general
purpose languages like Java.

The techniques which allow the knowledge representation for manipulation and inference are also AI
techniques.

In fact, the requirements that we listed are all which the users can see on the surface. To support these
requirements, the computing systems do need to provide many other requirements. An AI technique, in
general, should help in knowledge representation, inference, learning and programming with heuristics.

The requirement of learning is obvious for knowledge extension. In fact one important branch of deals
with automates the learning process for information gathering. That information is to be used for
further processing. That process of automated learning is known as machine learning.

Another area where learning is more important is known as case-based reasoning. Whenever a human
receives a problem, he would try to match that with other problems he has already solved and try using
the same approach with required modification if he finds a perfect or a near match.

Reason with incomplete information

In fact, many AI programs need something more. For example, most humans can reason with
incomplete information. They are able to guess and work. There is a set of problems known as
constraint satisfaction problems which demand such ability. For example, we may get a new mobile with
many new features. We can assume something and try, if fail, we assume something else and try.
Usually, based on our previous experience, we can assume most things right and learn to use the mobile
in a very short period of time. Let us take this problem to little deeper level. Suppose we want to find
out how to set an alarm using a new mobile. We will try to find settings first. (That is based on our
experience of having similar features under setting). Suppose under setting we find following menus;
Phone, Contacts, Logs, Connections, Accounts and More, which one will we choose? Most of us choose
Phone as the clock is more likely to be part of it than any other menu. Suppose we cannot find it under
phone, we may try a menu called More as it may be the next best option. What we are doing is
assuming something (for example the phone menu designer is following some logical sequence) and
checking for it. It is quite possible that a setting does not contain the clock or alarm related information
and it is somewhere else. In most cases, we will be able to find alarm related information assuming
some constraints and following the search process accordingly.
Another example is processing user inputs in the form of voice or spoken commands. Sometimes the
voice input matches with two items. The decision about which item to choose is decided based on
context. We sometimes face the same problem when the mobile call is not coming clearly and we
cannot listen to the other party’s voice cleanly. We may miss words or sometimes entire sentences but
still can communicate based on our ability to judge the missing word or sentence.

Another example is the domain all of us loves to be engaged with, games. A simple game of cards
depends on heavily on our ability to assume what the other player's card values are. We do not have
that information but we are able to assume and proceed with the information that we have.

Thus the ability to continue despite incomplete information using assumptions is an important
requirement of an AI program. A technique which enables the program to work with incomplete
information is an AI technique.

Fault tolerance
Another important attribute an AI system sometimes requires is fault tolerance. We do not only work
with incomplete information but incorrect information as well. For example, if you ask a school boy a
question like "Name the fish which is bigger than shark and have lungs”. Most school kids would
respond back “I think you are asking for Whale, but it is not a fish, it is a mammal”. We provided wrong
or incorrect information but a school kid can not only produce the correct answer, also help us learn
about our mistake.

Let me quote one more example. I was looking for a friend who told me over the phone that he lives in a
society called "Ratlam”. While looking for him, I asked a panwala nearby “Where can I find a society
called Ratlam?”. The panel responded, "Sir, there is a society called Satnam nearby, you better check
there.” Is there something which surprises us? If you are an AI teacher or researcher, you are. I have
provided completely wrong information but I got correct answer (I could locate my friend actually from
that society). How could that panwalla’s brain detect that? It is due to the fact that both Ratlam and
Satnam look different, they sound similar. Can our AI-based programs get that? Some programs actually
are able to do so and exhibit fault tolerance. Not all programs require this attribute, though.

Summary
Let us quickly recap what we have learned. AI is a discipline where we learn how to write difficult
programs. The difficulty of such programs lie in their ability to act like humans, use heuristics to search
when there is no direct solution available or search blindly would result in an inordinate amount of time.
The programs need explanation facilities sometimes and sometimes fault tolerance. Sometimes ability
of the program to work with insufficient information also matters. One of the important attribute of
many programs which need AI support is learning. Neural network based learning methods are very
popular today.

The techniques which enable the program to have all of above abilities are called AI techniques. We will
study many of them in due course.