1.

1 AI & our world; an

introduction

Menya Edmond, MSc.

Agenda

1. Define Artificial Intelligence

2. Discuss the disciplines that AI borrows from

3. Discuss various applications of AI.

What is AI
 The four paradigms

Thinking Humanly Thinking Rationally

Focus: • Cognitive models of human • Model of rational thought (formal
reasoning reasoning logic)
and thought
processes Acting Humanly Acting Rationally
• Models of human behavior • Rational actions but not
Focus: • What they do, not how they think necessarily formal rational
Behavior
reasoning

Success based on Success based on

comparison to human comparison to an ideal
performance performance
 Acting Humanly: The Turing Test
approach A.T (1950)
• It was designed to provide a satisfactory
operational definition of intelligence.

• He defined intelligent behavior as the ability to

achieve human level performance in all cognitive
tasks.

• The abilities of the machine should be sufficient to

fool an interrogator.

• He proposed a computer to be interrogated by a

human via a teletype.

• The machine would pass the test if the

interrogator cannot tell whether there is a
computer on the other end or not.
• To pass Turing's test, a machine would need to have the following
capabilities:

– Natural language processing – to communicate e.g. in English.

– Knowledge representation - to store & manipulate information

during or before the interrogation.

– Automated reasoning - to answer questions and draw any

conclusions.

– Machine learning - to adapt to new circumstances and to detect

and extrapolate patterns
• Turing avoided direct physical interaction between the interrogator
and the computer.

• The tests included a video signal so that the interrogator could test
the subject (machines) perceptual abilities and to pass nay physical
object through the “hatch” (Total Turing Test)

• Hence the machine would be capable of:

• Computer vision - to perceive objects

• Robotics - to move them around

• This can be said to be acting humanly.

Thinking humanly: Cognitive
Modeling Approach
• If a machine has to think like a human, then we must get into the
human mind to determine how humans think.

• There are 2 ways :

1. Introspection – trying to catch our own thoughts as they go by

2. Psychological experiments

• Once these are captured, they can be transformed into a computer

program.
• For example, Newell and Simon who developed a program, the
General Problem Solver (GPS), but were not content to see it solve
problems correctly.

• They were more concerned with tracing its reasoning mechanism

with that of humans solving the same problems.

• The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science brings together

computer models from AI and experimental techniques from
psychology to construct precise theories of how the human mind
works.
Thinking Rationally: Laws of
Thought Approach
• Aristotle was the first to try and codify “right thinking”

• Right thinking is an irrefutable or correct thinking process.

• His syllogisms provided patterns for arguments; structures that

always have correct conclusions given premises.

• For example: “Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore

Socrates is mortal.

• These laws were supposed to govern the operation of the mind and
initiated the field of logic.
• Problems with Knowledge Based approaches are:

• Not easy to represent knowledge formally in formal logic especially

when the knowledge is not 100% certain.

• There is a difference between being able to solve a problem in

principle and in practice.
Acting Rationally: The Rational
Agent Approach
• Acting rationally means acting to achieve ones goals given ones
beliefs.

• An agent is something that perceives and acts, hence Ai is viewed as

the study and construction of rational agents.

• Making correct inferences like in the Laws of Thought Approach is

part of thinking rationally or Rational Agent Approach.

• The difference here is that of “acting” / doing something.

• One can reason rationally but find that there is no one provably
correct action to take yet an action must be taken.

• There are also ways acting rationally that do not involve inference.

• For example a reflex action like pulling your hand away from a hot
surface.

• This is more reasonable and successful and faster than waiting to

reason whether to pull your hand away or not.
Foundations of AI

Edmond Menya, MSc.

Philosophy
• A reported conversation between Plato and Socrates:

• "I want to know what is characteristic of piety which makes all actions
pious... that I may have it to turn to, and to use as a standard whereby to
judge your actions and those of other men."

• Plato was asking for an algorithm to distinguish between piety and non
piety

• Socrates then came up with syllogisms which later turned to logic.

• These were rules of reasoning which allowed one to mechanically
generate conclusions given premises
• Hume (1978) also proposed the rule of induction whereby learning
is said to take place via induction.

• In induction, general rules are acquired by exposure to repeated

associations between their elements.

• This the basis upon which decision tree learning is based.

• Other philosophers also contributed various viewpoints.

Linguistics
• The study of languages and how it is learned gave rise to disciplines
in AI like

• natural language processing,

• knowledge representation and

• computer linguistics.
Mathematics
• Most ideas in AI need some formal representation and means of
manipulation.

• Mathematics provided this formalization through the works of various

individuals like George Boole who introduced the concept a formal
language for making logical inferences.

• A major contribution from mathematics was in decision theory that is

used to construct logic gates and in decision support systems. This was
contributed by John von Neumann.

• Other mathematicians contributed ideas that led to applications like

theorem provers.
Psychology
• German physicist Herman von Helmholtz applied the scientific
method to study human vision.

• Experiments in human thought processes gave rise to concepts like

behaviorism and cognitive psychology which tended to study how
human think and to transform these thought processes to machines.
Computer Engineering
• For artificial intelligence to succeed, we need two things:
intelligence and an artifact.

• The computer has been unanimously acclaimed as the artifact with

the best chance of demonstrating intelligence.

• Several developments in computer engineering have made it the

artifact of choice in creating intelligent machines.

• Ranging from software to hardware capabilities.

Main Branches of AI

Edmond Menya, MSc.

Machine Learning

The branch of AI whose goal is to

give machines ability to improve
from experience

– Learning has remained a

challenging area in AI

– An expert system may perform

extensive and costly computation
to solve a problem; unlike
human, it usually doesn't
remember the solution
 Natural Language Processing
• Branch of AI concerned with
giving machines the ability to

• Understand (NLU) and

• Generate (NLG)

• human language(s).

• This gives rise to

• Question Answering systems, Machine
Translation, Conversational Agents, OCR,
Sentiment Analysis etc
 KBS & Expert systems
• Giving machines the ability to
acquire, store and use
knowledge

– One major insight gained from

early work in problem solving
was the importance of
domain-specific knowledge

– Expert knowledge is a
combination of a theoretical
understanding of the problem
and a collection of heuristic
problem-solving rules
Robotics
• Study of AI that is concerned
about machines that completely
models an artificial human being
or superhuman

– A robot that blindly performs a

sequence of actions without
responding to changes or being
able to detect and correct errors
could hardly considered
intelligent

– It should have some degree of

sensors and algorithms to guild it
Applications of AI

Edmond Menya, MSc.

AI Today

• AI is more rigorous and depends strongly on: applied math;

statistics, probability, control and decision theories.

• Recent Advances:
– Robotics
– Machine Learning and Data Mining
– Image analysis and vision
– Natural Language Processing
– Optimization
1. Adaptive systems:
– Self-Driving Cars/Trucks, Driver Assistant Tech, Auto Pilot Plane
mode
– Target advertising

2. Search, Information Retrieval & Extraction:

– Search Engines, Recommender Systems, Natural Disasters
Monitoring Systems

3. Speech Recognition systems:

– Siri, Cortana, Alexa
Medicine & AI

1. Patient Monitoring and Alerting

2. Medical Imaging
– Tumor identification

3. Medical Diagnosis

4. Robotic Surgeries
AI in Transportation
• Autonomous Vehicle Control

• Pedestrian Detection

• Traffic Monitoring

• Navigation/ Route Optimizations

AI in Business

• TBD
AI & Governance

• TBD
AI & Entertainment

• TBD
Assignment I
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eViswN602_k

• Watch the above documentary and write an argumentative essay

(3/4 A4 page max) on how the Kenyan Government can use AI to its
advantage. Also discuss some dangers of the same government on
using AI.

• Upload your typed work on e-learning via respective assignment link

deadline 10th October 2021 mid night i.e. 11:59PM
 Thank you!

Any Questions?