Unit-1

Introduction

Topics Covered:
 Introduction
 Definition
 Future of Artificial Intelligence
 Characteristics of Intelligent Agents
 Typical Intelligent Agents
 Problem Solving Approach to Typical AI problems

Introduction
It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially
intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to
understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods
that are biologically observable.

Intelligence is composed of:

 Reasoning
 Learning
 Problem Solving
 Perception
 Linguistic Intelligence

Many tools are used in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization,
logic, methods based on probability and economics. The AI field draws upon computer
science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, artificial
psychology, and many others.
Need for Artificial Intelligence
1. To create expert systems that exhibit intelligent behavior with the capability to learn,
demonstrate, explain, and advise its users.
2. Helping machines find solutions to complex problems like humans do and applying
them as algorithms in a computer-friendly manner.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

 Future of Artificial Intelligence

 AI will change the way we live and work. It improves our productivity by assisting
us in many ways and saving plenty of time by taking care of monotonous tasks at
home also at workplaces. For example, now we can schedule the robotic vacuum
cleaner to clean the floor and thereby we can save some time and energy. Using
Artificial intelligence, the robotic vacuum cleaner avoids colliding into obstacles and
cleans the surface effectively. In the same way, using AI more innovations will
enable us to eliminate the need for doing repetitive works.
 Driverless vehicles will reduce the burden of driving for us and will most likely
reduce the probability of vehicular accidents by eliminating the chance of human
error. Autonomous vehicles will enhance the way we travel.
 At present websites and apps are providing personalized experience using Artificial
intelligence. For example, YouTube provides personalized suggestions based on
what we watch. In future, more personalized services will come including
personalized healthcare services.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

 Using 5G and Artificial intelligence together, doctors can perform robotic surgeries,
which will be very helpful in improving the access to healthcare services. Humans
and machines together can do wonders using artificial intelligence.
 AI will help people with special needs and senior citizens to live independently.
 With the advancements AI is bringing, there will be more data privacy and security
issues. And laws to deal with the same will come. Ethical concerns will also arise.

What is an Intelligent Agent (IA)?

An intelligent agent (IA) is an entity that makes a decision that enables artificial
intelligence to be put into action. It can also be described as a software entity that
conducts operations in the place of users or programs after sensing the
environment. It uses actuators to initiate action in that environment.
This agent has some level of autonomy that allows it to perform specific, predictable,
and repetitive tasks for users or applications.
It’s also termed as ‘intelligent’ because of its ability to learn during the process of
performing tasks.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

  The two main functions of intelligent agents include perception and action.
Perception is done through sensors while actions are initiated through
actuators.
 Intelligent agents consist of sub-agents that form a hierarchical structure.
Lower-level tasks are performed by these sub-agents.
 The higher-level agents and lower-level agents form a complete system that
can solve difficult problems through intelligent behaviors or responses.

The structure of intelligent agents

The IA structure consists of three main parts: architecture, agent function, and agent
program.
Architecture: This refers to machinery or devices that consists of actuators and
sensors. The intelligent agent executes on this machinery. Examples include a
personal computer, a car, or a camera.
Agent function: This is a function in which actions are mapped from a certain
percept sequence. Percept sequence refers to a history of what the intelligent agent
has perceived.
Agent program: This is an implementation or execution of the agent function. The
agent function is produced through the agent program’s execution on the physical
architecture.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

Classes of intelligent agents:
Russell & Norvig group agents into five classes based on their degree of perceived
intelligence and capability
1. Simple reflex agents
2. Model-based reflex agents
3. Goal-based agents.
4. Utility-based agents

Simple reflex agents

 Simple reflex agents act only on the basis of the current percept, ignoring the
rest of the percept history. The agent function is based on the condition-
action rule: if condition then action.
 This agent function only succeeds when the environment is fully observable.
Some reflex agents can also contain information on their current state which
allows them to disregard conditions whose actuators are already triggered.
 Infinite loops are often unavoidable for simple reflex agents operating in
partially observable environments. Note: If the agent can randomize its
actions, it may be possible to escape from infinite loops.

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function SIMPLE-REFLEX-AGENT(percept) returns action
static: rules, a set of condition-action rules
state INTERPRET-INPUT(percept)
rule RULE-MATCH(state,rules)

action RULE-ACTION[rule]

return action ―

“A simple reflex agent. It works by finding a rule whose condition matches the
current situation (as defined by the percept) and then doing the action associated
with that rule.”
Model-based reflex agents
 A model-based agent can handle a partially observable environment. Its
current state is stored inside the agent maintaining some kind of structure
which describes the part of the world which cannot be seen. This knowledge
about "how the world works" is called a model of the world, hence the name
"model-based agent".

 A model-based reflex agent should maintain some sort of internal model that
depends on the percept history and thereby reflects at least some of the
unobserved aspects of the current state. It then chooses an action in the same
way as the reflex agent.

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function REFLEX-AGENT-WITH-STATE( percept) returns action
static: state, a description of the current world state rules, a set of condition-action
rules action, the most recent action initially none
stateUPDATE-STATE(state, percept)
ruleRULE-MATCH(state, rules)
action RULE-ACTION[rule]
stateUPDATE-STATE(state, action)
return action
Goal-based agents
 Goal-based agents further expand on the capabilities of the model-based
agents, by using "goal" information.
 Goal information describes situations that are desirable. This allows the agent
a way to choose among multiple possibilities, selecting the one which reaches
a goal state.
 Search and planning are the subfields of artificial intelligence devoted to
finding action sequences that achieve the agent's goals.
 In some instances the goal-based agent appears to be less efficient; it is more
flexible because the knowledge that supports its decisions is represented
explicitly and can be modified.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

Utility-based agents

 Goal-based agents only distinguish between goal states and non-goal states.
 It is possible to define a measure of how desirable a particular state is. This
measure can be obtained through the use of a utility function which maps a
state to a measure of the utility of the state.
 A more general performance measure should allow a comparison of different
world states according to exactly how happy they would make the agent.
 The term utility can be used to describe how "happy" the agent is.
 A utility-based agent has to model and keep track of its environment, tasks
that have involved a great deal of research on perception, representation,
reasoning, and learning.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM

Characteristics of intelligent agents
Intelligent agents have the following distinguishing characteristics:
 They have some level of autonomy that allows them to perform certain tasks
on their own.
 They have a learning ability that enables them to learn even as tasks are
carried out.
 They can interact with other entities such as agents, humans, and systems.
 New rules can be accommodated by intelligent agents incrementally.
 They exhibit goal-oriented habits.
 They are knowledge-based. They use knowledge regarding communications,
processes, and entities.
Three Forms of Intelligent Agent:
Intelligent Agent can come in any of the three forms, such as:-
 Human-Agent
 Robotic Agent
 Software Agent
These three forms are described below:
Human-Agent: A Human-Agent use Eyes, Nose, Tongue and other sensory
organs as sensors to percept information from the environment and uses limbs and
vocal-tract as actuators to perform an action based on the information
Robotic Agent: Robotics Agent uses cameras and infrared radars as sensors to
record information from the Environment. It uses reflex motors as actuators to
deliver output back to the environment.
Software Agent: Software Agents use keypad strokes, audio commands as input
sensors and display screens as actuators.
For Example– AI-based smart assistants like Siri, Alexa. They use voice sensors
to request the user’s request and search for the relevant information in secondary
sources without human intervention, and actuators like its voice or text module
relay information to the environment.

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Problem-solving in Artificial Intelligence:
Problem-solving agent
The problem-solving agent performs precisely by defining problems and its several
solutions.
According to psychology, “a problem-solving refers to a state where we wish to
reach to a definite goal from a present state or condition.”
According to computer science, a problem-solving is a part of artificial
intelligence which encompasses a number of techniques such as algorithms,
heuristics to solve a problem.
Therefore, a problem-solving agent is a goal-driven agent and focuses on
satisfying the goal.
Steps performed by Problem-solving agent
Goal Formulation: It is the first and simplest step in problem-solving. It organizes
the steps/sequence required to formulate one goal out of multiple goals as well as
actions to achieve that goal. Goal formulation is based on the current situation and
the agent’s performance measure (discussed below).
Problem Formulation: It is the most important step of problem-solving which
decides what actions should be taken to achieve the formulated goal. There are
following five components involved in problem formulation:
Initial State: It is the starting state or initial step of the agent towards its goal.
Actions: It is the description of the possible actions available to the agent.
Transition Model: It describes what each action does.
Goal Test: It determines if the given state is a goal state.
Path cost: It assigns a numeric cost to each path that follows the goal. The problem-
solving agent selects a cost function, which reflects its performance measure.
Remember, an optimal solution has the lowest path cost among all the solutions.
Note: Initial state, actions, and transition model together define the state-
space of the problem implicitly. State-space of a problem is a set of all states which
can be reached from the initial state followed by any sequence of actions. The state-
space forms a directed map or graph where nodes are the states, links between the

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nodes are actions, and the path is a sequence of states connected by the sequence of
actions.
Some Real-world problems
 Traveling salesperson problem (TSP): It is a touring problem where the
salesman can visit each city only once. The objective is to find the shortest
tour and sell-out the stuff in each city.
 VLSI Layout problem: In this problem, millions of components and
connections are positioned on a chip in order to minimize the area, circuit-
delays, stray-capacitances, and maximizing the manufacturing yield.

Searching for solutions

We have seen many problems. Now, there is a need to search for solutions to solve
them.
In this section, we will understand how searching can be used by the agent to solve
a problem.
For solving different kinds of problem, an agent makes use of different strategies
to reach the goal by searching the best possible algorithms. This process of
searching is known as search strategy.
Search Strategies
There are two types of strategies that describe a solution for a given problem:

Uninformed Search (Blind Search)

This type of search strategy does not have any additional information about the states
except the information provided in the problem definition. They can only generate
the successors and distinguish a goal state from a non-goal state. These type of search
does not maintain any internal state, that’s why it is also known as Blind search.

There are following types of uninformed searches:

 Breadth-first search
 Uniform cost search
 Depth-first search
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  Depth-limited search
 Iterative deepening search
 Bidirectional search

Informed Search (Heuristic Search)

This type of search strategy contains some additional information about the states
beyond the problem definition. This search uses problem-specific knowledge to find
more efficient solutions. This search maintains some sort of internal states via
heuristic functions (which provides hints), so it is also called heuristic search.

There are following types of informed searches:

 Best first search (Greedy search)
 A* search

Measuring problem-solving performance

Before discussing different search strategies, the performance measure of an

algorithm should be measured. Consequently, there are four ways to measure the
performance of an algorithm:
Completeness: It measures if the algorithm guarantees to find a solution (if any
solution exist).
Optimality: It measures if the strategy searches for an optimal solution.
Time Complexity: The time taken by the algorithm to find a solution.
Space Complexity: Amount of memory required to perform a search.

BY: HEMANT KUMAR EMAIL: HEMANT.KUMAR2K13@GMAIL.COM