CS158-1

INTRODUCTION TO ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
MODULE 1
WEEK 2: AI CONCEPTS
 TYPES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
• General-purpose
• AI like the robots of science fiction is incredibly hard
• Human brain appears to have lots of special and general functions, integrated
in some amazing way that we really do not understand at all (yet)

• Special-purpose AI is more doable (nontrivial)

• E.g., chess/poker playing programs, logistics planning, automated translation,
voice recognition, web search, data mining, medical diagnosis, keeping a car
on the road, … … … …
 WHAT IS AI?
Views of AI fall into four categories:
 ACTING HUMANLY: TURING TEST
• Turing (1950) "Computing machinery and intelligence":
• "Can machines think?" → "Can machines behave intelligently?"
• Operational test for intelligent behavior: the Imitation Game

Predicted that by 2000, a machine might have a 30% chance of fooling a lay person for 5 minutes
• Anticipated all major arguments against AI in following 50 years
• Suggested major components of AI: knowledge, reasoning, language understanding, learning
 THINKING HUMANLY: COGNITIVE
MODELING
• 1960s "cognitive revolution": information-processing psychology
• Requires scientific theories of internal activities of the brain
• -- How to validate? Requires
1) Predicting and testing behavior of human subjects (top-down)
or 2) Direct identification from neurological data (bottom-up)

• Both approaches (roughly, Cognitive Science and Cognitive

Neuroscience) are now distinct from AI
 THINKING RATIONALLY: "LAWS OF
THOUGHT"
• Aristotle: what are correct arguments/thought processes?
• Several Greek schools developed various forms of logic: notation
and rules of derivation for thoughts; may or may not have
proceeded to the idea of mechanization
• Direct line through mathematics and philosophy to modern AI
• Problems:
1. Not all intelligent behavior is mediated by logical deliberation
2. What is the purpose of thinking? What thoughts should I have?
 ACTING RATIONALLY: RATIONAL
AGENT
• Rational behavior: doing the right thing

• The right thing: that which is expected to maximize goal achievement, given
the available information

• Doesn't necessarily involve thinking – e.g., blinking reflex – but thinking

should be in the service of rational action
 HOW TO TRAIN AI?
• Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI) (Douglas Lenat: Cyc)
• Cramming a computer full of knowledge about the real world and methods to
manipulate it
• Intelligence intimately tied up with having and being able to use knowledge
• “It’s worth to go to school”
• Robotic insects example
• Legs controlled by a central computer that has a detailed 3D map of the terrain
and knows all the relevant laws of physics and strategies
 HOW TO TRAIN AI?
• Learning through experience (Rodney Brooks: Cog, Kismet)
• Machines that experience the world in much the way human beings do
• “You can learn stuff on your own”
• Robotic insects example
• Each leg containing a small circuit that tells it about basic movements
• All local computation physically coupled through the body, with gait emerging
spontaneously from circuits’ interaction
TURING TEST
 ELIZA (1966)
• Conversation with ELIZA

E> Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?

P> I am feeling sad.
E> I am sorry to hear you are sad.
P> I had some nightmares tonight.
E> You say you had some nightmares tonight?
P> Yes, my dreams are worrying me.
E> What does that dream suggest to you?
P> Thrill, scare.
E> I am not sure I understand you fully.
P> My dreams annoy me.
E> Do you dream often?
P> Yes, daily.
 EARLY HISTORY OF AI
• 50s/60s: Early successes! AI can draw logical conclusions, prove some
theorems, create simple plans… Some initial work on neural networks…
• Led to overhyping: researchers promised funding agencies spectacular
progress, but started running into difficulties:
• Ambiguity: highly funded translation programs (Russian to English) were
good at syntactic manipulation but bad at disambiguation
 LOST IN TRANSLATION
English → Russian (or Spanish)→ English

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” →

→ Дух охотно готов, но плоть слаба →

→ “The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten”

(Actually: “Spirit is willingly ready, but flesh is weak” or

“The alcohol is arranged, but the meat is weak”)
THE CHINESE ROOM
(JOHN SEARLE)
 HISTORY OF AI…
• 70s, 80s: Creation of expert systems (systems specialized for one particular
task based on experts’ knowledge), wide industry adoption
• Again, overpromising…
• … led to AI winter(s)
• Funding cutbacks, bad reputation
 MODERN AI
• More rigorous, scientific, formal/mathematical
• Fewer grandiose promises
• Divided into many subareas interested in particular aspects
• More directly connected to “neighboring” disciplines
• Theoretical computer science, statistics, economics, operations research,
biology, psychology/neuroscience, …
• Some senior AI researchers are calling for re-integration of all these topics,
return to more grandiose goals of AI
• Somewhat risky proposition for graduate students and junior faculty…
 GESTATION OF ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE (1943-1955)

• 1943 McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain

• 1949 Donald Hebb demonstrated an updating rule for modifying the
connection strength between neurons. His rule is now called Hebbian
learning
• 1950 Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
 THE BIRTH OF ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE (1943-1955)
• 1955 Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon created the "first artificial
intelligence program.“ Which was named as "Logic Theorist.“

• 1956 Dartmouth meeting: "Artificial Intelligence" adopted

• 1952—69 Look, Ma, no hands! – John McCarthy

• 1950s Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers

program, Newell & Simon's Logic Theorist,
Gelernter's Geometry Engine
 THE GOLDEN YEARS-EARLY
ENTHUSIASM (1956-1974)
• 1965 Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning

• 1966 The researchers emphasized developing algorithms which can

solve mathematical problems. Joseph Weizenbaum created the
first chatbot in 1966, which was named as ELIZA.

• 1966—73 AI discovers computational complexity

Neural network research almost disappears

• 1969—79 Early development of knowledge-based systems

• 1972 The first intelligent humanoid robot was built in Japan which was
named as WABOT-1.
 THE FIRST AI WINTER (1974-1980)
• Severe shortage of funding from government for AI researches.
• Interest of publicity on artificial intelligence was decreased.
 A BOOM OF AI (1980-1987)
• 1980 AI becomes an industry

• 1986 Neural networks return to popularity

• 1987 AI becomes a science

 THE SECOND AI WINTER
(1987-1993)
• Investors and government stopped in funding for AI research as due to high
cost but not efficient result.
 THE EMERGENCE OF INTELLIGENT
AGENTS (1993-2011)
• 1997 IBM Deep Blue beats world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, and
became the first computer to beat a world chess champion.

• 2002: AI entered the home in the form of Roomba, a vacuum cleaner.

• 2006 AI came in the Business world. Companies like Facebook, Twitter,

and Netflix also started using AI.
 DEEP LEARNING, BIG DATA AND
ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
(2011-PRESENT)
• 2011 IBM's Watson won jeopardy, a quiz show, where it had to solve
the complex questions as well as riddles.
• 2012 Google has launched an Android app feature "Google now",
which was able to provide information to the user as a
prediction.
• 2014 In the year 2014, Chatbot "Eugene Goostman" won a
competition in the infamous "Turing test."
• 2018 The "Project Debater" from IBM debated on complex topics with
two master debaters and also performed extremely well.
• Google has demonstrated an AI program "Duplex" which was a virtual
assistant and which had taken hairdresser appointment on call, and lady on
other side didn't notice that she was talking with the machine.
AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS
 PERSONALIZATION,
RECOMMENDATION
 SOME AI VIDEOS
• Note: there is a lot of AI that is not quite this “sexy” but still very valuable!
• E.g. logistics planning – DARPA claims that savings from a single AI planning
application during 1991 Persian Gulf crisis more than paid back for all of DARPA’s
investment in AI, ever. [Russell and Norvig]
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JJsBFiXGl0&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICgL1OWsn58&feature=related
• http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~kdresner/aim/video/fcfs-insanity.mov
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HacG_FWWPOw&feature=related
• http://videolectures.net/aaai07_littman_ai/
• http://www.ai.sri.com/~nysmith/videos/SRI_AR-PA_AAAI08.avi
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScXX2bndGJc
THE END ☺