Defining

Artificial
Intelligence
CS158-2: Introduction to Artificial
Intelligence
4th Term AY 2019-2020
 Overview
of CS158-2
 What is artificial intelligence?

Outline Is AI a real science?

Can a computer be really

smarter than a human being?
 Relatively easy question but hard to
answer for two reasons:

1. There is little agreement about

What is what intelligence is.

artificial
intelligence 2. There is little reason so far to
? believe that machine intelligence
bears much relationship to human
intelligence.
What is artificial
intelligence?

“that of making a machine behave

in ways that would be called
intelligent if a human were so
behaving.”

John McCarthy (1955), father of AI

 How you
Difficulty in
approach the
defining/
problem is as
measuring
Why Comparing human
important as
whether you
Human and intelligence
solve it
Machine
Intelligence as
Characterization Machines can
perform lots of
of AI is Flawed tasks that
How gracefully
we fail
people can’t do
at all
 Infancy

Is AI a real Professional Adolescence

science?

Will it ever mature into a full-

fledged scientific discipline?
Solid Theoretical Foundation Examples

Non-Euclidean Geometry of Bernard Riemann set the stage for

Einstein’s theories of the curvature of space-time.

Claude Shannon’s 1937 MIT master’s thesis, in which he proposed that

electronic circuits can be modelled by Boolean algebra, laid the
groundwork for modern computer science.
Is AI susceptible to
theoretical analysis?
“The essence of AI— indeed, the
essence of intelligence— is the ability
to make appropriate generalizations in a
timely fashion based on limited data.“
Jerry Kaplan, American computer
scientist
 Breadth Breeds Brilliance
An important key to making good generalizations is to bring to bear the broadest
available context.

When you decide to avoid
driving a particular route
because it often gets backed
up.
When your mail program
suggests adding a conference
call to your calendar based on
the text of an e- mail you
received
When that same program
stops making such
suggestions because you
routinely decline
The Important Truth

AI may not be a hard science but

this new technology will impact a
great many things that we hold
dear, from our livelihoods to our
sense of self.
Can a computer
ever really be
smarter than a
human being?
In a word, yes – but most likely in
limited ways.
 Intelligence, as we might use the word for
machines, is likely to apply to well-
defined activities in which the goals can
Intelligence be easily specified and measured.

for
Machines …but not to others in which
success is more subjective.
Machine Intelligence to exceed Human Intelligence

Computers surpass human Swiss Army knife/ Smartphone

capabilities in many tasks today. analogy
 Relatively simple statistical methods, when
Machine supplied with a sufficiently large number of
Learning samples, are capable of tasks that previously
require comprehension and insight.
Questions?