Chapter One

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Data, Information, and Knowledge
What is Data and Information? Are they
different from Knowledge?

Data: Unorganized and unprocessed facts;

static; a set of discrete facts about events

Information: Aggregation of data that

makes decision making easier

Knowledge is derived from information in

the same way information is derived from
data; it is a person’s range of information

2 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Intelligence
Intelligence is the capability of observing, learning,
remembering and reasoning.
AI attempts to develop intelligent agents.
Characteristics of Intelligent system
Use vast amount of knowledge
Learn from experience and adopt to changing environment
Interact with human using language and speech
Respond in real time
Tolerate error and ambiguity in communication
3 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
 Human Intelligence
How do people Reason?
They create categories

They use specific rules

– if ‘a’ then ’b’
if ‘b’ then ‘c’
abc
They use Heuristics - “Rule of thumb”
They use Past Experience – “CASES”
- Similarities of current and previous case
- Store cases using key attributes
They Use “Expectations”
How does our brain work when we solve a problem?
Do we think it over and suddenly find an answer?
What do we do when solving a complicated factorization problem, a puzzle
or a mystery?
4 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
 Artificial Intelligence(AI)
AI is the branch of Computer Science that deals with ways of:
representing knowledge using symbol (non-algorithmic)
rather than numeric value and with rule-of-thumb and method
of processing information
The creation of computer programs which exhibit some features
of human intelligence has been the goal of Artificial Intelligence
(AI).
AI is the effort to develop computer based system that behave
as human.
Such system should be able to learn Natural Language.
Able to do text processing, communicate in natural language
and speech

5 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Views of AI
AI is found on the premise that:
workings of human mind can be explained in terms of computation, &
computers can do the right thing given correct premises and reasoning
rules.
AI definition organized into four categories these are:

6 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Thinking humanly: The Cognitive
Modeling
Reasons like humans do
 Programs that behave like humans

Requires understanding of the internal activities of the brain

 see how humans behave in certain situations and see if you
could make computers behave in that same way.
 Cognitive Science brings together Computer Science,
Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology in one.

Example. write a program that plays chess. Instead of making

the best possible chess-playing program, you would make one
that play chess like people do.

7 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Acting humanly: The Turing Test
Can machines act like human do? Can machines behave intelligently?
 Turing Test: Operational test for intelligent behavior
 do experiments on the ability to achieve human-level performance,
 Acting like humans requires AI programs to interact with people

Example A computer passes the test if a human interrogator, after

posing some written questions, cannot tell whether the written
responses come from a person or from a computer.
 Suggested major components of AI: knowledge representation,
automatic reasoning, natural language understanding, machine
learning, computer vision, …

8 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

Thinking Rationally: The Laws of Thought
A system is rational if it thinks/does the right thing through
correct reasoning.

Aristotle:provided the patterns for argument structures that

always gave correct conclusions when given correct
premises.
Example:
 Abdi is a man;
 all men are mortal;
 therefore Abdi is mortal

These Laws of thought governed the operation of the mind and

initiated the field of Logic.Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
9
 Acting rationally: The rational agent
Doing the right thing so as to achieve one’s goal, given one’s
beliefs.
Mostly AI is the study and construction of rational agents (an
agent that perceives and acts)
Rational action requires the ability to represent knowledge and
reason with it so as to reach good decision.
Learning for better understanding of how the world works
may require thinking rationally to decide which action will
achieve one's goal
may require natural language, vision, and learning skills to
be able to communicate with the world and generate better
strategies over time

10 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 The Foundations of AI
The disciplines that contributed ideas, viewpoints, and techniques
to AI include:
Philosophy (Where does knowledge come from?)
Mathematics (What can be computed?)
Economics (How should we make decisions so as to maximize
payoff?)
Neuroscience (How do brains process information?)
Psychology (How do humans and animals think and act?)
Computer engineering (How can we build an efficient
computer?)
Control theory and cybernetics (How can artifacts operate
under their own control?)
Linguistics (How does language relate to thought?)
11 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
 History of AI
 Formally
initiated in 1956 and the name AI was coined by John
McCarthy.

 Theadvent of general purpose computers provided a vehicle for

creating artificially intelligent entities.
 Used for solving general-purpose problems

The early work in AI concentrated a bit too much on search and

the use of heuristics of a very general-purpose nature for
guiding and limiting the search.

12 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 What led to new phase in AI field
 Relatively slow progress in AI in the sixties and seventies
 Significant steps forward to substantial investments made on AI in the
eighties.
 The US Department of Defense listed AI as an essential technology &
strategic computing program
 The Japanese launched a massive Fifth Generation Computer Systems
project with strong AI components.
 The UK set up the Alvey Program which made significant investments on
intelligent knowledge based systems.
 The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Consortium (MCC) set up
by a group of US companies recognized AI as an important area.
 The European Economic Community's ESPRIT Program funded a number of
AI activities.
 The Government of India and the United Nations Development Program
have initiated and supported the Knowledge Based Computer Systems
Project
13 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
 Some of AI research areas:
Natural language understanding
Knowledge representation
Common sense reasoning
Logic in AI
Intelligent tutoring systems
Theorem proving
Planning and scheduling
Computer vision
Robotics
Speech understanding
Game playing
Big data analysis

14 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Applications of AI
Solving problems that required thinking by humans:
Playing games (chess, checker, cards, ...)
Proving theorems (mathematical theorems, laws of
physics, …)
Classification of text (Politics, Economic, sports, etc,)
Writing story and poems; solving puzzles
Giving advice in medicine, law, … (diagnosing
diseases, consultation, …)

15 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 The State of Art : today’s AI can do
Robotic vehicles
 STANLEY (driverless robotic car) is a Volkswagen Touareg outfitted with
cameras, radar, and laser rangefinders to sense the environment and
onboard software to command the steering, braking, and acceleration.
Speech recognition
 A traveler calling United Airlines to book a flight can have the entire
conversation guided by an automated speech recognition and dialog
management system.
Autonomous planning and scheduling
 A hundred million miles from Earth, NASA’s Remote Agent program
became the first on-board autonomous planning program to control the
scheduling of operations for a spacecraft

16 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Cont…
Spam fighting
Each day, learning algorithms classify over a billion messages
as spam, saving the recipient from having to waste time
deleting.
Robotics
The iRobot Corporation has sold over two million Roomba
robotic vacuum cleaners for home use.
Machine Translation
A computer program automatically translates from Arabic to
English, allowing an English speaker to see the headlines.

17 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 How to make computers act like
humans?
The following sub-fields are emerged
Natural Language processing (enable computers communicate
in human language, English, Amharic, ..)
Knowledge representation (schemes to store information, both
facts and inferences, before and during interrogation)
Automated reasoning (use stored information to answer questions and
to draw new conclusions)
Machine learning (adapt to new circumstances and accumulate
knowledge)
Computer vision (recognize objects based on patterns in the
same way as the human visual system does)
Robotics (produce mechanical device capable of controlled motion; which
enable computers to see, hear & take actions)
Is AI equals human intelligence ?
18 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)
 Programming paradigms
 Each programming paradigms consists of two aspects:
 Methods for organizing data/knowledge,
 Methods for controlling the flow of computation

 Traditional paradigms:
Programs = data structure + algorithm

 AI programming paradigms:
Programs = knowledge structure + inference mechanism

19 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 Some AI Videos
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

20 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)

 End of Chapter 1

Any doubts???

21 Introduction to AI - By Chala S(MSc in CSE)