ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LECTURE NOTES

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of Science, which deals with helping machines, find solutions to
complex problems in a more human-like fashion.
 This generally involves borrowing characteristics from human intelligence, and applying them as
algorithms in a computer friendly way.
 A more or less flexible or efficient approach can be taken depending on the requirements established,
which influences how artificial the intelligent behavior appears
 Artificial intelligence can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.  From the perspective of
intelligence artificial intelligence is making machines "intelligent" -- acting as we would expect people to
act. o The inability to distinguish computer responses from human responses is called the Turing test. o
Intelligence requires knowledge o Expert problem solving - restricting domain to allow including
significant relevant knowledge  From a business perspective AI is a set of very powerful tools, and
methodologies for using those tools to solve business problems.  From a programming perspective, AI
includes the study of symbolic programming, problem solving, and search. o Typically AI programs focus
on symbols rather than numeric processing. o Problem solving - achieve goals. o Search - seldom access
a solution directly. Search may include a variety of techniques. o AI programming languages include: –
LISP, developed in the 1950s, is the early programming language strongly associated with AI. LISP is a
functional programming language with procedural extensions. LISP (LISt Processor) was specifically
designed for processing heterogeneous lists -- typically a list of symbols. Features of LISP are run- time
type checking, higher order functions (functions that have other functions as parameters), automatic
memory management (garbage collection) and an interactive environment. – The second language
strongly associated with AI is PROLOG. PROLOG was developed in the 1970s. PROLOG is based on firstorder logic. PROLOG is declarative in nature and has facilities for explicitly limiting the search space. –
Object-oriented languages are a class of languages more recently used for AI programming. Important
features of object-oriented languages include concepts of objects and messages, objects bundle data
and methods for manipulating the data, the sender specifies what is to be done receiver decides how to
do it, and inheritance (object hierarchy where objects inherit the attributes of the more general class of
objects). Examples of object-oriented languages are Smalltalk, Objective C, and C++. Object-oriented
extensions to LISP (CLOS - Common LISP Object System) and PROLOG (L&O - Logic & Objects) are also
used