What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technologies that enable computers to perform

a variety of advanced functions, including the ability to see, understand and
translate spoken and written language, analyze data, make recommendations, and
more. 

 Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation or approximation of

human intelligence in machines.
 The goals of artificial intelligence include computer-enhanced learning,
reasoning, and perception.
 AI is being used today across different industries from finance to
healthcare.
 Weak AI tends to be simple and single-task oriented, while strong AI
carries on tasks that are more complex and human-like.
 Some critics fear that the extensive use of advanced AI can have a negative
effect on society.

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in

machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The
term may also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a
human mind such as learning and problem-solving.

Turing Test

The Turing test was developed by Alan Turing(A computer scientist) in 1950. He

proposed that the “Turing test is used to determine whether or not a
computer(machine) can think intelligently like humans”? 
Imagine a game of three players having two humans and one computer, an
interrogator(as a human) is isolated from the other two players. The interrogator’s
job is to try and figure out which one is human and which one is a computer by
asking questions from both of them. To make things harder computer is trying to
make the interrogator guess wrongly. In other words, computers would try to be
indistinguishable from humans as much as possible. 
 
The “standard interpretation” of the Turing Test, in which player C, the
interrogator, is given the task of trying to determine which player – A or B – is
a computer and which is a human. The interrogator is limited to using the
responses to written questions to make the determination 
The conversation between interrogator and computer would be like this: 
C(Interrogator): Are you a computer? 
A(Computer): No 
C: Multiply one large number to another, 158745887 * 56755647 
A: After a long pause, an incorrect answer! 
C: Add 5478012, 4563145 
A: (Pause about 20 seconds and then give an answer)10041157 

If the interrogator wouldn’t able to distinguish the answers provided by both humans
and computers then the computer passes the test and the machine(computer) is
considered as intelligent as a human. In other words, a computer would be
considered intelligent if its conversation couldn’t be easily distinguished from a
human’s. The whole conversation would be limited to a text-only channel such as a
computer keyboard and screen. 
He also proposed that by the year 2000 a computer “would be able to play the
imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than a 70-
percent chance of making the right identification (machine or human) after five
minutes of questioning.” No computer has come close to this standard. 
But in the year 1980, Mr. John Searle proposed the “Chinese room argument“. He
argued that the Turing test could not be used to determine “whether or not a machine
is considered as intelligent like humans”. He argued that any machine
like ELIZA and PARRY could easily pass the Turing Test simply by manipulating
symbols of which they had no understanding. Without understanding, they could not
be described as “thinking” in the same sense people do. We will discuss this in the
next article. 
 
In 1990, The Newyork business man Hugh Loebner announce to reward $100,000
prize for the first computer program to pass the test. however no AI program has so
far come close to passing an undiluted Turing Test
Turing Test (Definition)  
Alan Turing proposed a simple method of determining whether a machine can
demonstrate human intelligence. If a machine engages in a conversation with a
human about how to process the data it has been demonstrated by a machine, He has
proposed the following skills of the test as follows: 
The turning judges the conversational skills of humans. According to this test, a
computer program can think of a proper response for humans. This test matches the
conversational data from the existing data through an algorithm and back respond to
humans.

 Artificial intelligence can be categorized by job capacity and competence in the

following two types: 
1. Weak artificial intelligence: A type of artificial intelligence with a
design for a personal assistant, customer relationships, video games, and
questionnaires known as weak artificial intelligence. It consists of a small
algorithm and data source. The algorithm and data source related to the
data associated with the service industry some of the weak AI examples
are – a.Amazon Alexa b. Railways Disha c. Apple’s Siri.
2. Strong Artificial Intelligence: It is a system that carries on the task
directly performed by humans like vehicle driving. This type of task is
more complex and considered under a complicated system. They are
programmed to handle situations in which the decision may be situational
changes or unpredicted these kinds of systems are developed under strong
AI and testing of these systems is very difficult but very useful for human
beings. This categorization of AI is able to replace the manual human
operative task with a programmed machine. These machines today are
most popularly available with intelligent systems such as robots, which are
treated the same rights as humans.

Cognitive modelling approach:

Cognitive modeling is an area of computer science that deals with simulating human
problem-solving and mental processing in a computerized model. Such a model can
be used to simulate or predict human behavior or performance on tasks similar to the
ones modeled and improve human-computer interaction.

Cognitive modeling is used in numerous artificial intelligence (AI) applications,

such as expert systems, natural language processing, neural networks, and in
robotics and virtual reality applications. Cognitive models are also used to improve
products in manufacturing segments, such as human factors, engineering, and
computer game and user interface design.

What is Cognitive Modeling?

Cognitive modeling is a computational model that hinges upon psychological

notions, demonstrating how people go about problem-solving and performing
tasks.

Cognitive modeling can be outlined simply on paper or may be developed on a

more complicated system such as a computer program. However, the purpose
remains the same: to predict users’ behavior with regard to the tasks. The behaviors
of particular concern address: the amount of time it takes to complete certain tasks,
the menu items and buttons the users may click, as well as the corresponding errors
that are bound to occur.

The most common modeling methods are ACT-R, Epic, GOMS and Soar.

We have briefly discussed the cognitive modeling approaches in one of my previous posts. It
gave an introduction to the Four Main Approaches to Artificial Intelligence.
 

In this post, we will take a closer look at the first quadrant on the left top corner “Thinking
Humanly:

Thinking humanly is to make a system or program to think like a human. But to achieve that,
we need to know how does a human thinks.

Suppose if we ask a person to explain how his brain connects different things during the
thinking process, he/she will probably close both eyes and will start to check how he/she
thinks but he/she cannot explain or interpret the process.

Ask the same question to yourself, and most likely you will have the same pattern and will
end up saying  “you do not know, or you may say something like “I am thinking through my
mind”, but you cannot express more than that.  Read through neuroscience books to get a
deeper understanding of this.
For example – If we want to model the thinking of Roger Federer and make the model system
to compete with someone or against him to play in a tennis game, it may not be possible to
replicate the exact thinking as Roger Federer, however, a good build of Intelligence systems
(Robot) can play and win the game against him.

To understand the exact process of how we think, we need to go inside the human mind to
see how this giant machine works.

We can interpret how the human mind thinks in theory, in three ways as follows:

1. Introspection method – Catch our thoughts and see how it flows.

2. Psychological Inspections method – Observe a person on the action.
3. Brain Imaging method (MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) or fMRI (Functional
Magnetic resonance imaging) scanning) – Observe a person’s brain in action.

Using the above methods, if we are able to catch the human brain’s actions and give it as a
theory, then we can convert that theory into a computer program.  If the input/output of the
computer program matches with human behavior, then it may be possible that a part of the
program may be behaving like a human brain.

This could be explained with the famous problem-solving example:

Allen Newell and Herbert Simon developed the General Problem Solver (GPS) program to
model human thinking and check whether it can solve problems like a person by following
the same reasoning steps as a human. The intent of the program is not just to solve the
problem correctly but to go through the same series of steps as that of a human brain to solve
it.
Thinking human goal is to develop modern computational models and intelligent devices to
think like a human and those models help humans to solve complex problems.

Per the book “Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach”, The Greek philosopher Aristotle
was the one who first codifies “right-thinking” reasoning processes.

Aristotle’s syllogisms provided patterns for argument structures that always provide correct
premises.

A famous example, “Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.”

Another example – All TVs use energy; Energy always generates heat; therefore, all TVs
generate heat.”

These arguments initiated the field called logic.  Notations for statements for all kinds of
objects were developed and interrelated between them to show logic.

By 1965, programs existed that could solve problems that were described in logical notation
and provides a solution.

The logical tradition in Artificial Intelligence hopes to build on such programs to create

intelligence systems or programs or computational models.

There are two limitations to this approach:

1. First, it is not easy to take informal knowledge to use logical notation when there is not
enough certainty on the knowledge.
2. Solving in principle and solving in practice varies hugely.

Let’s see a couple of examples of syllogism argument statements in Logical, Mathematical,

and Programming notations(Prolog programming is a logic computer language).
Logical notation:

Socrates is a man;

All men are mortal;

therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Mathematical predicate calculus notation:

Ps is the statement “Socrates is a man.”

Qs is the statement “Socrates is mortal.”

∀x[Px → Qx]

Ps

—————–

∴Qs

You can see syllogism argument shares a common term in predicate calculus.

Prolog programming notation:

Fact Statement: Socrates is a man.

man(socrates).

Rule (Headed horn clause) Statement: All men are mortal.

mortal(X):- man(X)
Goal or Query Statement: Is Socrates mortal?

?- mortal(Socrates)

Did you know?

Alan Colmeraue and Phillippe Roussel were interested in natural-language processing and
Robert Kowalski was interested in automated theorem proving.  All three collaborated and
developed the fundamental design of Prolog programming.

Logical notation:

All TV’s uses energy;

Energy always generates heat;

therefore, All TVs generate heat.

Mathematical predicate calculus notation:

Ps is the statement “All TV’s uses energy.”

Qs is the statement “All TVs generate heat.”

∀x[Px → Qx]

Ps

Ps

—————–

∴Qs

You can see syllogism argument shares a common term in predicate calculus.

Prolog programming notation:

Fact Statement: All TVs use energy.

energy(tv).

Rule (Headed horn clause) Statement: Energy always generates heat

heat(X):- energy(X)

Goal or Query Statement: Is TV generates heat?

?- heat(tv)

Acting Rationally: The rational agent approach

A traditional computer program blindly executes the code that we write. Neither it acts on its
own nor it adapts to change itself based on the outcome.

The so-called agent program that we refer to here is expected to do more than the traditional
computer program. It is expected to create and pursue the goal, change state, and operate
autonomously.

A rational agent is an agent that acts to achieve its best performance for a given task.

The “Logical Approach” to AI emphasizes correct inferences and achieving a correct

inference is a part of the rational agent.  Being able to give a logical reason is one way of
acting rationally.  But all correct inferences cannot be called rationality, because there are
situations that don’t always have a correct thing to do. It is also possible to act rationally
without involving inferences. Our reflex actions are considered as best examples of acting
rationally without inferences.

The rational agent approach to AI has a couple of advantage over other approaches:

1. A correct inference is considered a possible way to achieve rationality but is not always
required to achieve rationality.
2. It is a more manageable scientific approach to define rationality than others that are based on
human behavior or human thought.

Today’s AI concentrates on developing general principles of rational agents rather than

achieving perfect rational agents due to complex environments.