CS464: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

MODULE 1
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SYLLABUS
Module 1 (14 hours)
Introduction: What is AI, The foundations of AI, History and applications,
Production systems. Structures and strategies for state space search. Informed and
Uninformed searches.
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Introduction
Artificial intellegence(AI) is the study of how to make computer do things which at
the moment people do better.
The AI problems
Some of the task domains of AI are
 Mundane Tasks
 Perception
 Vision
 Speech
 Natural Language
 Understanding
 Generation
 Translation
 Commonsense reasoning
 Robot control
 Formal Taks
 Games
 Chess
 Backgammon
 Checkers
 Mathematics
 Geometry
 Logic
 Integral calculus
 Proving properties of programs
 Expert Tasks
 Engineering
 Design

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 Fault Finding
 Manufacturing planning
 Scientific Analysis
 Medical Diagnosis
 Financial Analysis
Perception of the world around us is crucial to our survival. Animals with much less
intelligence than people are capable of more sophisticated visual perception than are
current machines. Perpetual difficult because they involve analog signals, the signals
are typically very noisy and usually a large number of things must be perceived at
once.
The ability to use language to communicate a wide variety of ideas is perhaps the
most important thing that seperates humans from the other animals. The problem of
understanding spoken language is a perceptual problem. This problem, usually
referred to as natural language understanding. In order to understand sentences about
topic, it is necessary to know not only the language itself but also a good deal about
the topic so that unstated assumptions can be recognized.
AI focused on the sort of problem solving that we do every day when we decide how
to get to work in the morning, often called commonsense reasoning.
Game Playing and theorm proving show the property that people who do them well
are considered to be displaying intelligence. Compters could perform well at those
tasks simply by being fast at exploring a large number of solution paths and then
selecting the best one.
Now thousands of programs called expert systems in day to day operation throughout
all areas of industry and goverment. Each of these system attempts to solve part of a
practical, significant problem that previously required scarce expertise.
AI is a system that acts like human beings
For this, a computer would need to possess the following capabilities.
 Natural language processing To enable it to communicate successfully in
English.
 Knowledge representation To store what it knows or hears.
 Automated reasoning To use the stored information to answer questions and to
draw new conclusions.
 Machine learning To adapt to new circumstances and to detect and extrapolate
patterns.
 Computer vision To perceive objects.
 Robotics To manipulate objects and move about.
AI is a system that thinks like human beings.
First we must have some way of determining how humans think. We need to get
inside the workings of the human minds. Once we have a sufficiently precise theory
of the mind, it becomes possible to express that theory using a computer program.

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The field of cognitive science brings together computer models from AI and
experimental techniques from psychology to try to construct precise and testable
theories of the workings of the human mind.
AI is a system that thinks rationally
For a given set of correct premises, it is possible to yield new conclusions.
For eg.
“Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal.”
These laws of thought were supposed to govern the operation of the mind. This
resulted in a field called logic. A precise notation for the statements about all kinds of
things in the world and about relations among them are developed. Programs exist
that could in principle solve any solvable problem described in logical notation.
There are 2 main obstacles to this approach.
 First it is not easy to take informal knowledge and state it in the formal terms
required by logical notation.
 Second, there is a big difference between being able to solve a problem “in
principle” and doing so in practice.
AI is a system that acts rationally
An agent is something that acts. A rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the
best outcome or, when there is uncertainty, the best expected outcome. We need the
ability to represent knowledge and reason with it because this enables us to reach
good decisions in a wide variety of situations. We need to be able to generate
comprehensive sentences in natural language because saying those sentences helps us
get by in a complex society. We need learning because having a better idea of how the
world works enables us to generate more effective strategies for dealing with it. We
need visual perception to get a better idea of what an action might achieve.
AI Application Areas
The 2 most fundamental concerns of AI researchers are knowledge representation and
search.
 Knowledge representation
It addresses the problem of capturing the full range of knowledge required for
intelligent behavior in a formal language,
i.e. One suitable for computer manipulation.
Eg. predicate calculus, LISP, Prolog
 Search
It is a problem solving technique that systematically explores a space of problem
states, ie, successive and alternative stages in the problem solving process.

The following explains the major application areas of AI.

1. Game Playing

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Much of the early research in AI was done using common board games such as
 checkers,
 chess, and
 15 puzzle.
Board games have certain properties that made them ideal for AI research. Most
games are played using a well defined set of rules. This makes it easy to generate
the search space. The board configuration used in playing these games can be
easily represented on a computer. As games can be easily played, testing a game
playing program presents no financial or ethical burden.
2. Heuristics
Games can generate extremely large search spaces. So we use powerful
techniques called heuristics to explore the problem space.
A heuristic is a useful but potentially fallible problem strategy, such as checking
to make sure that an unresponsive appliance is plugged in before assuming that it
is broken. Since most of us have some experience with these simple games, we do
not need to find and consult an expert. For these reasons games provide a rich
domain for the study of heuristic search.
3. Automated Reasoning and Theorem Proving
Examples for automatic theorem provers are
Newell and Simon’s Logic Theorist,
General Problem Solver (GPS).
Theorem proving research is responsible for the development of languages such
as predicate calculus and prolog. The attraction of automated theorem proving lies
in the rigor and generality of logic. A wide variety of problems can be attacked by
representing the problem description as logical axioms and treating problem
instances as theorems to be proved. Reasoning based on formal mathematical
logic is also attractive. Many important problems such as design and verification
of logic circuits, verification of the correctness of computer programs and control
of complex systems come in this category.
4. Expert Systems
Here comes the importance of domain specific knowledge. A doctor, for example,
is effective at diagnosing illness because she possesses some innate general
problem solving skill; she is effective because she knows a lot about medicine.
A geologist is effective at discovering mineral deposits. Expert knowledge is a
combination of theoretical understanding of the problem and a collection of
heuristic problem solving rules that experience has shown to be effective in the
domain. Expert systems are constructed by obtaining this knowledge from a
human expert and coding it into a form that a computer may apply to similar
problems. To develop such a system, we must obtain knowledge from a human
domain expert. Examples for domain experts are doctor, chemist, geologist,
engineer etc..
The domain expert provides the necessary knowledge of the problem domain. The
AI specialist is responsible for implementing this knowledge in a program.

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Once such a program has been written, it is necessary to refine its expertise
through a process of giving it example problems to solve and making any
required changes or modifications to the program’s knowledge.
Dendral is an expert system designed to infer the structure of organic molecules
from their chemical formulas and
mass spectrographic information about the chemical bonds present in the
molecules.
Mycin is an expert system which uses expert medical knowledge to diagnose and
prescribe treatment for spinal meningitis
and bacterial infections of the blood.
Prospector is an expert system for determining the probable location and type of
ore deposits based on geological
information about a site.
Internist is an expert system for performing diagnosis in the area of internal
medicine.
The dipmeter advisor is an expert system for interpreting the results of oil well
drilling logs.
Xcon is an expert system for configuring VAX computers.

5. Natural Language Understanding and Semantic Modeling

One goal of AI is the creation of programs that are capable of understanding and
generating human language. Systems that can use natural language with the
flexibility and generality that characterize human speech are beyond current
methodologies. Understanding natural language involves much more than parsing
sentences into their individual parts of speech and looking those words up in a
dictionary. Real understanding depends on extensive background knowledge.
Consider for example, the difficulties in carrying out a conversation about
baseball with an individual who understands English but knows nothing about the
rules of the game. This person will not be able to understand the meaning of the
sentence.
“With none down in the top of the ninth and the go ahead run at second, the
manager called his relief from the bull pen”.
Even though hall of the words in the sentence may be individually understood,
this sentence would be difficult to even the most intelligent non base ball fan. The
task of collecting and organizing this background knowledge in such a way that it
may be applied to language comprehension forms the major problem in
automating natural language understanding.
6. Modeling Human Performance
We saw that human intelligence is a reference point in considering artificial
intelligence. It does not mean that programs should pattern themselves after the
organization of the human mind. Programs that take non human approaches to
solving problems are often more successful than their human counterparts. Still,

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the design of systems that explicitly model some aspect of human performance
has been a fertile area of research in both AI and psychology.
7. Planning and Robotics
Research in planning began as an effort to design robots that could perform their tasks
with some degree of flexibility and responsiveness to outside world. Planning
assumes a robot that is capable of performing certain atomic actions.
Planning is a difficult problem because of the size of the space of possible sequences
of moves. Even an extremely simple robot is capable of generating a vast number of
potential move sequences. One method that human beings use in planning is
hierarchical problem decomposition. If we plan a trip to London, we will generally
treat the problems of arranging a flight, getting to the air port, making airline
connections and finding ground transportation in London separately. Each of these
may be further decomposed into smaller sub problems. Creating a computer program
that can do the same is a difficult challenge.
A robot that blindly performs a sequence of actions without responding to changes in
its environment cannot be considered intelligent. Often, a robot will have to formulate
a plan based on the incomplete information and correct its behavior. A robot may not
have adequate sensors to locate all obstacles in the way of a projected path.
Organizing plans in a fashion that allows response to changing environmental
conditions is a major problem for planning.
8. Machine Learning
An expert system may perform extensive and costly computations to solve a problem.
But if it is given the same or similar problem a second time, it usually does not
remember the solution. It performs the same sequence of computations again.
This is not the behavior of an intelligent problem solver. The programs must learn on
their own. Learning is a difficult area. But there are several programs that suggest that
it is possible. One program is AM, the automated mathematician which was designed
to discover mathematical laws. Initially given the concepts and axioms of set theory,
AM was able to induce important mathematical concepts such as cardinality, integer
arithmetic and many of the results of number theory. AM conjectured new theorems
by modifying its current knowledge base.
Early work includes Winston’s research on the induction of structural concepts such
as “arch” from a set of examples in the blocks world. The ID3 algorithm has proved
successful in learning general patterns from examples. Meta dendral learns rules for
interpreting mass spectrographic data in organic chemistry from examples of data on
compounds of known structure.Teiresias, an intelligent front end for expert systems,
converts high level advice into new rules for its knowledge base. There are also now
many important biological and sociological models of learning.
9. Neural Nets and Genetic Algorithms
An approach to build intelligent programs is to use models that parallel the structure
of neurons in the human brain. A neuron consists of a cell body that has a number of
branched protrusions called dendrites and a single branch called the axon. Dendrites
receive signals from other neurons. When these combined impulses exceed a certain
threshold, the neuron fires and an impulse or spike passes down the axon.

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This description of the neuron captures features that are relevant to neural models of
computation. Each computational unit computes some function of its inputs and
passes the result along to connected units in the network; the final results are
produced by the parallel and distributed processing of this network of neural
connection and threshold weights.
Languages and Environments for AI
Programming environments include knowledge structuring techniques such as object
oriented programming and expert systems frameworks.
High level languages such as Lisp, and Prolog support modular development.

Problems, Problem Space And Search

To build a system to solve a particular problem
1. Define the problem precisely: this definition must include precise specification of
what the initial situation will be as well as what final situation constitute acceptable
solution to the problem
2. Analyse the problem: a few very important feature can have an immense impact on
appropriateness of various possible technique for solving the problem
3. Isolate and represent the task knowledge: that is necessary to solve the problem
4. Choose the best problem solving technique and apply it to particular problem.

Defining problem as a state space search

Suppose we start with the problem statement “PLAY CHESS”
To build a program
 Specify the starting position of the chess board
 The rules that define the legal moves
 The board positions that represent a win for one side or other
In addition we must make explicit the implicit goal of not only playing a legal game
of chess but also winning the game if possible.

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The starting position can be described as 8X8 array where each position contains a
symbol standing for the appropriate piece in the official chess opening position. We
can define as our goal any board position in which the opponent does not have any
legal move and his or her king is under attack. The legal moves provide the way of
getting from the initial state to a goal state.
Set of rules consisting of two parts:
 A left side that serves as a pattern to be matched against the current board
position
 A right side that describe the change to be made to the board position to reflect
the move

There are several ways in which these rules can be written. (10120 possible board
positions). We can have board configuration images or write as rules.
Difficulties
1. no person could ever supply a complete set of such rules
2. No program could easily handle all those rules
In order to minimize such problems we should look for a way to write the rules
describing the legal moves in as general a way as possible. Eg,

We just defined the problem of playing chess as a problem of moving around in a

state space where each state correspond to a legal position of the board. We can then

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play chess by starting at an initial states using a set of rules to move from one state to
another and attempting to end up in one of a set of final states. This stste space
representation seems natural for chess because the set of states which correspond to
set of board positions is artificial and well organized.
The state space representation forms the basics of most of the AI methods
Its Structure:
 It allows for a formal definition of a problem as the need to convert some given
situation into some desired situation using a set of permissible operations
 It permits us to define the process of solving a particular problem as a
combination of known techniques and search the general technique of exploring
the space to try to find some path from the current state to goal state. Search is
very important process in the solution of hard problems for which no more direct
techniques are available

A Water Jug Problem

You are given two jugs, a 4-gallon one and a 3 gallonone. Neither has any measuring
markers on it.There is a pump that can be used to fill the jugs with water. How can
you get exactly 2gallon of water into 4 gallon jar?
The state space for this problem can be described as the set of ordered pair of
integers(x,y) such that x=0,1,2,3 or 4 and y=0,1,2 or 3.
 x represent number of gallon of water in the 4 gallon jug
 y represent number of gallon of water in the 3 gallon jug
The start state is (0,0).
The goal state is (2,n) n can be any value.
Production rules for water jug problem

1 (x,y) -----> (4,y) Fill the 4 gallon jug

If x<4

2 (x,y) -----> (x,3) Fill the 3 gallon jug

If y<3

3 (x,y) -----> (x-d,y) Pour some water out of 4

If x>0 gallon jug

4 (x,y) -----> (x,y-d) Pour some water out of 3

If y>0 gallon jug

5 (x,y) -----> (0,y) Empty the 4 gallon jug on

If x>0 ground

6 (x,y) -----> (x,0) Empty the 3 gallon jug on

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If y>0 ground

7 (x,y) -----> ( 4, y-(4-x) ) Pour water from 3 gallon

jug into 4 gallon jug until
If x+y>=4 and y>0
4 gallon jug is fill

8 (x,y) -----> ( x-(3-y), 3 ) Pour water from 4 gallon

If x+y>=4 and y>0 jug into 3 gallon jug until
3 gallon jug is fill

9 (x,y) -----> (x+y,0) Pour all water from 3

If x+y<=4 and y>0 gallon jug into 4 gallon jug

10 (x,y) -----> (0,x+y) Pour all water from 4

If x+y<=4 and y>0 gallon jug into 3 gallon jug

11 (0,2) -----> (2,0) Pour the 2 gallon from 3

If x+y<=4 and y>0 gallon jug into 4 gallon
jug.

12 (2,y) -----> (0,y) Empty the 2 gallon in the 4

If x+y<=4 and y>0 gallon on the ground

The state space for this problem can be described as a set of ordered pairs of integers
(x,y) such that x=0,1,2,3 or 4 and y= 0,1,2 or 3. x represent number of gallon of water
in the 4 gallon jug and y represent number of gallon of water in the 3 gallon jug.
The start state is (0,0).
The goal state is (2,n) n can be any value.
For any value of n, since the problem does not specify how many gallons needed to be
in the 3 gallon jug.

Gallons in 4 gallon jug Gallons in 3 gallon jug Rule Applied

0 0 2

0 3 9

3 0 2

3 3 7

4 2 5

0 2 11

2 0 Final state

Production System

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A production system consist of:

 A set of rules each contsisting of a left side that determines the applicability of
the rule and right side that describes the operation to be performed if rule is
applied.
 One or more knowledge/database that contain whatever information is
appropriate for the particular task. Some parts of the database may be permenent,
while other parts of it may pertain only to the solution of current problem.
 A control stratergy that specifies the order in which the rules will be ccompared
to the database and a way of resolving the conflicts that arise when several rules
match at once
 A rule applier.

Control Stratergies
The first requirement of a good control stratergy is that it causes motion. Consider the
water jug problem. Suppose we implemented the simple control stratergy of starting
each time at the top of the list of rules and choosing the first applicable rule. If we did
that we would never solve the problem. We would continue indefinitley filling the 4
gallon jug with water.
Control stratergies that do not cause motion will never lead to a solution.
The second requirement of a good control stratergy is that it be systematic.
On each cycle choose at random from among the applicable rules. This stratergy is
better than the first. It causes motion. It will lead to a solution eventually. But we are
likely to arrive at the same state several times suring the process and to use many
more steps than are necessary. Because the control stratergy is not systemati, we may
explore a particular useless sequence of operators several times before we finally find
a solution.
The requirement that a control stratergy be systemtic corresponds to the need for
global motion as well as for local motion.
One systematic control stratergy for water jug problem is the following. Construct a
tree with initial state as its root, generate all offspring of the root by applying each of
the applicable rules to the initial state. Now for each leaf node, generate all its
sucessors by applying all the rules that are appropriate. Continue this process until
some rule produces a goal state. This process is called Breath First Search.

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Breadth first Search Algorithm

1. create a variable called NODE_LIST and set it to initial state
2. Until a goal state is found or NODE_LIST is empty
a) Remove the first element from NODE_LIST and call it E. if NODE_LIST
was empty quit
b) For each way that each rule can match the state described in E do
i. Apply the rule to generate a new state
ii. If the new state is a goal state, quit and return this state
iii. Otherwise add the new state to end of NODE_LIST

Pursue a single branch of tree until a solution or until a decision to determine the path
is made. It makes sense to terminate a path if it reaches a dead end. In such a case,
backtracking occurs. The most recently created state from which alternative moves
are available will be revisited and a new state will be created. This form of
backtracking is called chronological backtracking. This search procedure is called
depth first search.
Depth first Search Algorithm
1. if the initial state is a goal state, quit and return success
2. Otherwise do the following until success or failure is signaled:
a) Generate a successor E of the initial state. If there are no more
successors,signal failure
b) Call Depth first search with E as the initial state
c) If the success is returned, signal success otherwise continue in the loop.

Advantages of BFS
Breath first search will not get trapped exploring a blind alley. This contrasts with
DFS which may follow a single, unfruitful path for a very long time, before the path
actually terminates in a state that has no successors.
If there is a solution then breath first search is guarenteed to find it. Furthermore if
there are multiple solutions, then a minimal solution will be found.

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The Traveling Salesman Problem

A salesman has a list of cities each of which he must visit exactly once. There are
direct roads between each pair of cities on the list. Find the route the salesman should
follow for the shortest possible round trip that both starts and finishes at any one of
the cities.
A simple motion causing and systematic control structure could in principle solve this
problem. It would simply explore all possible path in the tree and return the one with
the shortest length. This approach will even work in practice for every short list of
cities. But it breaks down quickly as the number of cities grows. If there are N cities
then the number of different path among them is 1,2, . . . (N-1) or (N-1)!
Assuming there are only 10cities. 10! is 3628800 which is a large number. The
salesman could easily have 25 cities to visit. To solve this problem would take more
time than he would take more time than he would be willing to spend. This
phenomenon is called combinational explosion. To combat it we need a new control
stratergy.
We can beat the simple stratergy outlined above using a technique called branch and
bound. Being generating complete paths keeping track of shortest path found so far
give up exploring any path as soon as its partial length become greater than the
shortest path found so far . Using this technique we are still guarenteed to find the
shortest path.

Heuristic Search
In state space search, heuristics are formalized as rule for choosing those branches in
a state space that are most likely to lead to an acceptable problem solution.
Two basic solution:
1. a problem may not have an exact solution because of inherent ambiguties in the
problem statement or available data. Medical diagnosis is an example of this. A given
set of symptoms may have several possible causes, doctors use heuristics to choose
the most likely diagnosis and formulate a plan of treatment.
2. A problem may have an exact solution, but the computational cost of finding it may
be prohibitive. A heuristic algorithm can defeat this combinational explosion and find
an acceptable solution.
Heuristic approach for travelling salesman problem
1. arbitarily select a starting city
2. To select the next city, look at all cities not yet visited and select the one closest to
the current city go to it next.
3. Repeat step 2 until all cities have been visited
The procedure executes in time proportional to N2, a significant improvement over N!
Heuristics and the design algorithms to implement heuristic search have long been a
core concern of artificial intelligence research. Game playing and theorm proving are
two of the oldest applications in artificial intelligence.

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Problem Charateristics
In order to choose the most appropriate method for a particular problem, it is
necessary to analyze the problem along several dimensions.
 Is the problem decomposable into a set of independent smaller or easier sub
problems?
 Can solution steps be ignored or at least undone if they prove unwise?
 Is the problem’s universe predictable?
 Is a good solution to the problem obvious without comparison to all other
possible solutions?
 Is the desired solution a state of the world or a path to a state?
 Is a large amount of knowledge absolutely required to solve the problem, or is
knowledge important only to constrain the search?
 Can a computer that is simply given the problem return the solution, or will the
solution of the problem require interaction between the computer and a person?

1. Is the problem Decomposable?

Suppose we want to solve the problem of computing the expression.

 ( x 2  3x  sin 2 x. cos 2 x)dx

We can solve this problem by breaking it down into three smaller problems, each of
which we can then solve by using a small collection of specific rules.

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At each step it checks to see whether problem it is working on is immediately

solvable. If so then the answer is returned directly. If the problem is not easily
solvable the integrator checks to see whether it can decompose the problem into
smaller problems. If it can it creates those problems ans calls itself recursively on
them. This technique is called problem decomposition.
A simple blocks world problem
Start: Goal:
A

B
C
A B C

ON (C,A) ON(B,C) and ON(A,B)

Assume that the following operators are availale
1. CLEAR(x) ON(x,table)
[block x has nothing on it] [pick up x and put it on the table]

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2. CLEAR(x) and CLEAR(y) ON(x,y)

The idea of solution is to reduce the problem of getting B on C and A on B to get two
seperated problems. The first of these new problems getting B on C is simple, given
he start state. Simply put B on C. The second subgoal is not quite so simple.
Since the only operators we have allow us to pick up single blocks at a time, we have
to clear off A by removing C before we can pick up A and put it on B. this can easily
be done. However if we now try to combine the two sub solutions into one solution,
we will fqail. Regardless of which one we do first we will not be able to do the second
as we had planned. In this problem the two sub problems are not independent. They
interact and those interactions must be considered in order to arrive at a solution for
entire problem.
These two examples symbolic integration and the block world, illustrate the
difference between decomposable and non decomposible problems

ON(B,C) and ON(A,B)

ON(B,C) ON(A,B)

Move A to table
Put A on B

2. Can solution steps be ignored or undone

Here we can divide problems into 3 classes.
 Ignorable, in which solution steps can be ignored.
 Recoverable, in which solution steps can be undone.
 Irrecoverable, in which solution steps cannot be undone.
Ignorable Problem (eg, Theorm Proving)
Here solution steps can be ignored.
Suppose we are trying to prove a mathematical theorem. We proceed by first proving
a lemma that we think will be useful. Eventually we realize that the lemma is no help
at all. Here the different steps in proving the theorem can be ignored. ThenON(A,B)
we can
start from another rule. The former can be ignored. CLEAR(A)
ON(B,C)
Recoverable Problems(eg, 8 Puzzle)
ON(A,B)
Consider the 8 puzzle problem CLEAR A

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The goal is to transform the starting position into the goal position by sliding the tiles
around. In an attempt to solve the 8- puzzle, we might make a stupid move. For
example, in the game shown above, we might start by sliding tile 5 into the empty
space. Having done that, we cannot change our mind and immediately slide tile 6 into
the empty space since the empty space will essentially have moved. But we can
backtrack and undo the 1st move, sliding tile 5 back to where it was. Then we can
move tile 6. here mistakes can be recovered.
Additional step must be performed to undo each incorrect step. The control
mechanism for an 8-puzzle solver must keep track of the order in which operations
are performed so that the operations can be undone one at a time if necessary.
Irrecoverable problems (eg. Chess)
Consider the problem of playing chess. Suppose a chess playing program makes a
stupid move and realizes it a couple of moves later. It cannot simply play as though it
had never made the stupid move. Nor can it simply back up and start the game over
from that point. All it can do is to try to make the best of the current situation and go
from there.
The recoverability of a problem plays an important role in determining the complexity
of the control structure necessary for the problem’s solution. Ignorable problems can
be solved using a simple control structure. Recoverable problems can be solved by
a slightly more complicated control strategy that does sometimes makes mistakes.
Irrecoverable problems will need to be solved by a system that expends a great deal
of effort making each decision since the decision must be final.

3. Is the universe predictable?

Certain outcome problems (eg. 8 puzzle)
Suppose we are playing with the 8 puzzle problem. Every time we make a move, we
know exactly what will happen. This means that it is possible to plan an entire
sequence of moves and be confident that we know what the resulting state will be.
Uncertain outcome problems (eg. Bridge)
However, in games such as bridge, this planning may not be possible. One of the
decisions we will have to make is which card to play on the first trick. What we would
like to do is to plan the entire hand before making that first play. But now it is not

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possible to do such planning with certainty since we cannot know exactly where all
the cards are or what the other players will do on their turns.
Planning can be used to generate a sequence of operators that is guarenteed to lead to
a solution. For uncetain outcome problems, planning can at best generate a sequence
of operators that has a good probability of leading to a solution. In which the outcome
cannot be predicted.
One of the hardest types of problems to solve is the irrecoverable, uncertain
outcome.
Examples of such problems are
 Playing bridge,
 Controlling a robot arm,
 Helping a lawyer decide how to defend his client against a murder charge.

4. Is a good solution Absolute or relative

Any path problems
Consider the problem of answering questions based on a database of simple facts,
such as the following.
1. Marcus was a man.
2. Marcus was a Pompean.
3. Marcus was born in 40 A. D.
4. all men are mortal.
5. All pompeans died when the volcano erupted in 79 A. D.
6. No mortal lives longer than 150 years.
7. It is now 1991 A. D.
Suppose we ask the question. “Is Marcus alive?”. By representing each of these facts
in a formal language, such as predicate logic, and then using formal inference
methods, we can fairly easily derive an answer to the question. The following shows 2
ways of deciding that Marcus is dead.

Solutions Axiom

1 Marcus was a man. 1

4 All men are mortal. 4

3 Marcus was born in 40 A.D. 3

7 It is now 2017 A. D. 7

9 Marcus’ age is 1977 years. 3,7

6 no mortal lives longer than 150 years. 6

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10 Marcus is dead. 8,6,9

OR

Solutions Axiom

1 It is now 2017AD 7

5 All Pompeians died in 79 AD 5

11 All pompeians are dead now 7,5

2 Marcus was a pompeian 2

12 Marcus is dead. 11,2

Since all we are interested in is the answer to the question, it does not matter which
path we follow.

Best path problems (eg. Traveling salesman problem )

Consider the traveling salesman problem. Our goal is to find the shortest route that
visits each city exactly once. Suppose the cities to be visited and the distances
between them are shown below.

One place the salesman could start is Boston. In that case, one path that might be
followed is the one shown below which is 8850 miles long.

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But is this the solution to the problem? The answer is that we cannot be sure unless
we also try all other paths to make sure that none of them is shorter.
Best path problems are computationally harder than any path problems. Any path
problem can often be solved in a reasonable amount of time by using heuristics that
suggest good path to explore.

5. Is the solution a state or path?

Problems whose solution is a state of the world. eg. Natural language
understanding
Consider the problem of finding a consistent interpretation for the sentence,
‘ The bank president ate a dish of pasta salad with the fork’.
There are several components of this sentence, each of which, in isolation, may have
more than one interpretation. Some of the sources of ambiguity in this sentence are
the following.
The word ‘bank’ may refer either to a financial institution or to a side of a river. The
word ’dish’ is the object of the verb ‘eat’. It is possible that a dish was eaten. But it is
more likely that the pasta salad in the dish was eaten.

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Pasta salad is a salad containing pasta. But there are other ways interpretations can be
formed from pairs of nouns.
For example, dog food does not normally contain dogs. The phrase ‘with the fork’
could modify several parts of the sentence. In this case, it modifies the verb ‘eat’. But,
if the phrase had been ‘with vegetables’, then the modification structure would be
different. Because of the interaction among the interpretations of the constituents of
this sentence, some search may be required to find a complete interpretation for the
sentence. But to solve the problem of finding the interpretation, we need to produce
only the interpretation itself. No record of the processing by which the interpretation
was found is necessary.
Problems whose solution is a path to a state? Eg. Water jug problem
In water jug problem, it is not sufficient to report that we have solved the problem and
that the final state is (2,0). For this kind of problem, what we really must report is not
the final state, but the path that we found to that state.

6. What is the Role of Knowledge

Problems for which a lot of knowledge is important only to constrain the search
for a solution.
Eg. Chess
Consider the problem of playing chess. How much knowledge would be required by a
perfect chess playing program?
Just the rules for determining the legal moves and some simple control mechanism
that implements an appropriatesearch procedure.
Problems for which a lot of knowledge is required even to be able to recognize a
solution.
Eg. News paper story understanding
Consider the problem of scanning daily newspapers to decide which are supporting
democrats and which are supporting the republicans in some upcoming election. How
much knowledge would be required by a computer trying to solve this problem? Here
a great deal of knowledge is necessary.

7. Does the task require interaction with a person?

Solitary problems
Here the computer is given a problem description and produces an answer with no
intermediate communication and with no demand for an explanation for the reasoning
process.
Consider the problem of proving mathematical theorems. If
 All we want is to know that there is a proof.
 The program is capable of finding a proof by itself.
Then it does not matter what strategy the program takes to find the proof.
Conversational problems

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In which there is intermediate communication between a person and the computer,

either to provide additional assistance to the computer or to provide additional
information to the user. Eg. Suppose we are trying to prove some new, very difficult
theorem. Then the program may not know where to start. At the moment, people are
still better at doing the high level strategy required for a proof. So the computer might
like to be able to ask for advice. To exploit such advice, the computer’s reasoning
must be analogous to that of its human advisor, at least on a few levels.

SEARCHING
Problem solving in artificial intelligence may be characterized as a systematic search
through a range of possible actions in order to reach some predefined goal or solution.
In AI problem solving by search algorithms is quite common technique. In the coming
age of AI it will have big impact on the technologies of the robotics and path finding.
It is also widely used in travel planning. This chapter contains the different search
algorithms of AI used in various applications. Let us look the concepts for visualizing
the algorithms. A search algorithm takes a problem as input and returns the solution in
the form of an action sequence. Once the solution is found, the actions it recommends
can be carried out. This phase is called as the execution phase. After formulating a
goal and problem to solve the agent cells a search procedure to solve it. A problem
can be defined by 5 components.
a) The initial state: The state from which agent will start.
b) The goal state: The state to be finally reached.
c) The current state: The state at which the agent is present after starting from the
initial state.
d) Successor function: It is the description of possible actions and their outcomes.
e) Path cost: It is a function that assigns a numeric cost to each path.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SEARCHING

The searching algorithms can be various types. When any type of searching is
performed, there may some information about the searching or mayn’t be. Also it is
possible that the searching procedure may depend upon any constraints or rules.
However, generally searching can be classified into two types i.e. uninformed
searching and informed searching. Also some other classifications of these searches
are given below in the figure

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Informed Search
Informed Search
 A search using domain-specific knowledge.
 Suppose that we have a way to estimate how close a state is to the goal, with
an evaluation function.
 General strategy: expand the best state in the open list first. It's called a
best-first search or ordered state-space search.
 In general the evaluation function is imprecise, which makes the method a
heuristic (works well in most cases).
 The evaluation is often based on empirical observations.
Informed (Heuristic) Search Strategies
To solve large problems with large number of possible states, problem-specific
knowledge needs to be added to increase the efficiency of search algorithms.
Heuristic Evaluation Functions
They calculate the cost of optimal path between two states. A heuristic function for
sliding-tiles games is computed by counting number of moves that each tile makes
from its goal state and adding these number of moves for all tiles.
Pure Heuristic Search
It expands nodes in the order of their heuristic values. It creates two lists, a closed list
for the already expanded nodes and an open list for the created but unexpanded nodes.

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In each iteration, a node with a minimum heuristic value is expanded, all its child
nodes are created and placed in the closed list. Then, the heuristic function is applied
to the child nodes and they are placed in the open list according to their heuristic
value. The shorter paths are saved and the longer ones are disposed.
A * Search
It is best-known form of Best First search. It avoids expanding paths that are already
expensive, but expands most promising paths first.
f(n) = g(n) + h(n), where
 g(n) the cost (so far) to reach the node
 h(n) estimated cost to get from the node to the goal
 f(n) estimated total cost of path through n to goal. It is implemented using
priority queue by increasing f(n).
Greedy Best First Search
It expands the node that is estimated to be closest to goal. It expands nodes based on
f(n) = h(n). It is implemented using priority queue.
Disadvantage − It can get stuck in loops. It is not optimal.
Local Search Algorithms
They start from a prospective solution and then move to a neighboring solution. They
can return a valid solution even if it is interrupted at any time before they end.

Generate-And-Test Algorithm

Generate-and-test search algorithm is a very simple algorithm that guarantees to find a

solution if done systematically and there exists a solution.

Algorithm: Generate-And-Test

1.Generate a possible solution.

2.Test to see if this is the expected solution.
3.If the solution has been found quit else go to step 1.

Potential solutions that need to be generated vary depending on the kinds of problems.
For some problems the possible solutions may be particular points in the problem
space and for some problems, paths from the start state.

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Figure: Generate And Test

Generate-and-test, like depth-first search, requires that complete solutions be

generated for testing. In its most systematic form, it is only an exhaustive search of
the problem space. Solutions can also be generated randomly but solution is not
guaranteed. This approach is what is known as British Museum algorithm: finding an
object in the British Museum by wandering randomly.

Systematic Generate-And-Test

While generating complete solutions and generating random solutions are the two
extremes there exists another approach that lies in between. The approach is that the
search process proceeds systematically but some paths that unlikely to lead the
solution are not considered. This evaluation is performed by a heuristic function.

Depth-first search tree with backtracking can be used to implement systematic

generate-and-test procedure. As per this procedure, if some intermediate states are
likely to appear often in the tree, it would be better to modify that procedure to
traverse a graph rather than a tree.

Generate-And-Test And Planning

Exhaustive generate-and-test is very useful for simple problems. But for complex
problems even heuristic generate-and-test is not very effective technique. But this
may be made effective by combining with other techniques in such a way that the
space in which to search is restricted. An AI program DENDRAL, for example, uses
plan-Generate-and-test technique. First, the planning process uses
constraint-satisfaction techniques and creates lists of recommended and
contraindicated substructures. Then the generate-and-test procedure uses the lists

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generated and required to explore only a limited set of structures. Constrained in this
way, generate-and-test proved highly effective. A major weakness of planning is that
it often produces inaccurate solutions as there is no feedback from the world. But if it
is used to produce only pieces of solutions then lack of detailed accuracy becomes
unimportant.

Heuristic Search Techniques.

Introduction:- Many if the problems are too complex to be solvable by direct
techniques. They have to be solved only by suitable heuristic search techniques.
Though the heuristic techniques can be described independently, they are domain
specific. They are called "Weak Methods", since they are vulnerable to combinatorial
explosion. Even so, they provide the frame work into which domain specific
knowledge can be placed.
Every search process can be viewed as a traversal of a directed graph, in which the
nodes represent problem states and the arcs represent relationships between states.
The search process must find a path through this graph, starting at an initial state and
ending in one or more final states. The following issues have to be considered before
going for a search.
Heuristic Search Techniques.
Heuristic techniques are called weak methods, since they are vulnerable to
combinatorial explosion. Even then these techniques continue to provide framework
into which domain specific knowledge can be placed, either by hand or as a result of
learning. The following are some general purpose control strategies ( often called
weak methods).

- Generate - and - test

- Hill climbing
- Breadth - First search
- Depth - First search
- Best First Search (A* search)
- Problem reduction(AO* search)
- Constraint satisfaction
- Means - ends analysis

A heuristic procedure, or heuristic, is defined as having the following properties.

1. It will usually find good, although not necessary optimum solutions.
2. It is faster and easier to implement than any known exact algorithm
( one which guarantees an optimum solution ).
In general, heuristic search improve the quality of the path that are exported. Using
good heuristics we can hope to get good solutions to hard problems such as the
traveling salesman problem in less than exponential time. There are some good
general purpose heuristics that are useful in a wide variety of problems. It is also
possible to construct special purpose heuristics to solve particular problems. For
example, consider the traveling salesman problem.
Hill Climbing

Hill climbing search algorithm is simply a loop that continuously moves in the
direction of increasing value. It stops when it reaches a “peak” where no neighbour
has higher value. This algorithm is considered to be one of the simplest procedures for
implementing heuristic search. The hill climbing comes from that idea if you are

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trying to find the top of the hill and you go up direction from where ever you are. This
heuristic combines the advantages of both depth first and breadth first searches into a
single method. The name hill climbing is derived from simulating the situation of a
person climbing the hill. The person will try to move forward in the direction of at the
top of the hill. His movement stops when it reaches at the peak of hill and no peak has
higher value of heuristic function than this. Hill climbing uses knowledge about the
local terrain, providing a very useful and effective heuristic for eliminating much of
the unproductive search space. It is a branch by a local evaluation function. The hill
climbing is a variant of generate and test in which direction the search should proceed.
At each point in the search path, a successor node that appears to reach for
exploration.

Algorithm:
Step 1: Evaluate the starting state. If it is a goal state then stop and return success.
Step 2: Else, continue with the starting state as considering it as a current state.
Step 3: Continue step-4 until a solution is found i.e. until there are no new states left
to be applied in the current state.
Step 4: a) Select a state that has not been yet applied to the current state and apply it
to produce a new state.
b)Procedure to evaluate a new state.
i. If the current state is a goal state, then stop and return success.
ii. If it is better than the current state, then make it current state and proceed further.
iii. If it is not better than the current state, then continue in the loop until a solution is
found.
Step 5:Exit.
Advantages:
 Hill climbing technique is useful in job shop scheduling, automatic
programming, circuit designing, and vehicle routing and portfolio
management.
 It is also helpful to solve pure optimization problems where the objective is to
find the best state according to the objective function.
 It requires much less conditions than other search techniques.
Disadvantages:
The question that remains on hill climbing search is whether this hill is the highest hill
possible.
Unfortunately without further extensive exploration, this question cannot be answered.
This technique works but as it uses local information that’s why it can be fooled. The
algorithm doesn’t maintain a search tree, so the current node data structure need only
record the state and its objective function value. It assumes that local improvement
will lead to global improvement.
There are some reasons by which hill climbing often gets suck which are stated
below.
Local Maxima:
A local maxima is a state that is better than each of its neighbouring states, but not
better than some other states further away. Generally this state is lower than the global
maximum. At this point, one cannot decide easily to move in which direction! This
difficulties can be extracted by the process of backtracking i.e. backtrack to any of
one earlier node position and try to go on a different event direction. To implement
this strategy, maintaining in a list of path almost taken and go back to one of them. If
the path was taken that leads to a dead end, then go back to one of them.

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Ridges:
It is a special type of local maxima. It is a simply an area of search space. Ridges
result in a sequence of local maxima that is very difficult to implement ridge itself has
a slope which is difficult to traverse. In this type of situation apply two or more rules
before doing the test. This will correspond to move in several directions at once.

Plateau:
It is a flat area of search space in which the neighbouring have same value. So it is
very difficult to calculate the best direction. So to get out of this situation, make a big
jump in any direction, which will help to move in a new direction this is the best way
to handle the problem like plateau.

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Travelling Salesman Problem

In this algorithm, the objective is to find a low-cost tour that starts from a city, visits
all cities en-route exactly once and ends at the same starting city.
Start
Find out all (n -1)! Possible solutions, where n is the total number of cities.
Determine the minimum cost by finding out the cost of each of these (n -1)!
solutions.
Finally, keep the one with the minimum cost.
end

Uninformed Search Strategies

A problem determines the graph and the goal but not which path to select from the
frontier. This is the job of a search strategy. A search strategy specifies which paths
are selected from the frontier. Different strategies are obtained by modifying how the
selection of paths in the frontier is implemented.

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This section presents three uninformed search strategies that do not take into
account the location of the goal. Intuitively, these algorithms ignore where they are
going until they find a goal and report success.
 Depth-First Search
 Breadth-First Search
 Lowest-Cost-First Search

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