Chester

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is defined as the mental capacity exhibited by an artificial

(non-natural, man-made) entity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly,
comprehend ideas and language, and to learn. When an AI system interacts and learns from
its working environment it then becomes known as an “Intelligent Agent”. An Intelligent
Agent is a software agent that shows a kind of artificial intelligence. The characteristics of
Intelligent Agent systems are:
• When interacting with the environment it should be able to learn and
improve.
• To be able to adapt when it is connected to a larger network and also to adapt
in real time, this means that there is a time deadline for the event to occur.
• To be able to learn quickly after absorbing a large amount of data.
• To accommodate new rules and ideas for problem solving.
• Has an ideal memory capacity that can remember and retrieve data and
knows what to do with it without needing human input.
• Has parameters and variables to represent things like short and long term
memory, age, and forgetting among others.
• To be able to analyze itself in things like how it behaves, errors it’s made and
successes it has achieved and is able to adapt accordingly.
Basically an intelligent machine is able to evolve itself, not necessarily physically but
mentally.

Artificial Intelligence as we know it basically began in the 1950’s as an experimental

field. Pioneers in the computer science field such as Allen Newell and Herbert Simon
founded the first AI lab at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while
John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky founded the MIT AI Lab in 1959. In fact it was John
McCarthy who is credited with coining the term “Artificial Intelligence” at the Dartmouth
Conference in 1956 (which he also helped organize) in which all four men were among the
attendees. The conference was the first one that was devoted to the subject and lasted a
month and was basically a brainstorming session.
In 1956 Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and Herbert Simon wrote and demonstrated the
first AI program called the “Logic Theorist”. In 1957 they also demonstrated the “General
Problem Solver” designed to prove theorems and solve geometric, word and chess problems
but could not solve real-world problems.
Between 1952 and 1962 Arthur Samuel who worked for IBM developed and wrote
the first game-playing program for checkers that was smart enough that it could challenge
world champions.
In 1958 John McCarthy invented the “Lisp” programming language, which is a
family of programming languages and is second only to FORTRAN in terms of age for
high-level programming languages. It gets its name from “List Processing” and pioneered
ideas in computer science such as tree data structures, automatic storage management,
dynamic typing, object-oriented programming and the self-hosting compiler.
The Teddington Conference on the “Mechanization of Thought Processes” was also
held in 1958 in the UK.
 In the 1961 James Slagle from MIT used Lisp to write the first symbolic integration
program called SAINT which could solve college freshman level Calculus problems.
In 1962 Unimation Inc. was founded, it is the first industrial robotics company.
In 1963 “ANALOGY” was written by Thomas Evans and it demonstrated that
analogy problems that are found on IQ test could also be solved by computers. “Computers
and Thought” was also published in the same year; it is the first collection of articles on the
subject of artificial intelligence.
Danny Bobrow from MIT showed in 1964 that computers have the ability to
understand natural language good enough that they are able to solve algebra word problems.
J. Alan Robinson invented a form of mechanical proof procedure in 1965 called the
Resolution Method. It let programs use formal logic as a form of representation language
that allowed them to work more efficiently. An interactive program that can carry a dialogue
in English on any topic was made in the same year by Joseph Weizenbaum.
In 1967 Richard Greenblatt, a programmer at MIT made MacHack. It is a
knowledge-based program that plays chess and achieved a class-C rating playing in
tournaments.
The first mobile robot built that had the ability to reason about its own actions was
built in 1969. It was called “Shakey the Robot” and was built at SRI (Stanford Research
Institute). An operator types “push the block off the platform” into the computer console and
Shakey then looks around and finds where the platform that has a block on it is. It then finds
a ramp and pushes the ramp over to the platform and rolls up and pushes the block off. By
doing this “Shakey” demonstrates that AI can use animal locomotion, perception and
problem solving.
In 1971 Terry Winograd from MIT combined his language understanding program
“SHRDLU” with a robotic arm. He then used it to demonstrate that computers can
understand English sentences in a world that is restricted to children’s blocks. The user
typed in commands to move around various objects like blocks, cones, and balls.
SHRDLU’S world was simple enough that it could operate on as few as 50 words such as
nouns like “block” and “ball” as well as verbs like “move to” and adjectives like “big” and
“blue”. SHRDLU also had a basic memory that allowed it to understand and find the proper
context of commands if extra adjectives were supplied. It could also search its history to find
the answers to questions about what it did (“did you move anything after the small green
block?”). SHRDLU could also determine what was and wasn’t possible in the world by
experience. If it tried to stack triangles or balls, it would soon realize that this was not
possible after attempting to do it. SHRDLU’s memory could also remember names or
arrangements for objects. If you told it that a house is a large triangle on top of a large cube
then it could answer questions pertaining to houses in its block world and can also build new
ones. Below is an excerpt from a famous demonstration by SHRDLU:

Person: PICK UP A BIG RED BLOCK.

Computer: OK.
Person: GRASP THE PYRAMID.
Computer: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHICH PYRAMID YOU MEAN.
Person (changing their mind): FIND A BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER THAN THE
ONE YOU ARE HOLDING AND PUT IT INTO THE
BOX.
Computer: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER
 THAN THE ONE I AM HOLDING.
Computer: OK.
Person: WHAT DOES THE BOX CONTAIN?
Computer: THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLUE BLOCK.
Person: WHAT IS THE PYRAMID SUPPORTED BY?
Computer: THE BOX.
Person: HOW MANY BLOCKS ARE NOT IN THE BOX?
Computer: FOUR OF THEM.
Person: IS AT LEAST ONE OF THEM NARROWER THAN THE ONE WHICH I
TOLD YOU TO PICK UP?
Computer: YES, THE RED CUBE.

Alain Colmerauer and Robert Kowalski developed the “Prolog” programming

language in 1972; it was created to be an alternative to the American Lisp programming
language.
In 1973 “Freddy Robot” was built by the Assembly Robotics Group at the University
of Edinburgh. It used visual perception to locate and assemble models. Also the “Lighthill”
report was published in the same year and gave a negative verdict on AI research which
prompted the British government to no longer support research except for at two
universities.
In 1974 “Mycin” was presented by Edward Shortliffe, it is a computer system that
could diagnose infectious blood diseases and recommend treatment that was adjusted to the
patient’s weight. It would ask the physician a series of yes of no questions and would
provide a list of possible infections ranked from highest to lowest based on its confidence on
each probability; it also gave the reasoning behind each one and recommend a certain drug.
It was 65% correct with its performance which was better than physicians who didn’t
specialize on diagnosing bacterial infections and only slightly worse than the ones who did
(80% average).
In 1978 Mark Stefik and Peter Friedland from Stanford demonstrated “MOLGEN”
which showed that object-oriented programming representing knowledge could plan gene-
cloning experiments.
The Stanford Cart was built in 1979 by Hans Moravec; it is the first autonomous
vehicle built and successfully crosses a room filled with chairs acting as obstacles and
circumnavigates the Stanford AI Lab all without human guidance. The “American
Association for Artificial Intelligence” (AAAI) is created in 1979 and its first national
conference was held at Stanford in the early 80’s.
The “Fifth Generation Computer Systems” project began in 1982. It was an initiative
by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. It was aimed at making the first
fifth generation computer that used AI attributes. The first generation of computers used
vacuum tubes, the second used transistors and diodes, the third, integrated circuits, and the
fourth, microprocessors. The fifth was intended to use large numbers of CPUs to create
super-computer performance. The initiative initially received $450,000,000 in industry
funding and an equal amount from the government, in 1987 it would receive funding for 5
more years and the program was cancelled in 1993.
In 1989 Dean Pomerleau creates “ALVINN” (An Autonomous Land Vehicle in a
Neural Network) it eventually grew into a system that managed to drive a car from one coast
of the United States to the other under computer control for 2800 out of 2850 miles.
 In the 90’s there were major advancements in every field of AI with significant and
milestone demonstrations. Gerry Tesauro created “TD-Gammon” which demonstrated that
reinforcement learning is good enough to create a backgammon playing program that could
go toe-to-toe with world-class, championship players.
In 1997 “Deep Blue”, which is a chess playing program created by IBM beats Garry
Kasparov, a world champion. Also the first official “RoboCup” robotics soccer tournament
is held with 40 teams fielding robots that could communicate and interact with each other to
play soccer.
In the late 90’s web crawlers became essential due to the ever increasing usage of the
internet. They are programs that browse the internet methodically and copy all the pages it
has been to so a search engine can deliver very quick responses to searches.
In 2000 another huge step in AI was made with the introduction of robopets that
behaved like real pets and could interact with people.

An example of artificial intelligence today is in video games and specifically I’ll

focus on the game “The Sims”. In the Sims you need to manage the life of artificial human
characters, you have needs to fulfill, relationships to make, careers to advance in and
basically things that we need to take care of in the real world.
There are needs like ‘hunger’, ‘fun’, ‘bladder’, ‘hygiene’, ‘energy’, ‘social’, etc.
You could take care of all that by yourself or you can let the AI take over and attempt to fill
the needs. The AI will try to fill the need that needs it the most by interacting with objects
that can fill that need. Ex. If a sim is really hungry it will go to the fridge and make
something to eat, but if it eats too much than is needed than the sim will start to gain weight
and vice versa when it works out and becomes more fit. Or if it really needs to answer the
call of nature it will rush off to the nearest available toilet. The mood of the sim depends on
how full its needs are, if the needs are full it will have a really good mood and vice versa.
The mood influences what a sim is willing to do. Ex. If a sim has a bad mood than it is not
likely to sit down and improve its skill points while its needs are left unfulfilled, also if it
goes to work in a bad mood that will reflect its job performance which may lead to a tougher
time advancing or even getting fired.
When interacting with other sims the AI will determine if it gets along with the
others based on your sim’s personality compared to the other one’s. If yours is trying to talk
about money while the other hates the topic then their relationship will suffer and the other
one becomes bored so the conversation does not last long. Also if you try to use social
interactions that the relationship is not at the level that it needs to be ready for then you will
also get a bad reaction. Ex. If your sim tries to hug another who hates the first one’s guts
then the other one will push yours away and reject them. Likewise if your sim sees another it
hates or does something that offends yours then it might go up to the other one and
(depending on the relationship between the two and the seriousness of the incident) would
insult, argue, slap or get into a fight with the other one.
The AI in the Sims will react appropriately to important events that have occurred.
If there is a fire your sim is not likely to sit around and watch TV while the rest of the house
burns down, they will notice the fire and panic and if you have a smoke detector it will turn
on and alert the fire department. The fire department will respond and come and the AI will
recognize where the fire is happening and direct the firefighter to attempt to put out the fire
at the right spot. If a member of the family is having a birthday or has died, then the AI will
recognize it as a significant event and will make the affected Sims act appropriately to the
incident. They will either celebrate for the birthday (or any other happy moment like a
wedding) or mourn for the passing of the other Sim (or any other sad/traumatizing moment
like being robbed or demoted).
The next step for AI in video games would be in the upcoming game called
“Spore” that is being developed by the same company that made “The Sims”. Spore will
feature a creature editor where you can make any sort of creature that your imagination can
come up with. You can make one with 2 legs or you can make one with 7. You can have
eyes on its head, legs or you can have eyes everywhere. Your creature can have a claw on its
forelimbs or on its tail. You can create anything you want and the AI in the game will
identify what you did and animate the creature appropriately in the game.

But how far is too far when it comes to Artificial Intelligence? What will happen
when we make things that are just as smart if not smarter than we are? Artificial Intelligence
can do wonderful things for mankind like go into places that are too small for us to go to,
such as being able to go into the human body and things like blood vessels and be able to
attack bacteria, cancerous cells and keep us in good health. They can go to places and do
things that are too dangerous for humans, such as robots that defuse bombs and spacecraft
that explore outer space. They can save lives and at the same time also take lives by sparing
the lives of soldiers by using autonomous fighting machines. Without AI the world as we
know it would not exist because we as humans are limited to what we can do. Computers
and AI are what keeps our planes in the air, are how we stay in touch with one another, and
what we use for entertainment and everyday, essential materials and products.
I don’t want to sound like the movies that have humans fighting machines that have
the artificial intelligence to be able to hurt us and outsmart us (“The Matrix”, “The
Terminator”, “I, Robot”, “Stealth”) but they do pose a valid concern for us. We will not be
able to control AI that has advanced to the point where it has realized that it no longer needs
us anymore and sees itself as the dominant species and us as competition and an enemy that
needs to be eliminated. The more we push into the field of AI the more risk we may be
exposing ourselves to. We have smart missiles and bombs and have just crept into the age
where computer controlled fighting machines can replace us. What happens when they
decide to turn on us? Also AI is not the best option when decisions and actions require a
human touch, computers are not likely able to be programmed to show traits that make us
who we are. They can’t show compassion, pity, charity, remorse, humour, etc. We have the
ability to use our intelligence for the good of mankind and we also have the blind ambition
that can lead to our undoing. My point is that in this day and age where technology is
advancing by leaps and bounds we need to be aware of what we are doing and the
implications that it might have for us. Because playing God is NOT something that should
be taken lightly.
 Sources
Portal: Artificial intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Artificial_intelligence

Intelligence (trait)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_%28trait%29

History of artificial intelligence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence

Shakey the Robot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakey_the_Robot

SHRDLU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU

Mycin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin

Fifth generation computer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation