Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

It is argued that AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been in existence, or at least the ideas of AI have existed since the ancient Egyptians. Evidence of this has been found in Egyptian folklore. Concepts of intelligent artefacts have also been found in Greek mythological literature. Early attempts at AI were neural networks modelled after the ones in the human brain. Success was minimal at best because of the lack of computer technology needed to calculate such large equations. The real breakthrough came with the advent of the electronic computer in 1941. As a result of this the technology was finally available to create machine intelligence. It became possible to create programs that perform difficult intellectual tasks.

Discussion

In the early days of the electronic computer however, computers were generally used for number crunching. That is to say that the programs written for these computers were dumb. They only performed tasks they were programmed to do, no more, no less. The machines were not able to learn or change in there behaviour through usage or experience (Lucas 2001). It was not until the early 1950s that a link between machines and human intelligence was observed. An American called Norbert Wiener was one of the first people to observe the feedback theory principle. One of the best examples of this theory is the thermostat.

A thermostat controls the temperature of an environment by measuring the actual temperature of the room where it is situated and reacting accordingly. If the temperature falls below that to which the thermostat set then the thermostat will turn the switch to the on position therefore turning the heating on. When the temperature rises above the point to which the thermostat is set then the thermostat will turn the switch to the off position turning the heating off and therefore cooling the room. The cycle or loop continues until human changes the circumstances of this task. One of the ways this can be changed is by adjusting the temperature to which the thermostat operates. As a consequence of this the temperature of the room will change but the rules to which the thermostat operates remain the same (Brooks 2000). A cycle or loop of this kind is called a feedback loop. Norbert Wiener did much research on feedback loops and one of his theories was that all intelligent behaviour was the result of feedback mechanisms. Machines could possibly simulate these mechanisms. Whether a thermostat can be considered as intelligent or not is open to debate but Wiener's theories formed part of the platform for much of the early development of AI.

Newell and Simon developed a program called 'The Logic Theorist' which was considered to be the first AI program. Representing each problem as a tree model, the program would attempt to solve it by selecting the branch that would most likely result in the correct answer. This would require some knowledge of the area to which the problem refers but the program would do the ...