What is Artificial Intelligence? What does it mean to talk about a program being “intelligent”? How will we know when we’ve succeeded?

What is “intelligence”?  Is this even the right question to ask?  Perhaps a better question would be “what is intelligent behavior?”  There are, of course, many possible answers.

Thinking vs. Acting  Should we be more interested in how machines “think”, or how they act?  By “think” we mean process input information.  By “act” we mean generate appropriate output

Intelligent behavior  Advantages Entity behaves intelligently Entity behaves intelligently “If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck….” “If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck….”  Drawbacks Lack of flexibility Lack of flexibility  The Turing Test measures how close a machine is to human-like behavior (GOFAI)

Intelligent Thought  The other idea is to build systems that at also think in an intelligent fashion.  Advantages: More flexibility More flexibility  Disadvantages: Much more complicated. We’re no longer simply interested in outcomes, but also interested in process. Much more complicated. We’re no longer simply interested in outcomes, but also interested in process.

Same or different?

A brief history of AI: Prehistory  Automata  Descartes: Animals as machines

Computing machines  Da Vinci, Pascal, and Schickard  Babbage’s Difference Engine and Analytical Engine

The First breakthrough  The Analytical Engine was the first stored program computer.  Such a computer has a set of basic instructions used in different sequences to perform calculations.  Complex calculations can be built from simple instructions

The Turing Test

Passing grades?  PARRY the Paranoid Robot  Eliza:  Eliza:  Chat bots:  Chat bots:  What about my cats?

Information processing theory

The symbol system hypothesis  Successes: Logic Theorist Logic Theorist SHRDLU SHRDLU GPS GPS MYCIN and other Expert Systems MYCIN and other Expert Systems

Searle’s Chinese Room

Does the Chinese Room hold water?  Put another way, the Chinese Room focuses on the process inside the room. What about the totality of the system?

Where is the burden of proof?  How do you know your neighbor is not just a complicated robot?  Is it fair to place a higher burden of proof on artificial systems, just because we know how their constructed?

Meaning and Understanding in symbol systems  Lots of people latch onto “understanding” as the difference between human and artificial systems.  What does it mean to “understand?” Where does “meaning” come from?