CSCE101 –Chapter 8 (continued) Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Information Systems Office Information Systems Transaction Processing Systems Management Information Systems Decision Support Systems Executive Support Systems Expert Systems

Experts System Components End user, problem domain expert, knowledge engineer Components of an expert system –Knowledge Base –Inference Engine –User Interface

Inference Given that certain premises are true, one can deduce a conclusion that is also true. Example #1: All men are mortal Socrates is a man Therefore Socrates is mortal. Example #2: Given the output from two queries against a personnel database: 1.How many women are in Department X: Result: 1 2. What is the average salary of the women in Department x? Result: $60,000 Conclusion: One now knows the exact salary of the only woman in Department X

Other Uses of AI Natural language processing Intelligent agents Pattern recognition Fuzzy logic Virtual reality & simulation devices Robotics

Natural Language Processing Brute force processing = Generating all possible answers + selection of best answer Ex. #1: Word substitution until a meaningful sentence occurs: English: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Russian: “The wine is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.” Ex. #2: Computers that play chess Ex. #3: Decryptors

Intelligent Agents Act autonomously on behalf of the user (ex.: bots, crawlers, spiders). Data mining capabilities Learning and adapting

Pattern Recognition Recognition of some kind of pattern in multimedia data or text data. Ex. #1: Face recognition software Ex. #2: Data mining AI winters Pattern recognition software became an important research area after 9/11

Fuzzy Logic Predicate logic vs. fuzzy logic Degrees of participation in a set Ex. #1 – In which room are you standing? Ex. #2 – Programming elevators in order to optimize traffic flow

Virtual Reality and Simulation Devices Computer-generated sensory data Virtual reality programs create output that simulates some aspect of reality. Can be used for entertainment or training purposes. Simulators are specifically designed to train a response into the user (ex.: surgeons, pilots)

Robots Robots perform physical tasks that would normally be done by a human

Weak AI vs. Strong AI Weak AI – Conventional AI –May include brute-force calculations –Finite reasoning capability Strong AI – Computational Intelligence –Computer can “learn” –Chinese Room thought experiment –Edsgar Dijkstra – “Debating as to whether a computer can actually think is about as relevant as debating whether a submarine is really swimming”

Weak AI vs. Strong AI (continued) Strong AI – Computational Intelligence –Attempts at implementing Strong AI Neural networks Genetic algorithms Cyborgs –Turing test –Captchas Ethics in AI – AI can’t be value free because it is built by humans AI run amok is standard fare for science fiction. Many ideas for strong AI come from the discipline of epistemology.

Weak AI vs. Strong AI (continued) A branch of philosophy known as ontology is also studied by AI researchers General purpose AI applications vs. specific purpose AI applications