Artificial Intelligence

Prepared by
G.V.S. ANANTH NATH
DEPARTMENT OF CSE
Messages

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an

interesting sub-field of computer
science that provides many
contributions to the overall field
 CS 420, as the AI course at UWEC, is a
good opportunity to begin to explore
these issues
Outline
 Overview
 AI Topics
– Knowledge representation
– Problem solving and search space manipulation
– Planning
– Learning
– Communicating
– Uncertainty
– Intelligent agents
– Robotics
 AI Languages
 MICS Robot Contest Video
Overview of Artificial
Intelligence
 Definitions – four Systems Systems
major combinations that think that think
– Based on thinking like rationally
or acting humans
– Based on activity
like humans or Systems Systems
performed in that act that act
rational way like rationally
humans
AI Definitions

 Acting Humanly
– Turing Test – computer passes test if a
human interrogator asking written
questions can distinguish written answers
from computer or human
– Computer needs:
 Natural language processing
 Knowledge representation
 Automated reasoning
 Machine learning
AI Definitions (2)

– Total Turing Test – includes video

component (to test subject’s perceptual
abilities) and opportunity to pass physical
objects to subject
– Computer also needs:
 Computer vision
 Robotics
AI Definitions (3)

 Thinking Humanly
– Cognitive Modeling approach to AI
– Involves crossover between computer
science and psychology – cognitive
science
– Areas of interest
 Cognitive models
 Neural networks
AI Definitions (4)

 Thinking Rationally
– “Laws of thought” approach to AI
– Goal: solve any problem based on logical
manipulation
– Problems
 Difficult to represent certain types of knowledge (e.g.
common sense, informal knowledge)
 Difference between solving problems in principle and in
practice
– E.g. computational limits
AI Definitions (4)

 Acting Rationally
– “Design a rational agent” approach to AI
– Advantages over logic approach
 Logic is only one tool or many that can be
used to design rational agent
 Scientific advances can provide more tools for
developing better agents
Knowledge
Representation
 How to represent information?
 Generally, we use some sort of tree, grid or
network
 Options
– OO programming languages: classes/objects
– Relational database system:
tables/rows/columns
 Problem
– The world is more varied, with many types of
things to represent
Knowledge
Representation (2)
 Abstract Objects
– Sets
– Sentences
– Measurements
 Times
 Weights
 Generalized Events
– Intervals
– Places
– Physical Objects
– Processes
Knowledge
Representation (3)
 Some things are very difficult to represent
– Common sense
 See http://www.cyc.com/
– Combinations of multiple types
 Issues of:
– Type
– Scale
– Granularity
– Combination
 Other Questions
– How to distinguish knowledge and belief?
– What is the best way to reason with this information?
Problem Solving and Search
Space Manipulation
 Many Algorithmic Approaches to
Problem Solving
– Depth-First Search
– Breadth-First Search
 Variations
– Depth-Limited Search
– Iterative Deepening Depth-First Search
– Bi-directional Search
Problem Solving and Search
Space Manipulation (2)
 Smarter Search
– Greedy best-first search
– A* search (combine costs of path so far
plus path from current node to goal)
– Memory-bounded heuristic search
 Heuristic – means of estimating a
measurement such as cost of search
Problem Solving and Search
Space Manipulation (3)
 Issues
– Avoiding repeated search
– Searching with partial information
Problem Solving and Search
Space Manipulation (4)
 Adversarial Search
– E.g. games and game trees
– Minimax algorithm
– Alpha-Beta pruning
Problem Solving and Search
Space Manipulation (5)
 Applications of Problem Solving
– Expert Systems
 Approximating the functionality of an absent
human expert
– Robotics
 Encountering unexpected obstacles
Planning
 Many types of
problems
– “Blocks world”
– Getting yourself from
Eau Claire to the AAAI
conference in Boston
– Changing a flat tire
– Completing all of your
projects at the end of
the semester
– Developing a large
software application
Planning (2)

 Approaches
– State-based search
– Partial-order planning
– Planning graphs
 Issues
– Time
– Scheduling
– Resources
Learning

 Definition - Building on current knowledge

by using experience to improve a system
 Various approaches
– Supervised/unsupervised/reinforcement
 Forms of learning algorithms
– Inductive logic
 Example: given a set of point, approximate a line
– Decision tree (set of questions, act differently
depending on answer)
Learning (2)

 Issues
– Computational Learning Theory
 Intersection of theoretical CS, AI, statistics
– How many examples do you need?
Communicating
 Major issue - Natural language processing
– Many issues
 Syntax
 Semantics
 Context
– Steps
 Perception
 Parsing
 Analysis
 Disambiguation
 Incorporation
Uncertainty
 Much knowledge is not absolute
– Boundary between knowledge and belief is gray
 Techniques for dealing with uncertainty
– Probabilistic reasoning
– Probabilistic reasoning over time
– Fuzzy sets / fuzzy logic
– Simple decision-making (evaluating utility)
– Complex decision-making (taking ability to reevaluate into
account)
 Applications
– Expert systems
Intelligent Agents

 Everything we’ve talked about can be

viewed in terms of embedding
intelligence within an agent
– Software system
– Machine with embedded software
– Robot
Intelligent Agents (2)

 Issues for agents

– Limitations on memory
– Perceiving its environment
– Working with other agents
– Affecting its environment (through actuators)
 Processes
– Simple – based on rules
– Complex – based on multiple pieces of logic,
dealing with uncertainty
Robotics
 Field encompassing elements of computer
science/AI, engineering, physical systems
 Issues
– Many that we’ve discussed, plus:
– Perception
– Actuation
 Recent successes
– Worker bots (e.g. floor cleaners)
– Intelligent navigation (DARPA vehicle contest)
 Test environments
– Lego Mindstorms
– Other robot packages or custom systems
AI Languages
 Scheme / LISP
– Functional
– Simple knowledge representation (list)
– Easy to apply functionality to represented elements
 Prolog
– Logic-based
– Facts and rules easily represented
– Built-in search engine
 Specialized languages
– Rule languages (e.g. CLIPS)
– Planning languages (e.g. STRIPS)
CS 420

 Spring semester, about every other

year
 Will be offered Spring 2007
 Prerequisite: CS 330 (to get Scheme
and Prolog background)
 Topics
– All of the above!
CS 420 (2)

 Possible Projects
– Neural network to simulate decision
making, natural language processing
– Software development planning through
cooperating intelligent agents
– Expert system for deciding which courses
to take to complete a CS major
– Sumo robots?
MICS Robot Contest
Video
 http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc
id=7851913746457357108&hl=en