SCO113 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) 2020/2021

SCO 113 – Foundations of Artificial Intelligence Lecturer: Michael Kinyua - SCO 113 1 1.1.1 Definition of AI  What is AI ?  Artificial Intelligence is concerned with the design of intelligence in an artificial device. The term was coined by McCarthy in 1956.  There are two ideas in the definition. 1. Intelligence 2. artificial device  What is intelligence?  Is it that which characterize humans? Or is there an absolute standard of judgment?  Accordingly there are two possibilities:  A system with intelligence is expected to behave as intelligently as a human  A system with intelligence is expected to behave in the best possible manner  Secondly what type of behavior are we talking about?  Are we looking at the thought process or reasoning ability of the system?  Or are we only interested in the final manifestations of the system in terms of its actions? Lecturer: Michael Kinyua - SCO 113 2  Given this scenario different interpretations have been used by different researchers as defining the scope and view of Artificial Intelligence. 1. One view is that artificial intelligence is about designing systems that are as intelligent as humans.  This view involves trying to understand human thought and an effort to build machines that emulate the human thought process.  This view is the cognitive science approach to AI. 2. The second approach is best embodied by the concept of the Turing Test.  Turing held that in future computers can be programmed to acquire abilities rivaling human intelligence.  As part of his argument Turing put forward the idea of an 'imitation game', in which a human being and a computer would be interrogated under conditions where the interrogator would not know which was which, the communication being entirely by textual messages.  Turing argued that if the interrogator could not distinguish them by questioning, then it would be unreasonable not to call the computer intelligent. Turing's 'imitation game' is now usually called 'the Turing test' for intelligence.