Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ruchin Gupta
Minal Jadhav
Computer Technology,
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
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Advanced information technology can help meet these and many other needs in
our society. Advances in computer and telecommunications have made available
a vast quantity of data, and given us computational power that puts the
equivalents of mainframes on our desktops. However, raw information processing
power alone, like brute strength, is useful but insufficient. To achieve their full
impact, computer systems must have more than processing power-they must
have intelligence. They need to be able to assimilate and use large bodies of
information and collaborate with and help people find new ways of working
together effectively. The technology must become more responsive to human
needs and styles of work, and must employ more natural means of
communication.
Basic research in AI will, in the long run, contribute not only to our scientific
knowledge but also to our technological base and to a wide variety of
applications. It will provide the foundation for systems that can search large
bodies of data for relevant information; help users to evaluate the effects of
complex courses of action; and work with users to develop, share, and effectively
use knowledge about complex systems and processes. It will make it possible to
build a wide range of application systems that assist decision makers in adapting
and reacting appropriately to rapidly changing world situations.
BRANCHES OF AI
Logical AI
Search
Pattern recognition
Representation
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Inference
Common sense knowledge and reasoning
Learning from experience
Planning
Epistemology
Ontology
Heuristics
Genetic programming
1. Logical AI
What a program knows about the world in general the facts of the specific
situation in which it must act, and its goals are all represented by sentences of
some mathematical logical language. The program decides what to do by
inferring that certain actions are appropriate for achieving its goals.
2. Search
3. Pattern recognition
4. Representation
Facts about the world have to be represented in some way. Usually languages of
mathematical logic are used.
5. Inference
From some facts, others can be inferred. For example, when we hear of a bird, we
man infer that it can fly, but this conclusion can be reversed when we hear that it
is a penguin. In logical reasoning the set of conclusions can be drawn from a set
of function of the premises.
This is the area in which AI is farthest from human-level, in spite of the fact that it
has been an active research area since the 1950s.
Programs can only learn what facts or behaviors their formalisms can represent,
and unfortunately learning systems are almost all based on very limited abilities
to represent information.
8. Planning
Planning programs start with general facts about the world, facts about the
particular situation and a statement of a goal. From these, they generate a
strategy for achieving the goal. In the most common cases, the strategy is just a
sequence of actions.
9. Epistemology
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This is a study of the kinds of knowledge that are required for solving problems in
the world.
10. Ontology
Ontology is the study of the kinds of things that exist. In AI, the programs and
sentences deal with various kinds of objects, and we study what these kinds are
and what their basic properties are.
11. Heuristics
Heuristics are the knowledge use to make good judgments or the strategies,
tricks or rules of thumb use to simplify the solution of problem and help us to
determine how to proceed. Heuristics are usually acquired with much experience.
TASK DOMAINS OF AI
Mundane tasks
Perception
Vision
Speech
Natural Language
Understanding
Generation
Translation
Commonsense reasoning
Robot control
Formal tasks
Games
Chess
Backgammon
Checkers
Go
Mathematics
Geometry
Logic
Integral calculus
Proving properties of programs
Expert tasks
Engeneering
Design
Fault finding
Manufacturing planning
Scientific analysis
Medical diagnosis
Financial analysis
APPLICATIONS OF AI
Game Playing
You can buy machines that can play master level chess for a few hundred dollars.
There is some AI in them, but they play well against people mainly through brute
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force computation--looking at hundreds of thousands of positions. To beat a world
champion by brute force and known reliable heuristics requires being able to look
at 200 million positions per second.
Speech Recognition
In the 1990s, computer speech recognition reached a practical level for limited
purposes. Thus United Airlines has replaced its keyboard tree for flight
information by a system using speech recognition of flight numbers and city
names. It is quite convenient. On the the other hand, while it is possible to
instruct some computers using speech, most users have gone back to the
keyboard and the mouse as still more convenient.
Computer Vision
The world is composed of three-dimensional objects, but the inputs to the human
eye and computers' TV cameras are two dimensional. Some useful programs can
work solely in two dimensions, but full computer vision requires partial three-
dimensional information that is not just a set of two-dimensional views. At
present there are only limited ways of representing three-dimensional information
directly, and they are not as good as what humans evidently use.
Expert Systems
Heuristic Classification
One of the most feasible kinds of expert system given the present knowledge of
AI is to put some information in one of a fixed set of categories using several
sources of information. An example is advising whether to accept a proposed
credit card purchase. Information is available about the owner of the credit card,
his record of payment and also about the item he is buying and about the
establishment from which he is buying it (e.g., about whether there have been
previous credit card frauds at this establishment).
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For many tasks, on-the-job training is extremely effective, providing the trainee
with the chance to make real, on-the-spot decisions and see the consequences.
On-the-job training is impossible, however, when a bad decision can be
disastrous-for example, in controlling a steel mill, or making diagnoses and
prescribing treatment in an operating room, or running a large company, or
making battle management decisions . Simulation systems that could portray
realistic simulated worlds, and in particular that had the capability to produce
realistic simulations of people, would enable development of training systems for
such situations. These same simulation capabilities are also important when the
cost of assembling large groups of people for training is prohibitive.
PROJECTS IN AI
XSPAN
PLINTH
GHOSTWRITER
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GhostWriter was a research project between British Aerospace Defence and
Dassault Aviation, with assistance from AIAI and the Department of AI. Its
primary objective was to design, develop and demonstrate a prototype-authoring
environment so as to illustrate the kinds of proactive support that are required by
and that would benefit authors in the production of technical documents. The
prototype has been used to demonstrate the interactive and semi-automatic
production of a significant portion of a complex maintenance procedure for the
Falcon 900 aircraft in both English and French. The resulting texts are at a level
close to that produced by human authors. The prototype has been demonstrated
to members of the Technical Publications Department at British Aerospace and
has received some praise, although further work in knowledge acquisition is
required before it can be used in earnest.
SPIRIT is a knowledge based diagnostic system for a particular type of oil well
test, which is used to determine how much oil exists in a reservoir, where it is
and how it will flow to the well. The diagnosis draws on multiple sources of data
and can handle uncertainty in the data. The prototype system was used by
sponsors and a commercial product based on the system ideas has been
released. The motive behind the SPIRIT project was the perceived need by the
project sponsors to improve the quality of well test interpretation as it is carried
out within oil companies. Existing conventional well test interpretation software
assists reservoir engineers by removing some of the more mundane tasks as well
as automating some of the manual interpretation techniques. However, the
software generally provides no guidance on the most important stage in the
analysis: that of selecting the most appropriate mathematical model to use to
analyze the pressure test data. This task requires significant expertise and
experience, beyond that of many reservoir engineers who use the software. PSTI
wished to prototype a decision support system for reservoir engineers that
encoded expert knowledge on well test interpretation.
PSTI (the major project funder) initiated the project as a means of exploring the
requirements for the next generation of well test interpretation software. The aim
was that petroleum software companies would then exploit the results of the
project to improve their well test software, which would in turn benefit the
petroleum industry as a whole. AIAI designed and developed the knowledge
based component of the prototype software system
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and amenable to modelling. To date, however, most evacuation models have
concentrated on modelling how people move through various floor layouts.
Although the effects of initial wait time and of negotiating obstacles have been
dealt with, the subsequent decisions that have to be made have been largely
ignored. Modelling these decisions, particularly those made immediately after the
occurrence of an incident, is critical to the validity of any simulation exercise.
This is particularly true in the offshore environment where the population is well
trained and where many individuals have unique duties to carry out in the event
of an emergency.
EGRESS will benefit safety analysts, safety managers and safety officers who will
be able to design floor plans and set up scenarios with different facilities,
populations and hazards, to determine their various effects.
EGRESS can simulate scenarios in different platform layouts and help in the
design of safer installations or in the improvement of existing ones. The script
representation is a natural one and scripts can be easily modified by the safety
analyst to reflect different roles, conditions or procedures. In this way EGRESS
can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of existing procedures and to help in
improving training.
Q. What is intelligence?
A:- Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the
world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals
and some machines.
A:- Sometimes but not always or even usually. On the one hand, we can learn
something about how to make machines solve problems by observing other
people or just by observing our own methods. On the other hand, most work in AI
involves studying the problems the world presents to intelligence rather than
studying people or animals. AI researchers are free to use methods that are not
observed in people or that involve much more computing than people can do.
A:- All normal humans have the same intellectual mechanisms and that
differences in intelligence are related to ``quantitative biochemical and
physiological conditions''. Computer programs have plenty of speed and memory
but their abilities correspond to the intellectual mechanisms that program
designers understand well enough to put in programs. The matter is further
complicated by the fact that the cognitive sciences still have not succeeded in
determining exactly what the human abilities are.
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Whenever people do better than computers on some task or computers use a lot
of computation to do as well as people, this demonstrates that the program
designers lack understanding of the intellectual mechanisms required to do the
task efficiently.
A:- Some researchers say they have that objective, but may be they are using the
phrase metaphorically. The human mind has a lot of peculiarities, and it is not
sure anyone is serious about imitating all of them.
A:- Yes. The ultimate effort is to make computer programs that can solve
problems and achieve goals in the world as well as humans.
A:- A few people think that human-level intelligence can be achieved by writing
large numbers of programs of the kind people are now writing and assembling
vast knowledge bases of facts in the languages now used for expressing
knowledge.
However, most AI researchers believe that new fundamental ideas are required,
and therefore it cannot be predicted when human level intelligence will be
achieved.
A:- Some people think much faster computers are required as well as new ideas.
But the computers of 30 years ago were fast enough if only we knew how to
program them. Of course, quite apart from the ambitions of AI researchers,
computers will keep getting faster.
Q. What about making a ``child machine'' that could improve by reading and by
learning from experience?
A:- AI programs haven't yet reached the level of being able to learn much of what
a child learns from physical experience. Nor do present programs understand
language well enough to learn much by reading.
A:- Playing chess requires certain intellectual mechanisms and not others. Chess
programs now play at grandmaster level, but they do it with limited intellectual
mechanisms compared to those used by a human chess player, substituting large
amounts of computation for understanding. Once we understand these
mechanisms better, we can build human-level chess programs that do far less
computation than do present programs.
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A:- AI research has both theoretical and experimental sides. The experimental
side has both basic and applied aspects.
There are two main lines of research. One is biological, based on the idea that
since humans are intelligent, AI should study humans and imitate their
psychology or physiology. The other is phenomenal, based on studying and
formalizing common sense facts about the world and the problems that the world
presents to the achievement of goals. The two approaches interact to some
extent, and both should eventually succeed.
A:- Study mathematics, especially mathematical logic. The more you learn about
science in general the better. For the biological approaches to AI, study
psychology and the physiology of the nervous system. Learn some programming
languages--at least C, Lisp and Prolog. It is also a good idea to learn one basic
machine language. Jobs are likely to depend on knowing the languages currently
in fashion. In the late 1990s, these include C++ and Java.
CAREERS IN AI
Fortunately for universities, most companies in the private sector are looking for
people with postgraduate degrees. So although it may be difficult to keep people
in academia once they are qualified, they must first get that qualification. At
Edinburgh, for example, around 20 students are taken on doctoral programs each
year and a further 90 doing their masters degrees. About 50 of the people taking
masters degrees will be doing conversion courses from art and other disciplines.
Employers are interested in people with undergraduate degrees in AI, but this
tends to be for less AI-oriented jobs. According to Sharon Wood, a member of
faculty and careers tutor at the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at
the University of Sussex, AI appeals to employers because it bridges the gap
between sciences and arts.
Have you got what it takes to be an AI researcher? Unlike many areas of research,
it is still relatively unexplored. And despite the benefits there is still a price to
pay for being the first on the beach. So besides just being curious about what
makes us tick you also have to be pretty independent and prepared to do what it
takes to break new ground. You need to be able to cope with frustration over a
long period. This demands people who are goal oriented and like to think for
themselves.
OPPORTUNITIES...
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So what sort of work is out there waiting for you? Just about anything--or at least
anything that can replace a human being to make money. But in fact there would
appear to be no real limits to where AI can be applied.
Pharmaceuticals industry - drug development can be speeded by algorithms
that can map protein folds and help researchers to understand the brain
chemistry better.
Medical applications - imaging techniques: capture and manipulate
information intelligently for making diagnosis from the interpretation of scans.
Internet-based businesses - automatic-trading systems for e-commerce
services
Mobile communications - voice-recognition technology and automatic text
recognition
But by far one of the largest growth industries for AI research is the
entertainment software sector, or more specifically the computer games industry,
widely reported to be bigger than Hollywood. Ostensibly the motivation comes
from companies wanting to design strategy "shoot-up" games that have software
opponents which appear realistic and intelligent, so that gamers don't feel like
they are playing a computer. But the scope goes much further. We are sociable
animals. Games companies want to exploit this by making games more sociable
and co-operative, and therefore less anti-social, so that new audiences can be
drawn in.
Team player
And on entering the private sector, the rules change, with starting salaries
ranging anywhere from the late teens to the mid-twenties. But coming from the
confines of the lonely lab you'll suddenly need to demonstrate your ability to be a
team player, says Andrew Wensley, project leader with games distributor Eidos
Interactive. "They also need to have excellent problem solving skills, and be
creative yet have good analytical skills," he says. "If they can display tenacity and
determination, then they'll succeed."
Slowly artificial intelligence is making its way into the mainstream and the
process is drawing in graduates from a many fields as its full potential begins to
dawn. With applications that can range from household appliances and medical
devices to data-mining systems for investment banks and robotic rovers on Mars,
AI is all around you.
FUTURE OF AI
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Seeing the future
Face recognition, still early in its development, works only when a face is
positioned carefully in front of the computers camera. The computer matches
the face with data representing facial features and their geometrical
relationships. Researchers are working toward recognition of faces in a larger
environmental context to identify known terrorists in an airport, for instance.
At this point, just finding a face amid other objects in a scene is complex.
Computers have to string together subtle clues, says Jonathan Connell, a
computer vision researcher who helped develop technology for a face-finding
video browser. Using the browser, the computer looks for a pinkish color that
suggests the possibility of a face, regardless of a persons race. But color-
matching alone might as easily select a brick. Connell explains, Consider
someone wearing a tank top; bare arms could trick a browser based on color
alone. To further refine its search, the computer looks for other clues for
instance, dark bars where shadows from the eyes, nose, mouth and chin appear.
The browser quickly searches hours of videotape to find a specific segment. For
instance, a user who wants to locate an interview segment can make the browser
look for clips in which just two faces appear. Combined with speech recognition
technology on the audio track, it can find faces that are talking about specific
topics.
Sighting Speech
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tip of the tongue is doing. The computer recognizes possible visemes, or word
sounds that are visually distinguishable. It weighs the viseme data with audio
data representing phonemes. Finally, it combines that information with a
language model for a final hypothesis of what was actually said.
The AVST group has found dramatic improvement in speech recognition when a
computer is fed a combination of audio and visual signals, rather than relying on
audio alone. (The same is true for speech recognition by people.) Because speech
recognition is being deployed as the user interface of choice in a variety of
pervasive environments, he says, its accuracy needs to be improved. Working
algorithms already demonstrate significant improvements in overcoming speech
babble noise, and in settings with more than one speaker.
Countless science fiction films provide a foresight into the future of AI. For
example, In The Terminator (1984), a computer network nukes the human race in
order to achieve supremacy. This network then manufactures intelligent robots
called 'Terminators' which it programs to annihilate human survivors.
In The Matrix (1999) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003), a machine enslaves
humanity, using people as batteries to power its mainframe. Steven Spielbergs
AI: Artificial Intelligence (2002) paints a more sympathetic view of artificial life,
depicting sensitive robots that are abused by brutal, selfish human masters. HAL,
the supercomputer that rebels against its human handlers in the film 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968), is a cheeky reference to IBM. The letters H, A and L,
precede I, B and M in the alphabet.
REFERENCES
Artificial Intelligence by E. Rich & K. Knight
Artificial Intelligence by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence & Expert System by D. W. Patterson
International Conference Papers
www.aaai.org : Official website of the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence
www.bbc.co.uk : Official website of English news channel BBC
www.cs.cmu.edu : Official website of Carnegie Mellon University
CONCLUSION
In truth, we may never chat up a computer at a cocktail party. But in smaller yet
significant ways, artificial intelligence is already here: in the cruise control of
cars, the servers that route our email, and the personalized ads clogging our
browser windows. The future is all around us.
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