Tabla de contenido

Introduction...............................................................2
What is intelligence?.................................................3
Learning.....................................................................4
Reasoning..................................................................5
Problem solving.........................................................6
Perception.................................................................7
Language...................................................................8
Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital

computer or computer-controlled robot to perform
tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The
term is frequently applied to the project of developing
systems endowed with the intellectual processes
characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason,
discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past
experience. Since the development of the digital
computer in the 1940s, it has been demonstrated that
computers can be programmed to carry out very
complex tasks—as, for example, discovering proofs for
mathematical theorems or playing chess—with great
proficiency. Still, despite continuing advances in
computer processing speed and memory capacity,
there are as yet no programs that can match human
flexibility over wider domains or in tasks requiring
much everyday knowledge. On the other hand, some
programs have attained the performance levels of
human experts and professionals in performing certain
specific tasks, so that artificial intelligence in this
limited sense is found in applications as diverse as
medical diagnosis, computer search engines, and voice
or handwriting recognition.
What is intelligence?

All but the simplest human behaviour is ascribed to

intelligence, while even the most complicated insect
behaviour is never taken as an indication of
intelligence. What is the difference? Consider the
behaviour of the digger wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus.
When the female wasp returns to her burrow with
food, she first deposits it on the threshold, checks for
intruders inside her burrow, and only then, if the coast
is clear, carries her food inside. The real nature of the
wasp’s instinctual behaviour is revealed if the food is
moved a few inches away from the entrance to her
burrow while she is inside: on emerging, she will repeat
the whole procedure as often as the food is displaced.
Intelligence—conspicuously absent in the case of Sphex
—must include the ability to adapt to new
circumstances.

Psychologists generally do not characterize human

intelligence by just one trait but by the combination of
many diverse abilities. Research in AI has focused
chiefly on the following components of intelligence:
learning, reasoning, problem solving, perception, and
using language.
Learning

There are a number of different forms of learning as applied to artificial intelligence. The simplest is
learning by trial and error. For example, a simple computer program for solving mate-in-one chess
problems might try moves at random until mate is found. The program might then store the solution
with the position so that the next time the computer encountered the same position it would recall
the solution. This simple memorizing of individual items and procedures—known as rote learning—is
relatively easy to implement on a computer. More challenging is the problem of implementing what
is called generalization. Generalization involves applying past experience to analogous new
situations. For example, a program that learns the past tense of regular English verbs by rote will not
be able to produce the past tense of a word such as jump unless it previously had been presented
with jumped, whereas a program that is able to generalize can learn the “add ed” rule and so form
the past tense of jump based on experience with similar verbs.
Reasoning

To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the

situation. Inferences are classified as either deductive
or inductive. An example of the former is, “Fred must
be in either the museum or the café. He is not in the
café; therefore, he is in the museum,” and of the latter,
“Previous accidents of this sort were caused by
instrument failure; therefore this accident was caused
by instrument failure.” The most significant difference
between these forms of reasoning is that in the
deductive case the truth of the premises guarantees
the truth of the conclusion, whereas in the inductive
case the truth of the premise lends support to the
conclusion without giving absolute assurance. Inductive
reasoning is common in science, where data are
collected, and tentative models are developed to
describe and predict future behaviour—until the
appearance of anomalous data forces the model to be
revised. Deductive reasoning is common in
mathematics and logic, where elaborate structures of
irrefutable theorems are built up from a small set of
basic axioms and rules.

There has been considerable success in programming

computers to draw inferences, especially deductive
inferences. However, true reasoning involves more
than just drawing inferences; it involves drawing
inferences relevant to the solution of the particular
task or situation. This is one of the hardest problems
confronting AI.
Problem solving

Problem solving, particularly in artificial intelligence,

may be characterized as a systematic search through a
range of possible actions in order to reach some
predefined goal or solution. Problem-solving methods
divide into special purpose and general purpose. A
special-purpose method is tailor-made for a particular
problem and often exploits very specific features of the
situation in which the problem is embedded. In
contrast, a general-purpose method is applicable to a
wide variety of problems. One general-purpose
technique used in AI is means-end analysis—a step-by-
step, or incremental, reduction of the difference
between the current state and the final goal. The
program selects actions from a list of means—in the
case of a simple robot this might consist of PICKUP,
PUTDOWN, MOVEFORWARD, MOVEBACK, MOVELEFT,
and MOVERIGHT—until the goal is reached.

Many diverse problems have been solved by artificial

intelligence programs. Some examples are finding the
winning move (or sequence of moves) in a board game,
devising mathematical proofs, and manipulating
“virtual objects” in a computer-generated world.
Perception

In perception the environment is scanned by means of

various sensory organs, real or artificial, and the scene
is decomposed into separate objects in various spatial
relationships. Analysis is complicated by the fact that
an object may appear different depending on the angle
from which it is viewed, the direction and intensity of
illumination in the scene, and how much the object
contrasts with the surrounding field.

At present, artificial perception is sufficiently well

advanced to enable optical sensors to identify
individuals, autonomous vehicles to drive at moderate
speeds on the open road, and robots to roam through
buildings collecting empty soda cans. One of the
earliest systems to integrate perception and action was
FREDDY, a stationary robot with a moving television
eye and a pincer hand, constructed at the University of
Edinburgh, Scotland, during the period 1966–73 under
the direction of Donald Michie. FREDDY was able to
recognize a variety of objects and could be instructed
to assemble simple artifacts, such as a toy car, from a
random heap of components.
Language

A language is a system of signs having meaning by

convention. In this sense, language need not be
confined to the spoken word. Traffic signs, for example,
form a minilanguage, it being a matter of convention
that ⚠ means “hazard ahead” in some countries. It is
distinctive of languages that linguistic units possess
meaning by convention, and linguistic meaning is very
different from what is called natural meaning,
exemplified in statements such as “Those clouds mean
rain” and “The fall in pressure means the valve is
malfunctioning.”

An important characteristic of full-fledged human

languages—in contrast to birdcalls and traffic signs—is
their productivity. A productive language can formulate
an unlimited variety of sentences.

It is relatively easy to write computer programs that

seem able, in severely restricted contexts, to respond
fluently in a human language to questions and
statements. Although none of these programs actually
understands language, they may, in principle, reach the
point where their command of a language is
indistinguishable from that of a normal human. What,
then, is involved in genuine understanding, if even a
computer that uses language like a native human
speaker is not acknowledged to understand? There is
no universally agreed upon answer to this difficult
question. According to one theory, whether or not one
understands depends not only on one’s behaviour but
also on one’s history: in order to be said to understand,
one must have learned the language and have been
trained to take one’s place in the linguistic community
by means of interaction with other language users.

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