Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is '' the study and design of intelligent agents, where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chance of success'' . (1)

John McCarthy defines it as ''the science and engineering of making intelligent machines''. Human beings can ''perceive, understand, predict & manipulate'' (2) as also possess the power of intelligence that makes them superior species over others. AI attempts ''not just to understand but also to build intelligent entities''.

Intelligence

Intelligence probably can be defined as the ''manifestation of a high mental capacity'' (3). It is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world (4). But then the problem is we can't generalize or even categorize the computational procedures that can be called as intelligent. Computers carry out the tasks which require modern day understandable mechanisms.

A machine (computer) can do work faster than human beings and has the ability to form accurate & retrievable long term memories. Computer programs doesn't have IQ. Normal human beings have same intellectual mechanisms which differentiates them from a machine. A difference which Arthur R. Jensen suggests as '' heuristic hypothesis'' ( what human beings possess) as compared to ''quantitative biochemical and physiological conditions'' for the artificial intelligence.

The basic problem lies elsewhere. The programmers of AI have not been able to find cognitive sciences which actually determines exactly what the human abilities are. Thereby, the programs that are set are not meant for everyone.

So, what next??

As the computers can be programmed to stimulate any kinds of machines thereby the AI researchers aims at gathering basic knowledge based facts and writing large number of programs which humans beings are performing at the moment.

As said earlier, it is very difficult to analyze the performance of human-level intelligence, thereby, it can't be predicted that when will the robots/machines/AI devices catch up the power of human intelligence. Attempts has been made so far, for instance Turing test, but still it is way behind human imitations & expectations.


** AI- artificial intelligence

Bibliography

1) Class PPT presentations- Steven Conway
2) Artificial Intelligence : A Modern Approach; Stuart J. Russell, Peter Norvig
3) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intelligence
4) http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html