Intelligence Resources

There are many definitions that attempt to explain what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is. I like to think of AI as a science that investigates knowledge and intelligence, possibly the intelligent application of knowledge. Knowledge and Intelligence are as fundamental as the universe within which they exist, it may turn out that they are more fundamental.

One of the aims of AI is said to be the investigation of human cognition and AI is part of Cognitive Science. My view is that AI is really an investigation into the creation of intelligence and that there is no reason for the intelligence that is created to be exactly the same as human intelligence. Reading the AI literature highlights several difficulties that arise from the complexity of the subject:

Progressive research into ever finer detail can sometimes cause researchers to lose sight of the (or any) goal of AI.
Changes in fashion influence what should be fundamental thinking (although this is true of other science). For instance everything now seems to require the label ‘Agent’.

Summary of the Intelligence Resources section

This section is divided in Human intelligence topics and Machine intelligence topics,there is a brief summary of the articles within each subsection of this section. First a brief descriptin and link to the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition

The BCS Machine Intelligence Competition

During an after-dinner talk at an early British Computer Society conferences, Rick Magaldi from British Airways discussed the progress of Machine Intelligence in terms of the progress of human flight. Flight has been mastered in a way not yet paralleled by the emergence of machine intelligence. At one point Rick discussed one of the significant developments in the desire to fly as being when learned people started to confidently but usually disastrously, throw themselves off buildings. The consensus at the conference was that within AI, we have not really got to the stage where we are throwing ourselves off buildings. This is about to change. The SGAI (with AKRI) have decided to give people an opportunity to hurl themselves into the void, risking public ridicule and career stagnation to show what they have really achieved in the development of Machine Intelligence. This competition will put on show real systems working in real time. It is hoped that the competition and the competitors, over several years, will provide a new interest and visible improvements in the development of machine intelligence.
The competition will rely on people being open about developments, no matter how small these may appear. It will also serve as an opportunity to see what others can achieve and could prove a valuable source of ideas.

Read about, and enter, the competition here.

Human Intelligence

It is still difficult to provide a meaningful definition that clearly describes intelligence and separates it as a concept. This difficulty makes discussion of other aspects of intelligence also difficult. It may be argued that intelligence enables people to get the best jobs or reach the highest levels of academic success. It could be argued that intelligence is a requirement for innovators, inventors.

Machine Intelligence

From Fuzzy Logic to Logic

Fuzzy logic enables a computer to make decisions which care more in line with the sort of decisions which a human would make. Computer logic is rigorous and deterministic and relates to finite states and numbering systems. Computer logic marks distinct boundaries between any states. For instance, given various weather conditions to process such as, stormy, rainy, cloudy, sunny, ordinary logic would assign one of these values to any weather condition being observed. People however would recognise all sorts of shades in between theses states such as dull or drizzle etc. This is exactly what fuzzy logic can do. What is more impressive is that fuzzy logic offers a way of processing these decisions so that a final result is still correct.

Intelligent Homes

Originally to investigate how much the system could learn about human occupancy patterns by using mainly simple movement sensors as input. The main function of the system was to try to establish how many people were in each room at any one time (occupant location monitor). This was done by reference to a short term memory of sensor data and heuristics to detect and correct errors in reasoning when they occurred. The function of long term memory was to try to predict how many people were likely to be in any room in the near future and to predict the general occupancy pattern at the start of each day. This information was used to influence the decisions made by the short term occupancy location monitor.

Experts and Expert Systems

An expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in conventional programming.

Machine Memory

Unlike the case with human systems, the construction and operation of machine memory is fully understood. This means that models are not needed to simulate the way machine memory works. Models of human memory however, are used to try to equip machines with human like properties. The need for memory models for machines is therefore to help implement human like characteristics using artificial or man made devices and systems.

Technology

This article will attempt to give a very brief overview of some of the technologies that make up the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Steve Grand

Steve Grand OBE is a British computer scientist and roboticist. He was the creator and lead programmer of the Creatures artificial life simulation, which he discussed in his first book Creation: Life and how to make it, a finalist for the 2001 Aventis Prize for Science Books. He is also an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which he received in 2000. Grand’s project from 2001-2006 was the building of an artificial robot baby orang-utan, with the intention of having it learn as a human baby would. This is documented in his book Growing up with Lucy. Steve is presently working on a successor to Creatures (but not called that). His aim is the same as it was for Creatures, to make the closest thing to real virtual life so far "not something that looks like it’s alive and intelligent but something that really is".