When you think of Artificial Intelligence, the first thing that comes to mind is either Robots or Machines with Brains or Matrix or Terminator or Ex Machina or any of the other amazing concepts having machines that can think. This is an appropriate but vague understanding of Artificial Intelligence. In this article we’ll see what A.I. really is and how the definition has changed in the past.
While generalizing or defining a new concept/discipline, it is beneficial to set right goals and define the field by what we hope to achieve with it, along with how will we achieve it. Since Artificial Intelligence is a vast topic, embodying the knowledge of many domains of science, it’s definition has evolved rapidly in the recent years. The diagram below contains 8 definitions from different textbooks. Each of these definitions describe what is A.I. in a different sense. Lets understand how.
The various definition have been grouped into 4 different dimensions or schools of thought, based on what we want our A.I. to achieve and how we measure its success. As can be seen in the diagram, the definitions set the goal of Artificial Intelligence, either based on thought process and reasoning(top row), or based on behavior(bottom row). Further, the definitions are also grouped in terms of how we measure the success of Artificial Intelligence. This can be either in terms of human intelligence(left column), or against the idea of rationality or ideal concept of intelligence. The difference in human thinking and rationality is that, the former must be an empirical science, involving hypothesis and experimental confirmation and the latter involves a combination of mathematics and engineering.
Each of these 4 approaches, comprising Thinking and Acting, Humanly and Rationally, have been followed and each of them provides valuable insights into the field of Artificial Intelligence. We will now see what will systems, in each of these dimensions, look like and how feasible they are.
For following this approach, one first needs to understand how humans think. Knowing the internal working of human brain can be achieved by introspection or psychological experiments. This, in itself, is a vast interdisciplinary field, known as Cognitive Science.
