Overview
If thinking and intelligence are merely a matter of processing symbolic information, then computers should be capable of demonstrating such intelligence. Even before the world was aware of the importance of computers, work by Alan Turing in the 1930s and by John von Neumann in the 1950s quickly gave rise to the captivating notion of artificial intelligence, or AI. From the 1960s and on through much of the 1980s, a strong debate arose between philosophers, psychologists, and computer scientists concerning the future of AI and its status. We find ourselves in the mid-1990s with much cooler debate and many unrealized predictions, but now standing at a point where new computer architectures and environments seem to raise the issue of AI again.
Clearly, expert systems are the most mature and widely used commercial application coming out of artificial intelligence. In an expert system, the computer applies heuristics and rules in a knowledge-specific domain to render advice or make recommenda tions, much like a human expert would. Expert systems have managed to achieve fairly high levels of performance in task areas which require a good deal of specialized knowledge and training. Often they perform tasks which are physically difficult, tediou s, or expensive to have a human perform.
With the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the word "intelligent" often gets used to describe fairly simple programs, called agents, that may contain a matching or comparing algorithm and which when forwarded from one server to another, looks for data which will match and reports back to the original sender whatever it finds. Between the more difficult creation of expert systems and the simpler creation of Internet intelligent agents, there lies an amazing array of applicat ions which may be considered under the heading of artificial intelligence.
This course will attempt to examine a variety of these applications and theoretical areas that are currently considered as part of the "artificial intelligence" realm. The course will focus strongly on expert systems, but will provide scope for the examination of other areas of interest important to course participants. More specifically, the course objectives include:
Expert System Development Task (20%)
Quiz over Textbook Readings (20%)
Presentation of Selected AI Topic Area to the Class (20%)
Web Page Development for Selected AI Topic
Area (20%)
Critical Book Review (please discuss your choice with the instructor) (20%)
Textbooks:
Dutta, Soumitra. Knowledge Processing and Applied Artificial Intelligence. Oxford, England: Butterworth, 1993.
Kelly, Richard V., Jr. Practical Knowledge Engineering. Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1991.
Helpful Web sites to get you started:
Artificial Intelligence Center Publications, SRI International
University of Illinois, Beckman Institute AI Group
Artificial Intellgience Journals listing
World Wide Web Virtual Library: Artificial Intelligence
Course Listserv [inactive as of December 23, 1996] (Make sure your browser's mail preferences are set to your subscribed email address!!)
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