What is AI

What artificial intelligence is about
Artificial intelligence is the getting of computers to do things that seem to be intelligent. The hope is that
more intelligent computers can be more helpful to us--better able to respond to our needs and wants, and
more clever about satisfying them.
But "intelligence" is a vague word. So artificial intelligence is not a well-defined field. One thing it often
means is advanced software engineering, sophisticated software techniques for hard problems that can t
be solved in any easy way. Another thing it often means is nonnumeric ways of solving problems, since
people can t handle numbers well. Nonnumeric ways are often "common sense" ways, not necessarily the
best ones. So artificial-intelligence programs--like people--are usually not perfect, and even make
mistakes.
Artificial intelligence includes:
--Getting computers to communicate with us in human languages like English, either by
printing on a computer terminal, understanding things we type on a computer terminal,
generating speech, or understanding our speech (natural language);
--Getting computers to remember complicated interrelated facts, and draw conclusions
from them (inference);
--Getting computers to plan sequences of actions to accomplish goals (planning);
--Getting computers to offer us advice based on complicated rules for various situations
(expert systems);
--Getting computers to look through cameras and see what s there (vision);
--Getting computers to move themselves and objects around in the real world (robotics).
We ll emphasize inference, planning, and expert systems in this book because they re the "hard core" of
artificial intelligence; the other three subareas are getting quite specialized, though we ll mention them
too from time to time. All six subareas are hard; significant progress in any will require years of research.
But we ve already had enough progress to get some useful programs. These programs have created much
interest, and have stimulated recent growth of the field.