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3 Artificial intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science dealing with the
simulation of intelligent human behaviour by a computer.
artificial intelligence (AI) – it is a collection of rules and data which gives a computer
system the ability to reason, learn and adapt to external stimuli.
6.3.2 Characteristics of AI
AI can be split into three categories:
1. narrow AI – this occurs when a machine has superior performance to a human when
doing one specific task.
2. general AI – this occurs when a machine is similar (not superior) in its performance
to a human doing a specific task
3. strong AI – this occurs when a machine has superior performance to a human in
many tasks.
Examples of AI include:
news generation based on live news feeds.
smart home devices (such as Amazon Alexa, Google Now, Apple Siri andMicrosoft
Cortana):
the AI device interacts with a human by recognising verbal commands.
it learns from its environment and the data it receives.
the device becomes increasingly sophisticated in its responses, thus showing
the ability to use automated repetitive learning.
use of chatbots that interact through instant messaging, artificially replicating
patterns of human interactions using AI to respond to typed or voice messages; when
a question is asked, the chatbot responds using the information known at the time:
chatbots – a pop-up robot on a website that appears to enter into a meaningful
conversation with a web user.
autonomous cars.
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6.3.3 AI systems
Two types of AI system:
1. expert system – a computer system that mimics the decision-making ability of a
human; expert systems use AI to simulate the judgement and behaviour of a human
or organisation that has expert knowledge and experience
2. machine learning – this is the science of training computers with sample data so that
they can go on to make predictions about new unseen data, without the need to
specifically program them for the new data.
Expert systems
expert system – a form of AI that has been developed to mimic a human’s
knowledge and expertise in a specific domain.
They use knowledge and inference to solve problems or answer questions that would
normally require a human expert.
For example, suppose the user was investigating a series of symptoms in a patient.
The expert system would ask a series of questions, and the answers would lead to its
diagnosis.
There are many applications that use expert systems including:
oil and mineral prospecting
diagnosis of a patient’s illness
fault diagnostics in mechanical and electronic equipment
tax and financial calculations
strategy games, such as chess
logistics (efficient routing of parcel deliveries)
identification of plants, animals and chemical/biological compounds.
Typical structure of an expert system.
Components of an expert system
1. User Interface.
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2. Inference Engine
3. Knowledge Base
4. Rules Base.
User interface
It is a method by which the expert system interacts with a user
interaction can be through dialogue boxes, command prompts or other input
methods.
the questions being asked usually only have Yes/No answers and are based on the
responses to previous questions.
Inference engine
inference engine –It is a kind of search engine used in an expert system which
examines the knowledge base for information that matches the queries this is the
main processing element of the expert system.
it is responsible for gathering information from the user by asking a series of
questions and applying responses where necessary; each question being asked is
based on the previous responses.
the inference engine is the problem-solving part of the expert system that makes use
of inference rules in the rules base.
since the knowledge base is a collection of objects and attributes, the inference
engine attempts to use information gathered from the user to find an object that
matches (making use of the rules base to find a match)
inference rules – rules used by the inference engine and in expert systems to
draw conclusions using IF statements
knowledge base
It is a repository of facts which is a collection of objects and attributes.
it stores all the knowledge about an area of expertise obtained from a number of
expert resources.
Rules base
-the rules base is a set of inference rules inference rules are used by the inference
engine to draw conclusions (the methods used closely follow human reasoning)
they follow logical thinking like the example above; usually involving a seriesof
‘IF’ statements, for example:
IF continent = “South America” AND language = “Portuguese” THEN country = “Brazil”
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Setting up an expert system
information is gathered from human experts or from written sources such as
textbooks, research papers or the internet
information gathered is used to populate the knowledge base that needs to be first
created
a rules base is created; this is made up of a series of inference rules so that the
inference engine can draw conclusions
the inference engine itself needs to be set up; it is a complex system since it is the
main processing element making reasoned conclusions from data in the knowledge
base.
the user interface needs to be developed to allow the user and the expert system to
communicate
once the system is set up, it needs to be fully tested; this is done by running the
system with known outcomes so that results can be compared and any changes to
the expert system made.
Machine learning
It is a sub-set of artificial intelligence (AI), in which algorithms are ‘trained’ and learn
from their past experiences and examples.
Differences between AI and Machine learning.
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