BCS515B-Artificial Intelligence

Module1
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
• Homo Sapiens: The name is Latin for "wise man“
• Philosophy of AI-“Can a machine think and behave like humans do?”
• In Simple Words -Artificial Intelligence is a way of making a computer ,a computer-
controlled robot, or a software think intelligently, in the similar manner the
intelligent humans think.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the
creation of intelligent machines that work and reacts like humans.
• AI is accomplished by studying how human brain thinks and how humans learn,
decide, and work while trying to solve a problem, and then using the outcomes of this
study as a basis of developing intelligent software and systems.

1. What is AI?
Definitions of AI, organized into four categories:
i. Thinking humanly
ii. Thinking rationally
iii. Acting humanly
iv. Acting rationally
Thinking Humanly Thinking Rationally
“The exciting new effort to make computers “The study of mental faculties through the
think . .. machines with minds, in the full and use of computational models.”(Charniak
literal sense.” (Haugeland, 1985) and McDermott, 1985)
“[The automation of] activities that we “The study of the computations that make it
associate with human thinking, activities such possible to perceive, reason, and act.”
as decision-making, problem solving, (Winston, 1992)
learning...”(Bellman,1978)
Acting Humanly Acting Rationally
“The art of creating machines that per- form “Computational Intelligence is the study
functions that require intelligence when of the design of intelligent agents.” (Poole
performed by people.” (Kurzweil, 1990) et al., 1998)
“The study of how to make computers do “AI . . . is concerned with intelligent
things at which, at the moment, people are behavior in artifacts.” (Nilsson, 1998)
better.” (Rich and Knight, 1991)

Figure1.1Somedefinitionsofartificialintelligence, organized into four categories.

i. Acting humanly: The Turing Test approach

• Turing(1950)developed "Computing machinery and intelligence":
• "Can machines think?"or "Can machines behave intelligently?"
• Operational test for intelligent behavior: the Imitation Game
• A computer passes the test if a human interrogator, after posing some written
questions, can not tell whether the written responses come from a person or from
a machine.
• Suggested major components of AI: knowledge, reasoning, language understanding,
learning

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The computer would need to posses the following capabilities:

• Natural Language Processing: To enable it to communicate successfully in English.
• Knowledge representation: To store what it knows or hear.
• Automated reasoning: To use the stored information to answer questions and to draw
new conclusions.
• Machine Learning: To adopt to new circumstances and to detect and extrapolate
patterns.
To pass the Total Turing Test
• Computer vision: To perceive objects.
• Robotics: To manipulate objects and move about.

ii. Thinking humanly: The cognitive modeling approach

• If we are going to say that given program thinks like a human, we must have some
way of determining how humans think.
• We need to get inside the actual working of human minds.
• There are 3 ways to do it:
i. Through introspection
Trying to catch our own thoughts as they go
ii. Through psychological experiments
Observing a person in action
iii. Through brain imaging Observing the brain in action
• Comparison of the trace of computer program reasoning steps to traces of human
subjects solving the same problem.
• Cognitive Science brings together computer models from AI and experimental
techniques from psychology to try to construct precise and testable theories of the
working of the human mind.
• Now distinct from AI
✓ AI and Cognitive Science fertilize each other in the areas of vision and natural
language.
• Once we have a sufficiently precise theory of the mind, it becomes possible to
express the theory as a computer program.
• If the program’s input-output behavior matches corresponding human behaviour,
that is evidence that the program’s mechanisms could also be working in humans.
• For example, Allen Newel land Herbert Simon, who developed GPS, the "General
Problem Solver”.

iii. Thinking rationally: The “laws of thought” approach

Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to codify ―right thinking, that is, irrefutable
reasoning processes. His syllogisms provided patterns for argument structures that always
yielded correct conclusions when given correct premises.
Eg. So crates is a man;

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All men are mortal;

There fore, So crates is mortal.--logic
There are two main obstacles to this approach.
1. It is not easy to take informal knowledge and state it in the formal terms required by
logical notation, particularly when the knowledge is less than 100% certain.
2. Second, there is a big difference between solving a problem ―in principle and solving it
in practice.

iv. Acting rationally: The rational agent approach

• An agent is just something that acts.

• All computer programs do something, but computer agents are expected to do more:
operate autonomously, perceive their environment, persist over a prolonged time
period, and adapt to change, and create and pursue goals.
• A rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the best outcome or, when there is
uncertainty, the best expected outcome.
• In the―laws of thought approach to AI, the emphasis was on correct in ferences.
• On the other hand, correct inference is not all of rationality; in some situations, there
is no provably correct thing to do, but something must still be done.
• For example, recoiling from a hot stove is a reflex action that is usually more
successful than a slower action taken after careful deliberation.
• What means “behave rationally” for a person/system:
✓ Take the right/be station to achieve the goals, based on his/its knowledge and belief
✓ Example: Assume I don’t like to get wet in rain (my goal), so Ibringan umbrella (my
action). Do I behave rationally?
✓ The answer is dependent on my knowledge and belief
✓ If I’ve heard the forecast for rain and I believe it, then bringing the umbrella is
rational.
✓ If I’ve not heard the forecast for rain and I do not believe that it is going to rain, then
bringing the umbrella is not rational
• “Behave rationally” does not always achieve the goals successfully
Example:
✓ My goals – (i) do not get wet if rain; (ii) do not looked stupid (such as bring
an umbrella when not raining)
✓ My knowledge/belief–we at her forecast for rain and I believe it
✓ My rational behaviour–bring an umbrella
✓ The outcome of my behaviour: If rain, then my rational behavior achieves
both goals; If no rain, then my rational behavior fails to achieve the 2nd goal
• The successfulness of “behave rationally” is limited by my knowledge and belief.
2. Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
Philosophy
• Can formal rules be used to draw valid conclusions?
• How does the mind arise from a physical brain? Where does knowledge come from?
• How does knowledge lead to action?
• Aristotle was the first to formulate a precise set of laws governing the rational part of
the mind. He developed an informal system of syllogisms for proper reasoning,
which in principle allowed one to generate conclusions mechanically, given initial
premises.
✓ All dogs are animals;

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✓ All animals have four legs;

✓ There fore all dogs have four legs
• Descartes was a strong advocate of the power of reasoning in under standing the world,
philosophy now called as rationalism.
Mathematics
• What are the formal rules to draw valid conclusions? What can be computed?
• How do we reason with uncertain information?
• Formal representation and proof algorithms: Propositional logic Computation:
Turing tried to characterize exactly which functions are computable - capable of
being computed.
• (un) decidability: Incompleteness theory showed that in any formal theory, there
are true statements that are undecidable i.e. they have no proof within the
theory.
o “a line can be extended infinitely in both directions”
• (in) tractability: A problem is called intractable if the time required to solve instances of
the problem grows exponentially with the size of the instance.
• probability: Predicting the future.
Economics
• How should we make decisions so as to maximize payoff?
• Economics is the study of how people make choices that lead to preferred
outcomes (utility).
• Decision theory: It combines probability theory with utility theory, provides a
formal and complete framework for decisions made under uncertainty.
Neuroscience
• How do brains process information?
• Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, particularly brain.
• Brain consists of nerve cells or neurons.10^11neurons.
• Neurons are considered as Computational units.
Psychology

• Behaviorism movement, led by John Watson (1878-1958). Behaviorists insisted on

studying only objective measures of the percepts (stimulus) given to an animal and its
resulting actions (or response). Behaviorism discovered a lot about rats and pigeons
but had less success at understanding human.
• Cognitive psychology, views the brain as an information processing device. Common
view among psychologist that a cognitive theory should be like a computer program.
(Anderson 1980) i.e. It should describe a detailed information processing mechanism
whereby some cognitive function might be implemented.

Computer engineering:
How can we build an efficient computer?

• For artificial intelligence to succeed, we need two things: intelligence and an artifact.
The computer has been the artifact (object) of choice.
• The first operational computer was the electro mechanical Heath Robinson, built in 1940 by
Alan Turing's team for a single purpose: deciphering German messages.
• The first operational programmable computer was the Z-3, the invention of
Konrad Zuse in Germany in 1941.
• The first electronic computer, the ABC, was assembled by John Atanasoff and his
student Clifford Berry between 1940 and 1942 at Iowa State University.

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• The first programmable machine was a loom, devised in 1805 by Joseph Marie
Jacquard (1752-1834) that used punched cards to store instructions for the pattern to
be woven.

Control theory and cybernetics

How can artifacts operate under their own control?

• Ktesibios of Alexandria (c. 250 B.C.) built the first self-controlling machine: a water
clock with a regulator that maintained a constant flow rate. This invention changed
the definition of what an artifact could do.
• Modern control theory, especially the branch known as stochastic optimal control, has
as its goal the design of systems that maximize an objective function over time. This
roughly OBJECTIVE FUNCTION matches our view of Al: designing systems that
behave optimally.
• Calculus and matrix algebra-the tools of control theory
• The tools of logical inference and computation allowed AI researchers to consider
problems such as language, vision, and planning that fell completely outside the
control theorist’s purview.
Linguistics
How does language relate to thought?

• In 1957, B. F. Skinner published Verbal Behaviour. This was a comprehensive,

detailed account of the behaviourist approach to language learning, written by the
foremost expert in the field.
• Noam Chomsky, who had just published a book on his own theory, Syntactic
Structures. Chomsky pointed out that the behaviourist theory did not address the
notion of creativity in language.
• Modern linguistics and AI were ―born at about the same time, and grew up together,
intersecting in a hybrid field called computational linguistics or natural language
processing.
• The problem of understanding language soon turned out to be considerably more
complex than it seemed in 1957. Understanding language requires an understanding
of the subject matter and context, not just an understanding of the structure of
sentences.
• Knowledge representation (the study of how to put knowledge into a form that a
computer can reason with)- tied to language and informed by research in linguistics.

3. History of Artificial Intelligence

1. The gestation of artificial intelligence(1943–1955)

The gestation of artificial intelligence (AI) during the period from1943to1955marked
the early theoretical and conceptual groundwork for the field. This period laid the
foundation for the subsequent development of AI
2. The birth of artificial intelligence(1956)
The birth of artificial intelligence (AI) in 1956 is commonly associated with the
Dartmouth Conference, a seminal event that took place at Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire.

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3. Early enthusiasm, great expectations(1952–1969)

The period from 1952 to 1969 in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) was
characterized by early enthusiasm and great expectations. Researchers during this
time were optimistic about the potential of AI and believed that significant progress
could be made in creating machines with human-like intelligence.
4. A dose of reality(1966–1973)
The period from 1966 to 1973 in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) is often
referred to as "A Dose of Reality." During this time, researchers faced challenges and
setbacks that led to a reevaluation of the initial optimism and expectations
surrounding AI.
5. Knowledge-based systems: The key to power?(1969–1979)
The period from 1969 to 1979 in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) is
characterized by a focus on knowledge-based systems, with researchers exploring the
use of symbolic representation of knowledge to address challenges in AI. This era saw
efforts to build expert systems, which were designed to emulate human expertise in
specific domains.
6. AI becomes an industry (1980–present)
The period from 1980 to the present marks the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI)
into an industry, witnessing significant advancements, increased commercialization,
and widespread applications across various domains.
7. There turn of neural networks (1986–present)

The period from 1986 to the present is characterized by the resurgence and dominance
of neural networks in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This era is marked by
significant advancements in the development of neural network architectures, training
algorithms, and the widespread adoption of deep learning techniques.

8. AI adopts the scientific method(1987–present)

The period from 1987 to the present has seen the adoption of the scientific method in
the field of artificial intelligence (AI), reflecting a more rigorous and empirical
approach to research. This shift has involved the application of experimental
methodologies, reproducibility, and a greater emphasis on evidence-based practices.

9. The emergence of intelligent agents (1995–present)

The period from 1995 to the present has been marked by the emergence and evolution
of intelligent agents in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Intelligent agents are
autonomous entities that perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions
to achieve goals.

10. The availability of very large data sets (2001–present)

The period from 2001 to the present has been characterized by the availability and
utilization of very large datasets in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This era has
witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume and diversity of data, providing a
Foundation for training and enhancing increasingly sophisticated AI models.

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Intelligent Agents

1. Agents and environment

An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors
And acting upon that environment through actuators.
This simple Figure 2.1illustrated in
A human agent has eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors and hands, legs, vocal tract, and so
on for actuators. A robotic agent might have cameras and infrared range finders for sensors
and various motors for actuators.

Percept−It is agent’s perceptual inputs at a given instance.

Percept Sequence – It is the history of all that an agent has perceived till date.
Agent Function−It is a map from the precept sequence to an action. Internally, the Agent
function for an artificial agent will be implemented by an agent program.
It is important to keep these two ideas distinct. The agent function is an abstract mathematical
description; the agent program is a concrete implementation, running within some physical
system.
Performance Measure of Agent−It is the criteria, which determine show successful an
agent is.
Behavior of Agent−It is the action that agent performs after any given sequence of percepts.

To illustrate these ideas, we use a very simple example:

The vacuum-cleaner world shown in Figure2.2.

This particular world has just two locations: squares A and B. The vacuum agent perceives
which square it is in and whether there is dirt in the square. It can choose to move left, move
right, suck up the dirt, or do nothing. One very simple agent function is the following: if the
current square is dirty, then suck; otherwise, move to the other square. A partial tabulation of
this agent function is shown in Figure2.3 and an agent program that implements is given in
Figure 2.8.

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2. Good Behavior: The Concept of Rationality

A rational agent is one that does the right thing—conceptually speaking, every entry in the table
for the agent function is filled out correctly.

When an agent is plunked down in an environment, it generates a sequence of actions according

to the percepts it receives. This sequence of actions causes the environment to go through a
sequence of states. If the sequence is desirable, then the agent has performed well. This notion
of desirability is captured by a performance measure that evaluates any given sequence of
environment states.

As a general rule, it is better to design performance measures according to what one actually
wants in the environment, rather than according to how one thinks the agent should behave.
Rationality
Rational at any given time depends on four things:
• The performance measure that defines the criterion of success.
• The agent's prior knowledge of the environment.
• The actions that the agent can perform.
• The agent's percept sequence to date.

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A definition of a rational agent: For each possible percept sequence, a rational agent
should select an action that is expected to maximize its performance measure, given the evidence
provided by the percept sequence and what ever built-in knowledge the agent has.
Consider the simple vacuum-cleaner agent that cleans a square if it is dirty and moves to the other
square if not; this is the agent function tabulated in Figure2.3. Is this a rational agent? That
depends! First, we need to say what the performance measure is, what is known about the
environment, and what sensors and actuators the agent has. Let us assume the following:

✓ The performance measure awards one point for each clean square at each time step, over a
“lifetime” of 1000 time steps.
✓ The “geography” of the environment is known a priori (Figure 2.2) but the dirt distribution
and the initial location of the agent are not. Clean squares stay clean and sucking cleans the
current square. The Left and Right actions move the agent left and right except when this
would take the agent outside the environment, in which case the agent remains where it is.
✓ The only available actions are move Left, Right, Suck and No Op(do nothing).
The agent correctly perceives its location and whether that location contains dirt. We claim that under
these circumstances the agent is indeed rational; its expected performance is at least as high as any
other agent’s.

Omniscience, learning, and autonomy

An omniscient agent knows the actual outcome of its actions and can act accordingly; but
omniscience is impossible in reality.
Our definition of rationality does not require omniscience, then, because the rational choice depends
only on the percept sequence to date. We must also ensure that we haven’t in advertently allowed the
agent to engage in decidedly under intelligent activities.
For example, if an agent does not look both ways before crossing a busy road, then its percept
sequence will not tell it that there is a large truck approaching at high speed. Does our definition of
rationality say that it’s now OK to cross the road? Far from it! First, it would not be rational to cross
the road given this uninformative percept sequence: the risk of accident from crossing without
looking is too great. Second, a rational agent should choose the “looking” action before stepping into
the street, because looking helps maximize the expected performance.
Doing actions in order to modify future percepts—sometimes called information gathering.
A second example of information gathering is provided by the exploration that must be undertaken
by a vacuum-cleaning agent in an initially unknown environment. Our definition requires a rational
agent not only to gather information but also to learn as much as possible from what it perceives.
The agent’s initial configuration could reflect some prior knowledge of the environment, but as the
agent gains experience this may be modified and augmented. There are extreme cases in which the
environment is completely known a priori. In such cases, the agent need not perceive or learn; it

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simply acts correctly, such agents are fragile.

To the extent that an agent relies on the prior knowledge of its designer rather than on its own
percepts, we say that the agent lacks autonomy. A rational agent should be autonomous—it should
learn what it can to compensate for partial or incorrect prior knowledge.
For example, a vacuum-cleaning agent that learns to foresee where and when additional dirt will
appear will do better than one that does not.
3. The nature of environment
Task environments, which are essentially the “problems” to which rational agents are the
“solutions.”
To specify the performance measure, the environment, and the agent’s actuators and sensors
called the PEAS (Performance, Environment, Actuators, and Sensors) description.
In designing an agent, the first step must always be to specify the task environment as fully as
possible.
PEAS description of an automated taxi driver.

✓ The performance measure to which we would like our automated driver to aspire?
Desirable qualities include getting to the correct destination; minimizing fuel consumption
and wear and tear; minimizing the trip time or cost; minimizing violations of traffic laws
and disturbances to other drivers; maximizing safety and passenger comfort; maximizing
profits. Obviously, some of these goals conflict, so tradeoffs will be required.

✓ What is the driving environment that the taxi will face? Any taxi driver must deal with a
variety of roads, ranging from rural lanes and urban alleys to 12-lane freeways. The roads
contain other traffic, pedestrians, stray animals, road works, police cars, puddles, and
potholes. The taxi must also interact with potential and actual passengers.

✓ The actuators for an automated taxi include those available to a human driver: control
[Link], it will
need output to a display screen or voice synthesizer to talk back to the passengers, and
perhaps some way to communicate with other vehicles, politely or otherwise.

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✓ The basic sensors for the taxi will include one or more controllable video cameras so that
it can see the road; it might augment these with infrared or sonar sensors to detect
distances to other cars and obstacles. To avoid speeding tickets, the taxi should have a
speedometer, and to control the vehicle properly, especially on curves, it should have an
accelerometer. To determine the mechanical state of the vehicle, it will need the usual
array of engine, fuel, and electrical system sensors. Like many human drivers, it might
want a global positioning system (GPS) so that it doesn’t get lost. Finally, it will need a
keyboard or microphone for the passenger to request a destination.

InFigure2.5, shows the basic PEAS elements for a number of additional agent types

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4. Properties of Task Environments:

Fully observable vs. Partially observable
✓ When an agent sensor is capable to sense or access the complete state of an agent at each
point in time, it is said to be a fully observable environment else it is partially observable.

✓ A task environment is(effectively)fully observable iff the sensors detect the complete state of
the environment
• ”relevant” depends on the performance measure
• No need to maintain internal state to keep track of the environment
• e.g. Chess– the board is fully observable, and so are the opponent’s moves.
✓ A task environment may be partially observable(Ex: Taxi driving):
• No is y and in accurate sensors
• Parts of the state are not accessible for sensors
✓ A task environment might be even un-observable (no sensors). An environment is called
unobservable when the agent has no sensors in all environments.
• e.g. fully – deterministic actions
Deterministic vs. stochastic
✓ A task environment is deterministic iff its next state is completely determined by its
current state and by the action of the agent. (Ex: a crossword puzzle).
✓ If not so:
• A task environment is stochastic if uncertainty about out comes is quantified in terms
of probabilities (Ex: dice, poker game, component failure,...)
• A task environment is non deterministic iff actions are characterized by their possible
outcomes, but no probabilities are attached to them.
• The stochastic environment is random in nature which is not unique and cannot be
completely determined by the agent.

In a multi-agent environment we ignore uncertainty that arises from the actions of other agents (Ex:
chess is deterministic even though each agent is unable to predict the actions of the others).
A partially observable environment could appear to be stochastic. =⇒for practical purposes, when it
is impossible to keep track of all the unobserved aspects, they must be treated as stochastic. (Ex:
Taxi driving).

Episodic vs. sequential

In an episodic task environment
✓ The agent’s experience is divided into atomic episodes
✓ In each episode the agent receives a percept and then performs a single action
Episodes do not depend on the actions taken in previous episodes, and they do not influence
future episodes.
There is no dependency between current and previous incidents. In each incident, an agent
receives input from the environment and then performs the corresponding action.
Ex: an agent that has to spot defective parts on an assembly line bases each decision on the current
part, regardless of previous decisions; moreover, the current decision doesn’t affect whether the next
part is defective.
In sequential environments the current decision could affect all future decisions ⇒ actions
can have long-term consequences
✓ Ex: chess, taxi driving, ...

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Episodic environments are much simpler than sequential ones

✓ No need to think ahead!
Static vs. dynamic

✓ If the environment can change while an agent is deliberating, then we say the environment
tis dynamic for that agent; otherwise, it is static.
✓ Static environments are easy to deal with because the agent need not keep looking at the
world while it is deciding on an action, nor need it worry about the passage of time.
• Ex: cross word puzzles are static
✓ Dynamic environments, on the other hand, are continuously asking the agent what it wants to
do; if it hasn’t decided yet, that counts as deciding to do nothing.
• Ex: taxi driving is dynamic, the other cars and the taxi itself keep moving while the
driving algorithm dithers about what to do next
✓ If the environment itself does not change with the passage of time but the agent’s performance
score does, then we say the environment is semi dynamic.
• Ex: Chess, when played with a clock.

Discrete vs. continuous

The state of the environment, the way time is handled, and agents percepts & actions can be
discrete or continuous
✓ Ex: Cross word puzzles: discrete state, time, percepts & actions
✓ Ex: Taxi driving: continuous state, time, percepts & actions Note:
✓ The simplest environment is fully observable, single-agent, deterministic, episodic,
static and discrete. Ex: simple vacuum cleaner
✓ Most real-world situations are partially observable, multi-agent, stochastic, sequential,
dynamic, and continuous. Ex: taxi driving

Single-agent vs Multi-agent
✓ An environment consisting of only one agent is said to be a single-agent environment.
Ex: A person left alone in a maze is an example of the single-agent system.
✓ An environment involving more than one agent is a multi-agent environment.
Ex: The game of football is multi-agent as it involves11 players in each team.

Example properties of task Environments:

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Properties of the Agent’s State of Knowledge Known vs. unknown

✓ In a known environment, the output for all probable actions is given.
✓ In case of unknown environment, for an agent to make a decision, it has to gain knowledge about
how the environment works.

✓ Describes the agent’s (or designer’s) state of knowledge about the “laws of physics” of
the environment
• if the environment is known, then the outcomes (or outcome probabilities if
stochastic) for all actions are given.
• if the environment is unknown, then the agent will have to learn how it works
in order to make good decisions
✓ Orthogonal wrt task-environment properties.
Known not equal to Fully observable
✓ A known environment can be partially observable(Ex: a solitaire card games)
✓ An unknown environment can be fully observable(Ex: a game I don’t know the rules of)

5. The structure of agents

Agent=Architecture + Program
• AI Job: to design an agent program that implements the agent function mapping
percepts to actions
• The agent program runs on some computing device with physical sensors and actuators:
the agent architecture
• All agents have the same skeleton:
✓ Input: current percepts
✓ Output: action
✓ Program: manipulates input o produce output.
✓ The agent function takes the entire percept history as input
✓ The agent program takes only the current percept as input.
✓ If the actions need to depend on the entire percept sequence, the agent will have to
remember the percepts

TheTable-DrivenAgent
The table represents explicitly the agent function Ex: the simple vacuum cleaner

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Agents can be grouped into five classes based on their degree of perceived intelligence and
capability. All these agents can improve their performance and generate better action per the
time. These are given below:
Simple Reflex Agent
Model-based reflex agent
Goal-based agents
Utility-based agent
Learning agent
Simple reflex agents
✓ The Simple reflex agents are the simplest agents. These agents take decisions on the basis of the
current percepts and ignore the rest of the percept history.
✓ These agents only succeed in the fully observable environment.
✓ The Simple reflex agent does not consider any part of percepts history during their decision and
action process.
✓ The Simple reflex agent works on Condition-action rule, which means it maps the current state
to action. Such as a Room Cleaner agent, it works only if there is dirt in the room.
✓ Problems for the simple reflex agent design approach:
• They have very limited intelligence
• They do not have knowledge often-perceptual parts of the current state
• Mostly too big to generate and to store.
• Not adaptive to changes in the environment.

Figure: Schematic diagram of a simple reflex agent

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Model-based reflex agent

The Model-based agent can work in a partially observable environment & track the situation. A
model-based agent has two important factors:
• Model: It is knowledge about "how things happen in the world," so it is called a
Model-based agent.
• Internal State: It is presentations of the current state based on percept history.
These agents have the model, "which is knowledge of the world" and based on the model they
perform actions.
Updating the agent state requires information about:
• How the world evolves
• How the agent's action affects the world.

Figure: A model based reflex agent

Prof. Kotresh Naik D, Assistant Professor, Department of CS, CIT, Gubbi 16

BCS515B-Artificial Intelligence

✓ For the braking problem, the internal state is not too extensive— just the previous frame
from the camera, allowing the agent to detect when twored light sat the edge of the vehicle
go on or off simultaneously.
✓ For other driving tasks such as changing lanes, the agent needs to keep track of where the
other cars are if it can’t see them all at once. And for any driving to be possible at all, the
agent needs to keep track of where its keys are.
✓ Updating this internal state information as time goes by requires two kinds of knowledge to
be encoded in the agent program.
✓ First, we need some information about how the world evolves independently of the agent—
for example, that an overtaking car generally will be closer behind than it was a moment
ago.
✓ Second, we need some information about how the agent’s own actions affect the world—for
example, that when the agent turns the steering wheel clockwise, the car turns to the right, or
that after driving for five minutes north bound on the freeway, one is usually about five
miles north of where one was five minutes ago.
✓ This knowledge about “how the world works”—whether implemented in simple Boolean
circuits or in complete scientific theories—is called a model of the world. An agent that uses
such a model is called a model-based agent.

Goal-based agents
✓ The knowledge of the current state environment is not always sufficient to decide for an agent to
what to do.
✓ The agent needs to know its goal which describes desirable situations.
✓ Goal-based agents expand the capabilities of the model-based agent by having the "goal"
information.
✓ They choose an action, so that they can achieve the goal.
✓ These agents may have to consider a long sequence of possible actions before deciding whether
the goal is achieved or not. Such considerations of different scenario are called searching and
planning, which makes an agent proactive.
✓ Sometimes goal-based action selection is straightforward: for example when goal
satisfaction results immediately from a single action.
✓ Sometimes it will be trickier: for example, when the agent has to consider long sequences of
twists and turns to find a way to achieve the goal.
✓ Search and planning are the subfields of AI devoted to finding action sequences that achieve
the agent’s goals.

Prof. Kotresh Naik D, Assistant Professor, Department of CS, CIT, Gubbi 17

 BCS515B-Artificial Intelligence

Difference between reflex agent and Goal based agent:

Reflex Agent Goal Based
For the reflex agent, on the other hand, we The goal-based agent appears less efficient, it is
would have to rewrite many condition– more flexible because the knowledge that supports
action rules. its decisions is represented explicitly and can be
modified. If it starts to rain, the agent can update its
knowledge of how effectively its brakes will operate;
this will automatically cause all of the relevant
behaviors to be altered to suit the new conditions

The reflex agent’s rules for when to turn The goal-based agent’s behavior can easily be
and when to go straight will work only for changed to go to a different destination, simply by
a single destination; they must all be specifying that destination as the goal.
replaced to go somewhere new.
Example: Example:
The reflex agent brakes when it sees brake A goal-based agent, in principle, could reason that if
lights the car in front has its brake lights on, it will slow
down.

Utility-based agents
✓ These agents are similar to the goal-based agent but provide an extra component of utility
measurement which makes them different by providing a measure of success at a given state.
✓ Utility-based agent act based not only goals but also the best way to achieve the goal.
✓ The Utility-based agent is useful when there are multiple possible alternatives; and an agent has
to choose in order to perform the best action.
✓ The utility function maps each state to a real number to check how efficiently each action
achieves the goals.
Utility-based Agents advantages wrt goal-based:
✓ With conflicting goals, utility specifies and appropriate tradeoff
✓ with several goals none of which can be achieved with certainty, utility selects proper
tradeoff between importance of goals and likelihood of success
✓ still complicate to implement
✓ require sophisticated perception, reasoning, and learning
✓ may require expensive computation.

Prof. Kotresh Naik D, Assistant Professor, Department of CS, CIT, Gubbi 18

BCS515B-Artificial Intelligence

Learning Agents
Problem Previous agent programs describe methods for selecting actions
✓ How are these agent programs programmed?
✓ Programming by hand in efficient and ineffective!
✓ Solution: build learning machines and then teach them(rather than instruct them)
✓ Advantage: robustness of the agent program toward initially-unknown environments

✓ Performance element: selects actions based on percepts Corresponds to the previous

agent programs
✓ Learning element: introduces improvements uses feedback from the critic on how the
agent is doing determines improvements for the performance element
✓ Critic tells show the agent is doing wrt. Performance standard
✓ Problem generator: suggests actions that will lead to new and informative experiences
forces exploration of new stimulating scenarios
Example: Taxi Driving
✓ After the taxi makes A quick left turn across three lanes, the Critic observes the
Shocking language used by other drivers.
✓ From this experience, the learning element formulates a rule saying this was a bad
action.
✓ The performance element is modified by adding the new rule.
✓ The problem generator might identify certain areas of behavior in need of
improvement, and suggest trying out the brakes on different road surfaces under
different conditions.

Prof. Kotresh Naik D, Assistant Professor, Department of CS, CIT, Gubbi 19

BCS515B-Artificial Intelligence

QuestionBank:Module1

1. Define AI. Explain the foundation of AI in detail.

2. Explain the history of AI in detail.
3. Identify the Turing test approach to provide satisfactory operational definition of intelligence.
4. Explain the concepts of thinking rationally and acting rationally.
5. Define intelligent agents and their role in AI systems. Provide examples of intelligent agents in
real-world applications.
6. Explain the interaction between agent sand their environments in the context of AI.
7. Discuss the concept of percept sand actions in the agent environment interaction.
8. Discuss how rationality guides agents towards achieving their goals.
9. Define rationality in context of intelligent agents. OR Explain the concept of rationality.
10. Explain with example PEAS description of the task environment.
11. Explore the relationship between rationality and decision-making in AI system.
12. Briefly explain the properties of task environment. OR Classify environments based on
their characteristics and how they impact agent behavior.
13. Discuss the challenges and considerations when designing agents for different types of
environment.
14. Explain the following with respect to structure of agents:
i) Simple reflex agents ii)Model-based reflex agents iii)Utility-based agents
iv)Goal-based agents v)Learning agent

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Prof. Kotresh Naik D, Assistant Professor, Department of CS, CIT, Gubbi 20