Interesting facts about artificial intelligence

September 22, 2009 | In: Science facts

Artificial intelligence is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

Thinking machines and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as Talos of Crete, the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion’s Galatea. Human likenesses believed to have intelligence were built in every major civilization: animated statues were worshipped in Egypt and Greece and humanoid automatons were built by Yan Shi, Hero of Alexandria, Al-Jazari and Wolfgang von Kempelen.

Artificial intelligence (AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas. In problem solving, one must proceed from a beginning (the initial state) to the end (the goal state) via a limited number of steps; AI here involves an attempt to model the reasoning process in solving a problem, such as the proof of a theorem in Euclidean geometry .

Most researchers hope that their work will eventually be incorporated into a machine with general intelligence (known as strong AI), combining all the skills above and exceeding human abilities at most or all of them. A few believe that anthropomorphic features like artificial consciousness or an artificial brain may be required for such a project.