Typical AI problems
While
studying the typical range of tasks that we might expect an “intelligent
entity” to perform,
we
need to consider both “common-place
tasks” as well as "expert
tasks”.
Examples
of common-place tasks include
·
Recognizing people, objects.
·
Communicating
(through natural language).
·
Navigating around obstacles on the streets
These tasks are done matter of facility
and routinely by people and some other animals.
Expert tasks include:
·
Medical
diagnosis.
·
Mathematical
problem solving
·
Playing
games like chess
These tasks cannot be done by all people, and can only be
performed by skilled specialists.
Now, which of these tasks are easy and which ones are hard?
Clearly tasks of the first type are easy for humans to perform, and almost all
are able to master them. The second range of tasks requires skill development
and/or intelligence and only some specialists can perform them well.
However, when we look at what computer systems have been able
to achieve to date, we see that their achievements include performing
sophisticated tasks like medical diagnosis, performing symbolic integration,
proving theorems and playing chess.
On the other hand it has proved to be very hard to make
computer systems perform many routine tasks that all humans and a lot of
animals can do. Examples of such tasks include navigating our way without running
into things, catching prey and avoiding predators. Humans and animals are also
capable of interpreting complex sensory information. We are able to recognize
objects and people from the visual image that we receive. We are also able to
perform complex social functions.
Intelligent behaviour
This discussion brings us back to the question of what
constitutes intelligent behaviour. Some of these tasks and applications are:
Practical Impact of AI
AI components are embedded in numerous devices e.g. in copy
machines for automatic correction of operation for copy quality improvement. AI
systems are in everyday use for identifying credit card fraud, for advising
doctors, for recognizing speech and in helping complex planning tasks. Then
there are intelligent tutoring systems that provide students with personalized
attention
Thus AI has increased understanding
of the nature of intelligence and found many applications. It has helped in the
understanding of human reasoning, and of the nature of intelligence. It has
also helped us understand the complexity of modeling human reasoning.
