Artificial Intelligence Level 2: Rise of the Machines

In this course we introduce artificial intelligence, beginning with a brief history of attempts to understand mind and intelligence in philosophy, psychology, and other areas of research.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by humans or animals. Leading AI textbooks define the field as the study of intelligent agents : any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals.[a] Some popular accounts use the term artificial intelligence to describe machines that mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as learning and problem solving .

AI applications include advanced web search engines, recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri or Alexa), self–driving cars (e.g. Tesla), and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go), As machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered to require intelligence are often removed from the definition of AI, a phenomenon known as the AI effect. For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from things considered to be AI, having become a routine technology.

In level 2, we’ll introduce the research tools for AI problem solving. These include, the predicate calculus presented both as a mathematical system as well as a representation language to describe the essential features of a problem.