UEMH4723

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Ir. Dr. Tan Chee Fai AMN
LKCFES
INTRODUCTION
TO
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE

*The lecture note is strictly for internal use only

Key to Take Away
 Understand the AI
 Understand the foundations of AI
 Understand the history of AI
 Understand the Intelligent Agents
Definition
 The exciting new effort to make computers think …
machines with minds, in the full literal sense.
Haugeland, 1985
 The study of mental faculties through the use of computational
models.
Charniak and McDermott, 1985
 A field of study that seeks to explain and emulate intelligent
behavior in terms of computational processes.
Schalkoff, 1990
 The study of how to make computers do things at which, at
the moment, people are better.
Rich & Knight, 1991
 Intelligence:
• “the capacity to learn and solve problems” (Websters dictionary)
• in particular,
• the ability to solve novel problems
• the ability to act rationally
• the ability to act like humans
 Artificial Intelligence
• build and understand intelligent entities or agents
• 2 main approaches: “engineering” versus “cognitive
modeling”
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/637967/EPRS_BRI(2019)637967_EN.pdf
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/637967/EPRS_BRI(2019)637967_EN.pdf
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/ai-
automation-and-the-future-of-work-ten-things-to-solve-for
What is AI?
• What is artificial intelligence?
• It 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. John McCarthy ,
Basic Questions)
• Yes, but what is intelligence?
• Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the
world. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many
animals and some machines.

• Isn't there a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on

relating it to human intelligence?
• Not yet. The problem is that we cannot yet characterize in general what kinds
of computational procedures we want to call intelligent. We understand some
of the mechanisms of intelligence and not others.

• More in: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html

What’s involved in Intelligence?
 Ability to interact with the real world
 to perceive, understand, and act
 e.g., speech recognition and understanding and synthesis
 e.g., image understanding
 e.g., ability to take actions, have an effect

 Reasoning and Planning

 modeling the external world, given input
 solving new problems, planning, and making decisions
 ability to deal with unexpected problems, uncertainties

 Learning and Adaptation

 we are continuously learning and adapting
 our internal models are always being “updated”
• e.g., a baby learning to categorize and recognize animals
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
 Reduction in Human Error
 Takes risks instead of Humans
 Available 24x7
 Helping in Repetitive Jobs
 Digital Assistance
 Faster Decisions
 Daily Applications
https://towardsdatascience.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-artificial-intelligence-182a5ef6588c
Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence

 High Costs of Creation

 Making Humans Lazy
 Unemployment
 No Emotions
 Lacking Out of Box Thinking

https://towardsdatascience.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-artificial-intelligence-182a5ef6588c
AI Systems Lifecycle
Academic Disciplines important to AI.
 Philosophy: Logic, methods of reasoning, mind as physical
system, foundations of learning, language, rationality
 Mathematics: formal representation and proof, algorithms,
computation, (un)decidability, (in)tractability, probability
 Economics: utility, decision theory, rational economic agents
 Neuroscience: neurons as information processing units.
 Psychology/Cognitive science: how do people behave, perceive,
process information, represent knowledge
 Computer engineering: build fast computers
 Control theory: design systems that maximize an objective
functions over time
 Linguistics: knowledge representation, grammar
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdfc
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-
intelligence/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-applications-and-value-of-
deep-learning
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdfc
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/teachable-machine
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-
intelligence/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-applications-and-value-of-
deep-learning
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdfc
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdfc
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdfc
https://insights.globalspec.com/article/9323/ai-
expected-to-create-as-many-jobs-as-it-
displaces-in-the-uk
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/arti
ficial-intelligence-shaking-up-job-market/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/arti
ficial-intelligence-shaking-up-job-market/
https://workera.ai/?utm_source=
deeplearning_ai&utm_medium=
deeplearning_ai_website&utm_c
ampaign=deeplearning_ai_block
Foundations of AI
 Views of AI fall into four categories:

Thinking humanly Thinking rationally

Acting humanly Acting rationally

Human-like (“How to simulate humans intellect and
behavior on by a machine.)
Mathematical problems (puzzles, games,
theorems)
Common-sense reasoning (if there is parking-
space, probably illegal to park)
Expert knowledge: lawyers, medicine, diagnosis
Social behavior

Rational-like:
achieve goals, have performance measure
Thought processes
“The exciting new effort to make computers think ..
Machines with minds, in the full and literal sense”
(Haugeland, 1985)

Behavior
“The study of how to make computers do things at
which, at the moment, people are better.” (Rich,
and Knight, 1991)
• Turing test (1950)
• Requires:
• Natural language
• Knowledge representation
• automated reasoning
• machine learning
• (vision, robotics.) for full test
• Thinking humanly:
• Introspection, the general problem solver (Newell and Simon 1961)
• Cognitive sciences
• Thinking rationally:
• Logic
• Problems: how to represent and reason in a domain
• Acting rationally:
• Agents: Perceive and act
Artificial narrow intelligence
 Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) or “applied” AI is
designed to accomplish a specific problem-solving or
reasoning task. This is the current state-of-the-art.
 The most advanced AI systems available today, such as
Google’s AlphaGo, are still “narrow”.
 To some extent, they can generalise pattern recognition
such as by transferring knowledge learned in the area of
image recognition into speech recognition.
 However, the human mind is far more versatile.
Artificial General Intelligence
 Applied AI is often contrasted to a (hypothetical) AGI.
 In AGI, autonomous machines would become capable of general
intelligent action.
 Like humans, they would generalise and abstract learning across
different cognitive functions.
 AGI would have a strong associative memory and be capable of
judgment and decision making.
 It could solve multifaceted problems, learn through reading or
experience, create concepts, perceive the world and itself,
invent and be creative, react to the unexpected in complex
environments and anticipate.
 With respect to a potential AGI, views vary widely.
.
Source: https://lawtomated.com/ai-for-lawyers-ani-agi-and-asi/
History of AI
History of AI
• McCulloch and Pitts (1943)
• Neural networks that learn
• Minsky (1951)
• Built a neural net computer
• Darmouth conference (1956):
• McCarthy, Minsky, Newell, Simon met,
• Logic theorist (LT)- proves a theorem in Principia Mathematica-Russel.
• The name “Artficial Intelligence” was coined.
• 1952-1969
• GPS- Newell and Simon
• Geometry theorem prover - Gelernter (1959)
• Samuel Checkers that learns (1952)
• McCarthy - Lisp (1958), Advice Taker, Robinson’s resolution
• Microworlds: Integration, block-worlds.
• 1962- the perceptron convergence (Rosenblatt)
The Birthplace of Artificial Intelligence”,
1956
 Darmouth workshop, 1956: historical meeting of the precieved founders of AI
met: John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Alan Newell, and Herbert Simon.

 A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial

Intelligence. J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, and C.E. Shannon.
August 31, 1955. "We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial
intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the
conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can
in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate
it." And this marks the debut of the term "artificial intelligence.“

 50 anniversery of Darmouth workshop

History, continued
 1966-1974 a dose of reality
• Problems with computation
 1969-1979 Knowledge-based systems
• Weak vs. strong methods
• Expert systems:
 Dendral:Inferring molecular structures
 Mycin: diagnosing blood infections
 Prospector: recomending exploratory drilling (Duda).
• Roger Shank: no syntax only semantics
 1980-1988: AI becomes an industry
• R1: Mcdermott, 1982, order configurations of computer systems
• 1981: Fifth generation
 1986-present: return to neural networks
 Recent event:
• AI becomes a science: HMMs, planning, belief network
Abridged history of AI
 1943 McCulloch & Pitts: Boolean circuit model of brain
 1950 Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
 1956 Dartmouth meeting: "Artificial Intelligence" adopted
 1952—69 Look, Ma, no hands!
 1950s Early AI programs, including Samuel's checkers
program, Newell & Simon's Logic Theorist,
Gelernter's Geometry Engine
 1965 Robinson's complete algorithm for logical reasoning
 1966—73 AI discovers computational complexity
Neural network research almost disappears
 1969—79 Early development of knowledge-based systems
 1980-- AI becomes an industry
 1986-- Neural networks return to popularity
 1987-- AI becomes a science
 1995-- The emergence of intelligent agents
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/communities/sites/jrccties/files/eedfee77-en.pdf
State of the art
 Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry
Kasparov in 1997
 Proved a mathematical conjecture (Robbins conjecture)
unsolved for decades
 No hands across America (driving autonomously 98% of the time
from Pittsburgh to San Diego)
 During the 1991 Gulf War, US forces deployed an AI logistics
planning and scheduling program that involved up to 50,000
vehicles, cargo, and people
 NASA's on-board autonomous planning program controlled the
scheduling of operations for a spacecraft
 Proverb solves crossword puzzles better than most humans
 DARPA grand challenge 2003-2005, Robocup
 Robocup Video

 Darpa Challenge
Intelligent Agent
Agents
 An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its
environment through sensors and acting upon that environment
through actuators

 Human agent: eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors; hands,
legs, mouth, and other body parts for actuators

 Robotic agent: cameras and infrared range finders for sensors;

various motors for actuators
Agents and environments
Agents and environments
 The agent function maps from percept histories to
actions:
[f: P*  A]

 The agent program runs on the physical architecture to

produce f

 agent = architecture + program

Vacuum-cleaner world
 Percepts: location
and contents, e.g.,
[A,Dirty]
 Actions: Left, Right,
Suck, NoOp
Rational agents
 An agent should strive to "do the right thing", based on
what it can perceive and the actions it can perform. The
right action is the one that will cause the agent to be
most successful
 Performance measure: An objective criterion for success
of an agent's behavior
 E.g., performance measure of a vacuum-cleaner agent
could be amount of dirt cleaned up, amount of time
taken, amount of electricity consumed, amount of noise
generated, etc.
Rational agents
 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
whatever built-in knowledge the agent has.
What’s involved in Intelligence?
Intelligent agents
 Ability to interact with the real world
•to perceive, understand, and act
•e.g., speech recognition and
understanding and synthesis
•e.g., image understanding
•e.g., ability to take actions, have an
effect
What’s involved in Intelligence?
Intelligent agents
 Knowledge Representation, Reasoning
and Planning
•modeling the external world, given input
•solving new problems, planning and
making decisions
•ability to deal with unexpected
problems, uncertainties
What’s involved in Intelligence?
Intelligent agents
 Learning and Adaptation
•we are continuously learning and
adapting
•our internal models are always being
“updated”
 e.g. a baby learning to categorize and
recognize animals
What’s involved in Intelligence?
Intelligent agents
 Perceiving, recognizing, understanding
the real
world
 Reasoning and planning about the
external world
 Learning and adaptation
 The Turing Test
(Can Machine think? A. M. Turing, 1950)

• Requires
• Natural language
• Knowledge representation
• Automated reasoning
• Machine learning
• (vision, robotics) for full test

Question: is it important that an intelligent system act like a human?

Implementing agents
 Table look-ups
 Autonomy
• All actions are completely specified
• no need in sensing, no autonomy
• example: Monkey and the banana
 Structure of an agent
• agent = architecture + program
• Agent types
 medical diagnosis
 Satellite image analysis system
 part-picking robot
 Interactive English tutor
 cooking agent
 taxi driver
Agent types
 Example: Taxi driver
 Simple reflex
• If car-in-front-is-breaking then initiate-breaking
 Agents that keep track of the world
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and on fwy then initiate-breaking
• needs internal state
 goal-based
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and needs to get to hospital then go to adjacent lane and plan
• search and planning
 utility-based
• If car-in-front-is-breaking and on fwy and needs to get to hospital alive then search of a
way to get to the hospital that will make your passengers happy.
• Needs utility function that map a state to a real function (am I happy?)
Can Computers Talk?
Can Computers Recognize Speech?
Can Computers Learn and Adapt ?
Can Computers “see”?
Can Computers plan and make decisions?
Summary of State of AI Systems in
Practice
• Speech synthesis, recognition and understanding
• very useful for limited vocabulary applications
• unconstrained speech understanding is still too hard
• Computer vision
• works for constrained problems (hand-written zip-codes)
• understanding real-world, natural scenes is still too hard
• Learning
• adaptive systems are used in many applications: have their limits
• Planning and Reasoning
• only works for constrained problems: e.g., chess
• real-world is too complex for general systems
• Overall:
• many components of intelligent systems are “doable”
• there are many interesting research problems remaining
Intelligent Systems in Your Everyday Life
 Post Office
o automatic address recognition and sorting of mail
 Banks
o automatic check readers, signature verification systems
o automated loan application classification
 Telephone Companies
o automatic voice recognition for directory inquiries
 Credit Card Companies
o automated fraud detection
 Computer Companies
o automated diagnosis for help-desk applications
 Netflix:
o movie recommendation
 Google:
o Search Technology
AI Applications: Consumer Marketing
 Have you ever used any kind of credit/ATM/store card while shopping?
o if so, you have very likely been “input” to an AI algorithm
 All of this information is recorded digitally
 Companies like Nielsen gather this information weekly and search for
patterns
o general changes in consumer behavior
o tracking responses to new products
o identifying customer segments: targeted marketing, e.g., they find out that
consumers with sports cars who buy textbooks respond well to offers of new
credit cards.
o Currently a very hot area in marketing
 How do they do this?
o Algorithms (“data mining”) search data for patterns
o based on mathematical theories of learning
o completely impractical to do manually
AI Applications: Identification Technologies
 ID cards
o e.g., ATM cards
o can be a nuisance and security risk:
• cards can be lost, stolen, passwords forgotten, etc
 Biometric Identification
o walk up to a locked door
• camera
• fingerprint device
• microphone
• iris scan
o computer uses your biometric signature for identification
• face, eyes, fingerprints, voice pattern, iris pattern
AI Applications: Predicting the Stock
Market

 The Prediction Problem

o given the past, predict the future
o very difficult problem!
o we can use learning algorithms to learn a predictive model from historical
data
• prob(increase at day t+1 | values at day t, t-1,t-2....,t-k)
o such models are routinely used by banks and financial traders to manage
portfolios worth millions of dollars
AI-Applications: Machine Translation
 Language problems in international business
o e.g., at a meeting of Japanese, Korean,
Vietnamese and Swedish investors, no common
language
o or: you are shipping your software manuals to
127 countries
o solution; hire translators to translate
o would be much cheaper if a machine could do
this!
AI-Applications: Machine Translation
 How hard is automated translation
o very difficult!
o e.g., English to Russian
o “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (English)
o “the vodka is good but the meat is rotten” (Russian)
o not only must the words be translated, but their meaning also!
 Nonetheless....
o commercial systems can do a lot of the work very well (e.g.,
restricted
vocabularies in software documentation)
o algorithms which combine dictionaries, grammar models, etc.
o see for example babelfish.altavista.com
https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb0000000pTDREA2?tab=publications
http://pwcartificialintelligence.com/
What Next??
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Docum
ents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-
tmt-ai-report-en-190927.pdf
Summary
 What is Fourth Industrial Revolution?
 What is Artificial Intelligence?
• modeling humans thinking, acting, should think, should
act.
 History of AI
 Intelligent agents
• We want to build agents that act rationally
[email protected]