What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence has many different definitions. In the headlines of newspaper articles, AI is a machine that thinks, understands languages, solves problems, diagnoses medical conditions, keeps cars on the highways, plays chess, and paints impressionistic imitations of van Gogh paintings. AI is often defined as a computer system with the ability to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. As this definition somewhat problematically requires 105 Us to define intelligence and is inconveniently tautological, artificial intelligence is now commonly defined as a scientific discipline; as the activity that creates machines that can function appropriately and with foresight in their environment. The first explicit definition of artificial intelligence was suggested in a funding proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1955. It was based on 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.” This early definition rapidly led to deep controversies.
In practice, logical statements, thus, in effect, defining human intelligence as computation of truth values. This interpretation was historically aligned with logical positivism and attempts to formalize mathematics using purely syntactic means, but it also raised important questions about the philosophical foundations of AI. Three levels of human and machine learning The early developers of AI interpreted intelligence and thinking as mechanical processing of logical statements, thus, in effect, defining human intelligence as computation of truth values. This interpretation was historically aligned with logical positivism and attempts to formalize mathematics using purely syntactic means, but it also raised important questions about the philosophical foundations of AI.