1 Artificial Intelligence and Agents

This book is about artificial intelligence, a field built on centuries of thought, which has been a recognized discipline for over 50 years. As Buchanan points out in the quote above, we now have the tools to test hypotheses about the nature of thought itself, as well as solve practical problems. Deep scientific and engineering problems have already been solved and many more are waiting to be solved. Many practical applications are currently deployed and the potential exists for an almost unlimited number of future applications. In this book, we present the principles that underlie intelligent computational agents. Those principles can help you understand current and future work in AI and equip you to contribute to the discipline yourself.

• 1.1 What Is Artificial Intelligence?
  • 1.1.1 Artificial and Natural Intelligence
• 1.2 A Brief History of AI
  • 1.2.1 Relationship to Other Disciplines
• 1.3 Agents Situated in Environments
• 1.4 Knowledge Representation
  • 1.4.1 Defining a Solution
  • 1.4.2 Representations
  • 1.4.3 Reasoning and Acting
• 1.5 Dimensions of Complexity
  • 1.5.1 Modularity
  • 1.5.2 Representation Scheme
  • 1.5.3 Planning Horizon
  • 1.5.4 Uncertainty
  • 1.5.5 Preference
  • 1.5.6 Number of Agents
  • 1.5.7 Learning
  • 1.5.8 Computational Limits
  • 1.5.9 Interaction of the Dimensions
• 1.6 Prototypical Applications
  • 1.6.1 An Autonomous Delivery Robot
  • 1.6.2 A Diagnostic Assistant
  • 1.6.3 An Intelligent Tutoring System
  • 1.6.4 A Trading Agent
• 1.7 Overview of the Book
• 1.8 Review
• 1.9 References and Further Reading
• 1.10 Exercises