What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence overview

In the early days, mankind must fight nature with tools and weapons such as wheels and fire. In the 15th century, the printing press invented by Gutenberg made a wide range of changes in people's lives. In the 19th century, the industrial revolution used natural resources to develop electricity, which promoted the development of manufacturing, transportation, and communications. In the 20th century, human beings continued to advance through the exploration of the sky and space, through the invention of computers and their miniaturization, and thus into personal computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and smartphones. The past 60 years have witnessed the birth of a world in which a huge amount of data, facts and information has emerged. These data, facts and information must be converted into knowledge (one example of which is data contained in human genetic coding, as shown 1.0)). This paper introduces the conceptual framework of the artificial intelligence discipline and describes its areas and methods of successful application, recent history and future prospects.

Definition of artificial intelligence

In everyday language, the word "artificial" means synthetic (ie artificial), which usually has the negative meaning that "artificial objects are not as good as natural objects. However, man-made objects are usually better than real or natural objects. For example Artificial flowers are objects similar to buds or flowers made of silk and thread. They do not need sunlight or moisture as a nutrient, but can provide practical decoration functions for families or companies.

Although artificial flowers give people a feeling and fragrance that may not be as natural as flowers, it looks exactly the same as real flowers.

Another example is artificial light produced by candles, kerosene lamps or electric bulbs. Obviously, only when the sun appears in the sky, we can get the sun, but we can get artificial light at any time. From this point of view, artificial light is better than natural light.

Finally, consider that manual transportation devices (such as cars, trains, airplanes, and bicycles) have many advantages in terms of speed and durability compared to running, walking, and other natural forms of transportation (such as horseback riding). However, artificial forms of transportation also have some significant shortcomings—the ubiquitous highway on Earth, filled with the atmosphere of the car's exhaust, and the inner peace (and sleep) of people is often interrupted by the cockroaches of the plane.

Like artificial light, artificial flowers, and traffic, artificial intelligence is not natural, but artificial. To determine the pros and cons of artificial intelligence, you must first understand and define intelligence.

What is thinking? What is intelligence?

Intelligent definitions may be more elusive than manual definitions. R. Sternberg gives the following useful definitions on the subject of human consciousness: intelligence is the cognitive ability of individuals to learn from experience, to think rationally, to remember important information, and to cope with daily life needs.

We are all familiar with the issues of standardized testing, for example, given the following sequence: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21. Request the next number.

You may notice that the difference between consecutive numbers is 1 interval. For example, the difference from 1 to 3 is 2, the difference from 3 to 6 is 3, and so on. So the correct answer to the question is 28. This question is intended to measure our proficiency in identifying outstanding features in the model. We use experience to discover patterns.

Try your luck with the following columns:

a. 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, ?

b. 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, ?

Now that you have identified the definition of intelligence, you may have the following questions.

(1) How to determine if some people (or things) are intelligent?

(2) Is the animal intelligent?

(3) If animals are intelligent, how do they assess their intelligence?

Most people can easily answer the first question. We observe their reactions by communicating with others (such as making comments or asking questions) and repeating the process several times a day to assess their intelligence. Although we do not directly enter their thoughts, we believe that this indirect way of question and answer can provide us with an accurate assessment of internal brain activity.

If you insist on using questions and answers to assess intelligence, how do you assess animal intelligence? If you have a pet, you may already have an answer. The puppy seems to remember people who haven't seen it for a month or two, and can find the way home after getting lost.

Kittens often get excited when they hear the sound of canning at dinner time. Is this just a simple Pavlovian reflex problem, or is the kitten consciously linking the sound of cans to the joy of dinner?

There is an interesting anecdote about animal intelligence: In 1900, there was a horse in Berlin, Germany, known as Clever Hans, who is said to be proficient in mathematics.

When Hans did the addition or calculated the square root, the audience was shocked. Since then, it has been observed that if there is no audience, Hans will not perform very well. In fact, Hans' genius lies in its ability to recognize human emotions rather than proficiency in mathematics.

Horses generally have a keen sense of hearing. When Hans approaches the correct answer, the audience becomes relatively excited and their heart beats faster. Perhaps, Hans has an amazing ability to detect these changes and get the right answer. Although you may not want to attribute this behavior of Hans to intelligence, before you reach a conclusion, you should refer to Sternberg's early definition of intelligence.

Some creatures only show group intelligence. For example, an ant is a simple insect, and the behavior of a single ant is difficult to classify in the subject of artificial intelligence. On the other hand, ant colonies have shown extraordinary solutions to complex problems, such as finding the best path from the nest to the food source, carrying heavy loads and forming bridges. Collective intelligence stems from effective communication between individual insects. Chapter 12 will discuss emerging intelligence and cluster intelligence relatively more when discussing advanced search methods. The size of the brain and the mass ratio of the brain to the body are often considered indicators of animal intelligence. Dolphins are comparable to humans in both indicators. The breathing of the dolphins is self-controlled, which indicates that the quality of the brain is too large, and it can also explain the interesting fact that the two half-brains of the dolphins alternately dormant.

In animal self-awareness tests, such as mirror testing, the dolphins scored very well, recognizing that the images in the mirror were actually their own images. Visitors to parks such as Ocean World can see that dolphins can play complex tricks. This shows that dolphins have the ability to remember sequences and perform complex body movements.

Using tools is another "touchstone" of intelligence, and this is often used to distinguish Homo erectus from previous human ancestors. Dolphins and humans have this trait. For example, when foraging, dolphins use deep sea sponges (a multicellular animal) to protect their mouths. Obviously, intelligence is not a unique feature of human beings. To some extent, many forms of life are intelligent.

You should ask yourself the following question: "Do you think that having life is a necessary prerequisite for having intelligence?" or "Inanimate objects, such as computers, may have intelligence?" The goal of artificial intelligence claims is to create a world that can be compared with human thinking. Computer software and/or hardware systems, in other words, exhibit features associated with human intelligence. A key question is “Can the machine think?” More generally, you might ask, “Do humans, animals or machines have intelligence?”

On this node, it is wise to emphasize the difference between thinking and intelligence. Thinking is a tool for reasoning, analyzing, evaluating, and forming ideas and concepts. Not all objects that can think are intelligent. Intelligence may be efficient and effective thinking. Many people are biased towards this problem. They say: "The computer is made up of silicon and power, so you can't think about it." Or go to the other extreme: "Computers behave faster than people, so they have higher than people. IQ.” The truth is likely to exist between these two extremes.

As we have discussed, different animal species have varying degrees of intelligence. We will describe the software and hardware systems developed in the field of artificial intelligence, which also have varying degrees of intelligence. We are not very concerned about assessing the IQ of animals and have not yet developed standardized animal IQ tests, but are very interested in testing to determine if machine intelligence is present.

Perhaps Raphael's statement is most appropriate: "Artificial intelligence is a science that allows machines to do what humans need to do with intelligence."