Definition of AI

Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence

In Unified Theories of Cognition, Allen Newell defines intelligence as: the degree to which a system approximates a knowledge-level system. Perfect intelligence is defined as the ability to bring all the knowledge a system has at its disposal to bear in the solution of a problem (which is synonymous with goal achievement). This may be distinguished from ignorance, a lack of knowledge about a given problem space.

Artificial Intelligence, in light of this definition of intelligence, is simply the application of artificial or non-naturally occurring systems that use the knowledge-level to achieve goals. A more practical definition that has been used for AI is attempting to build artificial systems that will perform better on tasks that humans currently do better. Thus, at present, tasks like real number division are not AI because computers easily do that task better (faster with less error) than humans. However, visual perception is AI since it has proved very difficult to get computers to perform even basic tasks. Obviously, this definition changes over time but it does capture the essential nature of AI questions.


List of Theories
Table of Contents.

Current Location: Common - Theory - Artificial Intelligence