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From: yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What actually is AI?
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.175352.2710@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 90 17:53:52 GMT
References: <90241.112651F0O@psuvm.psu.edu> <1990Aug29.183823.25108@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <34175@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <25392@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <38294@siemens.siemens.com>
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Reply-To: yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
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In article <38294@siemens.siemens.com>, wood@jfred.siemens.edu (Jim
Wood) writes:
> After being in the field for seven years, this is MY informal
> definition of Artificial Intelligence:
> 
>     Artificial Intelligence is a computer science and engineering
>     discipline which attempts to model human reasoning methods
>     computationally.

Actually, this sounds more like the (usual) definition of Cognitive
Science (since the emphasis is on modeling human reasoning).

No doubt if you query a dozen AI researchers, you will receive a dozen
different definitions, but my definition would be:

	Artificial Intelligence is the study of how to build intelligent
	systems.

The term "intelligent" is both fuzzy and open to debate.  The usual
definition involves symbolic reasoning, but, in my opinion, a better
definition would be the ability to generate complex, goal-oriented
behavior in a rich, dynamic environment (and perhaps also the ability to
learn from experience and extend system abilities based on this
learning).  But I'm a robotics researcher, so naturally I'm biased :-).

_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi				University of Rochester
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________