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From: wm@tekchips.UUCP (Wm Leler)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: definition of AI
Message-ID: <409@tekchips.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Dec-85 18:35:21 EST
Article-I.D.: tekchips.409
Posted: Tue Dec  3 18:35:21 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Dec-85 07:28:49 EST
References: <33103@lanl.ARPA> <289@quest.UUCP> <2555@sunybcs.UUCP> <606@kitty.UUCP>
Reply-To: wm@tekchips.UUCP (Wm Leler)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 19

Here's another "off-the-cuff" definition of AI, but one which I
think captures the essence of what separates AI CS from regular CS.

Artificial Intelligence is the branch of Computer Science that
attempts to solve problems for which there is no known
efficient solution, but which we know are efficiently solvable,
(typically) because some intelligence can solve the problem
(often in "real time").

A side benefit of AI is that it helps us learn how intelligences
solve these problems, and thus how natural intelligence works.

Example: vision.  We do not have any algorithms for recognizing,
say, animal faces in images, but we know it must be possible,
because humans (even infants) can effectively recognize faces.
Solving this problem would help us understand how human vision
works.

wm