artificial intelligence
(AI) The subfield of computer science concerned with the concepts and methods of {symbolic
inference} by computer and symbolic {knowledge representation}
for use in making inferences. AI can be seen as an attempt to
model aspects of human thought on computers. It is also
sometimes defined as trying to solve by computer any problem
that a human can solve faster.
Examples of AI problems are {computer vision} (building a
system that can understand images as well as a human) and
{natural language processing} (building a system that can
understand and speak a human language as well as a human).
These may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1993)
to solve them have foundered on the amount of context
information and "intelligence" they seem to require.
See also {AI-complete}, {neats vs. scruffies}, {neural
network}, {genetic programming}, {fuzzy computing},
{artificial life}.
{ACM SIGART (http://sigart.acm.org/)}. {U Cal Davis
(http://phobos.cs.ucdavis.edu:8001)}. {CMU Artificial
Intelligence Repository
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/repository.html)}.
(1995-10-29)