INTRODUCTION

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERT SYSTEM

 2 IMPORTANT NOTES
▪ Two exams
▪ Attendance 10%
▪ Assessment 20%
▪ Midterm
▪ Quizzes
▪ Assignments
▪ Exam
▪ Finalterm
▪ Quizzes
▪ Assignments
▪ Exam
▪ Final Grade - Midterm 30% and Finalterm 40%

▪ Reference Book: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,

Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Second Edition
 WHAT IS AI?
Views of AI fall into four categories:

Thinking humanly Thinking rationally

Acting humanly Acting rationally

▪ Ones on top are concerned thought processing and reasoning and

bottom address behavior.

▪ The definition on the left measure success in term of human

performance, whereas the right measure ideal concept of
intelligence call rationality.

The textbook advocates "acting rationally"

 ACTING HUMANLY: TURING
TEST
▪ Turing (1950) "Computing machinery and intelligence":
▪ "Can machines think?" 🡪 "Can machines behave
intelligently?"
▪ Operational test for intelligent behavior: the Imitation
Game

▪ Suggested major components of AI: knowledge,

reasoning, language understanding, learning
 Bayzid ashik Hossain *

5 THINKING HUMANLY:
COGNITIVE MODELLING

▪How human thinks?

▪Two ways to determine a given program
thinks like human
▪ Through introspection
▪ Through psychological experiments

▪ After defining theory, we can express it as a computer

program and check if it is behaving like human
 THINKING RATIONALLY: LAWS
OF THOUGHT
▪ Normative rather than descriptive
▪ Aristotle was one of the first to attempt to codify “right
thinking” – reasoning processing
▪ Problems
▪ Not all intelligent behavior is mediated by
logical deliberation
▪ What is the purpose of thinking? What thoughts
should I have?
▪ Big difference in solving a problem “in
principle” and doing so in practice
 ACTING RATIONALLY

▪ Rational Behavior: doing the right thing

▪ Right thing: maximizes our goal achievement, given the
available information
▪ Doesn't necessarily involve thinking – but thinking should
be in the service of rational action
 RATIONAL AGENT

▪ An agent is an entity that perceives and acts.

▪ Abstractly, an agent is a function from percept
histories to actions:
▪ [f: P* 🡪 A]
▪ For any given class of environments and
tasks, we seek the agent with the best
performance
▪ Caveat: computational limitations make
perfect rationality unachievable
▪ 🡪 Target is to design best program for given machine
resources
 AGENTS
• An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its
environment through sensors and acting upon that
environment through actuators

Human agent:
eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors;
hands, legs, mouth, and other body parts for
actuators

Robotic agent:
cameras and infrared range finders for sensors; various
motors for actuators
AGENTS AND ENVIRONMENTS

• The agent function maps from percept histories to

actions:
[f: P* 🡪 A]

• The agent program runs on the physical architecture to

produce f

• agent = architecture + program

 VACUUM-CLEANER WORLD

• Percepts: location and state of the environment, e.g.,

[A,Dirty], [A,Clean], [B,Dirty]

• Actions: Left, Right, Suck, NoOp

 RATIONAL AGENTS
• Performance measure: An objective criterion for success of an
agent's behavior, e.g.,
• Robot driver?
• Chess-playing program?
• Spam email classifier?

• Rational Agent: selects actions that is expected to maximize its

performance measure,
• given percept sequence
• given agent’s built-in knowledge

• sidepoint: how to maximize expected future performance, given

only historical data
RATIONAL AGENTS

• Rationality is distinct from omniscience (all-

knowing with infinite knowledge)

• Agents can perform actions in order to modify

future percepts so as to obtain useful
information (information gathering, exploration)

• An agent is autonomous if its behavior is

determined by its own percepts & experience
(with ability to learn and adapt) without
depending solely on built-in knowledge
TASK ENVIRONMENT

• Before we design an intelligent agent, we must

specify its “task environment”:

PEAS:
Performance measure
Environment
Actuators
Sensors
PEAS

• Example: Agent = robot driver in DARPA

Challenge

• Performance measure:
• Time to complete course

• Environment:
• Roads, other traffic, obstacles

• Actuators:
• Steering wheel, accelerator, brake, signal, horn

• Sensors:
• Optical cameras, lasers, sonar, accelerometer,
speedometer, GPS, odometer, engine sensors,
 PEAS
• Example: Agent = Medical diagnosis system
Performance measure:

Healthy patient, minimize costs, lawsuits

Environment:
Patient, hospital, staff
Actuators:
Screen display (questions, tests, diagnoses, treatments,
referrals)
Sensors:
Keyboard (entry of symptoms, findings, patient's answers)
 ENVIRONMENT TYPES
• Fully observable (vs. partially observable):
• An agent's sensors give it access to the complete state of
the environment at each point in time.

• Deterministic (vs. stochastic):

• The next state of the environment is completely determined
by the current state and the action executed by the agent.
• If the environment is deterministic except for the actions of
other agents, then the environment is strategic
• Deterministic environments can appear stochastic to an
agent (e.g., when only partially observable)

• Episodic (vs. sequential):

• An agent’s action is divided into atomic episodes. Decisions
do not depend on previous decisions/actions.
 ENVIRONMENT TYPES
• Static (vs. dynamic):
• The environment is unchanged while an agent is deliberating.
• The environment is semidynamic if the environment itself does
not change with the passage of time but the agent's
performance score does
• Discrete (vs. continuous):
• A discrete set of distinct, clearly defined percepts and actions.
• How we represent or abstract or model the world
• Single agent (vs. multi-agent):
• An agent operating by itself in an environment. Does the other
agent interfere with my performance measure?
task observabl deterministic/ episodic/ static/ discrete/ agents
environm. e stochastic sequential dynamic continuous

crossword fully determ. sequential static discrete single

puzzle

chess with fully strategic sequential semi discrete multi

clock

poker

taxi partial stochastic sequential dynamic continuous multi

driving

medical
diagnosis

image fully determ. episodic semi continuous single

analysis

partpicking partial stochastic episodic dynamic continuous single

robot

refinery partial stochastic sequential dynamic continuous single

controller

interact. partial stochastic sequential dynamic discrete multi

tutor
WHAT IS THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THE DARPA
CHALLENGE?

• Agent = robotic vehicle

• Environment = 130-mile route through desert

• Observable?
• Deterministic?
• Episodic?
• Static?
• Discrete?
• Agents?
AGENT TYPES

• Five basic types in order of increasing

generality:
• Table Driven agent
• Simple reflex agents
• Model-based reflex agents
• Goal-based agents
• Problem-solving agents
• Utility-based agents
• Can distinguish between different goals

• Learning agents
 PROBLEM-SOLVING AGENTS
• Intelligent agents can solve problems by searching a state-space

• State-space Model
• the agent’s model of the world
• usually a set of discrete states
• e.g., in driving, the states in the model could be towns/cities

• Goal State(s)
• a goal is defined as a desirable state for an agent
• there may be many states which satisfy the goal test
• e.g., drive to a town with a ski-resort
• or just one state which satisfies the goal
• e.g., drive to Mammoth

• Operators (actions, successor function)

• operators are legal actions which the agent can take to move from one state
to another
INITIAL SIMPLIFYING
ASSUMPTIONS
• Environment is static
• no changes in environment while problem is being solved

• Environment is observable

• Environment and actions are discrete

• (typically assumed, but we will see some exceptions)

• Environment is deterministic
 EXAMPLE: TRAVELING IN
ROMANIA
• On holiday in Romania; currently in Arad
• Flight leaves tomorrow from Bucharest
• Formulate goal:
• be in Bucharest
• Formulate problem:
• states: various cities
• actions/operators: drive between cities
• Find solution
• By searching through states to find a goal
• sequence of cities, e.g., Arad, Sibiu, Fagaras, Bucharest
• Execute states that lead to a solution
EXAMPLE: TRAVELING IN
ROMANIA
STATE-SPACE PROBLEM FORMULATION
A problem is defined by four items:
1. initial state e.g., "at Arad“
2. actions or successor function
S(x) = set of action–state pairs
e.g., S(Arad) = {<Arad 🡪 Zerind, Zerind>, … }
3. goal test (or set of goal states)
e.g., x = "at Bucharest”, Checkmate(x)
4. path cost (additive)
e.g., sum of distances, number of actions
executed, etc.
c(x,a,y) is the step cost, assumed to be ≥ 0
A solution is a sequence of actions leading from the
initial state to a goal state
TREE-BASED SEARCH

• Basic idea:
• Exploration of state space by generating successors of already-explored
states (a.k.a. expanding states).

• Every state is evaluated: is it a goal state?

• In practice, the solution space can be a graph, not a tree

• E.g., 8-puzzle
• More general approach is graph search
• Tree search can end up repeatedly visiting the same nodes
• Unless it keeps track of all nodes visited
• …but this could take vast amounts of memory
TREE SEARCH EXAMPLE
TREE SEARCH EXAMPLE
TREE SEARCH EXAMPLE
TREE SEARCH EXAMPLE

This “strategy” is
what differentiates
different search
algorithms
STATES VERSUS NODES
• A state is a (representation of) a physical configuration

• A node is a data structure constituting part of a search tree contains info such as: state, parent node,
action, path cost g(x), depth

• The Expand function creates new nodes, filling in the various fields and using the SuccessorFn of the
problem to create the corresponding states.
STATE SPACES VERSUS
SEARCH TREES
• State Space
• Set of valid states for a problem
• Linked by operators
• e.g., 20 valid states (cities) in the Romanian travel problem

• Search Tree
• Root node = initial state
• Child nodes = states that can be visited from parent
• Note that the depth of the tree can be infinite
• E.g., via repeated states
• Partial search tree
• Portion of tree that has been expanded so far
• Fringe
• Leaves of partial search tree, candidates for expansion

Search trees = data structure to search state-space

SEARCH TREE FOR THE 8
PUZZLE PROBLEM
SEARCH STRATEGIES

• A search strategy is defined by picking the order of node expansion

• Strategies are evaluated along the following dimensions:

• completeness: does it always find a solution if one exists?
• time complexity: number of nodes generated
• space complexity: maximum number of nodes in memory
• optimality: does it always find a least-cost solution?

• Time and space complexity are measured in terms of

• b: maximum branching factor of the search tree
• d: depth of the least-cost solution
• m: maximum depth of the state space (may be ∞)
 WHY SEARCH CAN BE HARD
Assuming b=10, 1000 nodes/sec, 100 bytes/node

Depth of Nodes to
Solution Expand Time Memory

0 1 1 millisecond 100 bytes

2 111 0.1 seconds 11 kbytes

4 11,111 11 seconds 1 megabyte

8 108 31 hours 11 giabytes

12 1012 35 years 111 terabytes

 EXAMPLE: FORMULATING THE NAVIGATION
PROBLEM
• Set of States
• individual cities
• e.g., Irvine, SF, Las Vegas, Reno, Boise,
Phoenix, Denver
• Operators
• freeway routes from one city to another
• e.g., Irvine to SF via 5, SF to Seattle, etc
• Start State
• current city where we are, Irvine
• Goal States
• set of cities we would like to be in
• e.g., cities which are closer than Irvine
• Solution
• a specific goal city, e.g., Boise
• a sequence of operators which get us there,
• e.g., Irvine to SF via 5, SF to Reno via
80, etc
ABSTRACTION

• Definition of Abstraction:
Process of removing irrelevant detail to create an abstract representation: ``high-
level”, ignores irrelevant details

• Navigation Example: how do we define states and operators?

• First step is to abstract “the big picture”
• i.e., solve a map problem
• nodes = cities, links = freeways/roads (a high-level description)
• this description is an abstraction of the real problem
• Can later worry about details like freeway onramps, refueling, etc

• Abstraction is critical for automated problem solving

• must create an approximate, simplified, model of the world for the computer to deal
with: real-world is too detailed to model exactly
• good abstractions retain all important details
 THE STATE-SPACE GRAPH
• Graphs:
• nodes, arcs, directed arcs, paths
• Search graphs:
• States are nodes
• operators are directed arcs
• solution is a path from start S to goal G
• Problem formulation:
• Give an abstract description of states, operators,
initial state and goal state.
• Problem solving:
• Generate a part of the search space that contains a
solution
 THE TRAVELING SALESPERSON
PROBLEM
• Find the shortest tour that visits all cities without visiting any city
twice and return to starting point. C
• State: sequence of cities visited
B
• S0 = A
A D
F

• G = a complete tour E
EXAMPLE: 8-QUEENS PROBLEM
STATE-SPACE PROBLEM FORMULATION
• states? -any arrangement of n<=8 queens
-or arrangements of n<=8 queens in leftmost n
columns, 1 per column, such that no queen
attacks any other.

• initial state? no queens on the board

• actions? -add queen to any empty square

-or add queen to leftmost empty square such
that it is not attacked by other queens.

• goal test? 8 queens on the board, none attacked.

• path cost? 1 per move

 EXAMPLE: ROBOT ASSEMBLY

• States

• Initial state

• Actions

• Goal test

• Path Cost
 EXAMPLE: ROBOT ASSEMBLY

• States: configuration of robot (angles, positions) and object parts

• Initial state: any configuration of robot and object parts

• Actions: continuous motion of robot joints

• Goal test: object assembled?

• Path Cost: time-taken or number of actions

LEARNING A SPAM EMAIL
CLASSIFIER
• States

• Initial state

• Actions

• Goal test

• Path Cost
LEARNING A SPAM EMAIL
CLASSIFIER
• States: settings of the parameters in our model

• Initial state: random parameter settings

• Actions: moving in parameter space

• Goal test: optimal accuracy on the training data

• Path Cost: time taken to find optimal parameters

(Note: this is an optimization problem – many machine learning problems can be cast as
optimization)
 EXAMPLE: 8-PUZZLE

• states?

• initial state?

• actions?

• goal test?

• path cost?
 EXAMPLE: 8-PUZZLE

• states? locations of tiles

• initial state? given

• actions? move blank left, right, up, down

• goal test? goal state (given)

• path cost? 1 per move

 A WATER JUG PROBLEM
• You have a 4-gallon
and a 3-gallon water
jug

• You have a faucet with

an unlimited amount of
water

• You need to get exactly

2 gallons in 4-gallon jug
 PUZZLE-SOLVING AS SEARCH
• State representation: (x, y)
• x: Contents of four gallon
• y: Contents of three gallon

• Start state: (0, 0)

• Goal state (2, n)

• Operators
• Fill 3-gallon from faucet, fill 4-gallon from faucet
• Fill 3-gallon from 4-gallon , fill 4-gallon from 3-gallon
• Empty 3-gallon into 4-gallon, empty 4-gallon into 3-gallon
• Dump 3-gallon down drain, dump 4-gallon down drain
 PRODUCTION RULES FOR THE
WATER JUG PROBLEM
1 (x,y) 🡪 (4,y) Fill the 4-gallon jug
if x < 4

2 (x,y) 🡪 (x,3) Fill the 3-gallon jug

if y < 3

3 (x,y) 🡪 (x – d,y) Pour some water out of the 4-gallon jug

if x > 0
Pour some water out of the 3-gallon jug
4 (x,y) 🡪 (x,y – d)
if x > 0
Empty the 4-gallon jug on the ground
5 (x,y) 🡪 (0,y)
if x > 0
Empty the 3-gallon jug on the ground
6 (x,y) 🡪 (x,0)
if y > 0
Pour water from the 3-gallon jug into the 4-
7 (x,y) 🡪 (4,y – (4 – x)) gallon jug until the 4-gallon jug is full
if x + y ≥ 4 and y > 0
 THE WATER JUG PROBLEM
if x(CONT’D)
8 (x,y) 🡪 (x – (3 – y),3) Pour water from the 4-gallon jug into the 3-
+ y ≥ 3 and x > 0 gallon jug until the 3-gallon jug is full

9 (x,y) 🡪 (x + y, 0)
if x + y ≤ 4 and y > 0
Pour all the water from the 3-gallon jug into
the 4-gallon jug
10 (x,y) 🡪 (0, x + y)
if x + y ≤ 3 and x > 0
Pour all the water from the 4-gallon jug into
the 3-gallon jug
ONE SOLUTION TO THE WATER
JUG PROBLEM
Gallons in the 4- Gallons in the 3- Rule Applied
Gallon Jug Gallon Jug

0 0 2

0 3 9

3 0 2

3 3 7

4 2 5

0 2 9

2 0
NEXT TOPICS

• Uninformed search
• Breadth-first, depth-first
• Uniform cost
• Iterative deepening

• Informed (heuristic) search

• Greedy best-first
• A*
• Memory-bounded heuristic search
• And more….

• Local search and optimization

• Hill-climbing
• Simulated annealing
• Genetic algorithms
SUMMARY

• Characteristics of agents and environments

• Problem-solving agents where search consists of

• state space
• operators
• start state
• goal states

• Abstraction and problem formulation

• Search trees: an effective way to represent the search process

• Reading: chapter 2 and chapter 3.1, 3.2, 3.3

• Homework 1 will be announced shortly

 AI PREHISTORY
▪ Philosophy Logic, methods of reasoning, mind as
physical
system foundations of learning,
language,
rationality
▪ Mathematics Formal representation and proof
algorithms,
computation, (un)decidability,
(in)tractability,
probability
▪ Economics utility, decision theory
▪ Neuroscience physical substrate for mental
activity
▪ Psychology phenomena of perception and motor
control,
experimental techniques
▪ Computer building fast computers engineering
▪ Control theory design systems that maximize an
objective
function over time