Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field within computer science that is attempting to build enhanced intelligence into computer systems. This book traces the history of the subject, from the early dreams of eighteenth-century (and earlier) pioneers to the more successful work of today's AI engineers. AI is becoming more and more a part of everyone's life. The technology is already embedded in face-recognizing cameras, speech-recognition software, Internet search engines, and health-care robots, among other applications. The book's many diagrams and easy-to-understand descriptions of AI programs will help the casual reader gain an understanding of how these and other AI systems actually work. Its thorough (but unobtrusive) end-of-chapter notes containing citations to important source materials will be of great use to AI scholars and researchers. This book promises to be the definitive history of a field that has captivated the imaginations of scientists, philosophers, and writers for centuries.

Intelligent agents are employed as the central characters in this introductory text. Beginning with elementary reactive agents, Nilsson gradually increases their cognitive horsepower to illustrate the most important and lasting ideas in AI. Neural networks, genetic programming, computer vision, heuristic search, knowledge representation and reasoning, Bayes networks, planning, and language understanding are each revealed through the growing capabilities of these agents. A distinguishing feature of this text is in its evolutionary approach to the study of AI. This book provides a refreshing and motivating synthesis of the field by one of AI's master expositors and leading researches. An evolutionary approach provides a unifying theme Thorough coverage of important AI ideas, old and new Frequent use of examples and illustrative diagrams Extensive coverage of machine learning methods throughout the text Citations to over 500 references Comprehensive index

A fascinating look at Artificial Intelligence, from its humble Cold War beginnings to the dazzling future that is just around the corner. When most of us think about Artificial Intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that Artificial Intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways, the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate. In Thinking Machines, technology journalist Luke Dormehl takes you through the history of AI and how it makes up the foundations of the machines that think for us today. Furthermore, Dormehl speculates on the incredible--and possibly terrifying--future that's much closer than many would imagine. This remarkable book will invite you to marvel at what now seems commonplace and to dream about a future in which the scope of humanity may need to broaden itself to include intelligent machines.

What kind of AI? -- The big puzzle -- Knowledge and behavior -- Making it and faking it -- Learning with and without experience -- Book smarts and street smarts -- The long tail and the limits to training -- Symbols and symbol processing -- Knowledge-based systems -- AI technology

A fascinating look at Artificial Intelligence, from its humble Cold War beginnings to the dazzling future that is just around the corner. When most of us think about Artificial Intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that Artificial Intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways, the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate. In Thinking Machines, technology journalist Luke Dormehl takes you through the history of AI and how it makes up the foundations of the machines that think for us today. Furthermore, Dormehl speculates on the incredible--and possibly terrifying--future that's much closer than many would imagine. This remarkable book will invite you to marvel at what now seems commonplace and to dream about a future in which the scope of humanity may need to broaden itself to include intelligent machines.

Is it possible to construct an artificial person? Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence have for decades been developing computer programs that emulate human intelligence. This book goes beyond intelligence and describes how close we are to recreating many of the other capacities that make us human. These abilities include learning, creativity, consciousness, and emotion. The attempt to understand and engineer these abilities constitutes the new interdisciplinary field of artificial psychology, which is characterized by contributions from philosophy, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and robotics. This work is intended for use as a main or supplementary introductory textbook for a course in cognitive psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, or the philosophy of mind. It examines human abilities as operating requirements that an artificial person must have and analyzes them from a multidisciplinary approach. The book is comprehensive in scope, covering traditional topics like perception, memory, and problem solving. However, it also describes recent advances in the study of free will, ethical behavior, affective architectures, social robots, and hybrid human-machine societies.