Business Glossary

umbrella terminology for several main categories of research. They include natural language systems, visual and voice recognition systems, robotic systems, and expert systems . Artificial intelligence generally is the attempt to build machines that think, as well as the study of mental faculties through the use of computational models. A reasoning process is involved with self-correction. Significant data are evaluated and relevant relationships, such as the determination of a warranty reserve, uncovered. The computer learns which kind of answers are reasonable and which are not. Artificial intelligence performs complicated strategies that compute the best or worst way to achieve a task or avoid an undesirable result. An example of an application is in tax planning involving tax shelter options given the client's financial position.

branch of computer science that deals with using computers to simulate human thinking. Artificial intelligence is concerned with building computer programs that can solve problems creatively, rather than simply working through the steps of a solution designed by the programmer.

the use of computers to simulate human thinking. Artificial intelligence is concerned with building computer programs that can solve problems creatively, rather than just working through the steps of a solution designed by the programmer.

One of the main problems ofAI is howto represent knowledge in the computer in a form that can be used rather than merely reproduced. In fact, some workers define AI as the construction of computer programs that utilize a knowledge base.Acomputer that gives the call number of a library book is not displaying artificial intelligence; it is merely echoing back what was put into it. Artificial intelligence would come into play if the computer used its knowledge base to make generalizations about the library's holdings or construct bibliographies on selected subjects. See expert system .

Computer vision and robotics are important areas of AI. Although it is easy to take the image from a TV camera and store it in a computer's memory, it is hard to devise ways to make the computer recognize the objects it "sees." Likewise, there are many unsolved problems associated with getting robots to move about in three-dimensional space-to walk, for instance, and to find and grasp objects-even though human beings do these things naturally.

AI also includes natural language processing-getting computers to understand speech, or at least typewritten input, in a language such as English. In the late 1950s itwas expected that computerswould soon be programmed to accept natural-language input, translate Russian into English, and the like. But human languages have proved to be more complex than was expected, and progress has been slow. See natural language processing .

Do computers really think? Artificial intelligence theorist Alan Turing proposed a criterion that has since become known as theTuring test: A computer is manifesting humanlike intelligence if a person communicating with it by teletype cannot distinguish it from a human being. Critics have pointed out that it makes little sense to build a machine whose purpose is to deceive its makers. Increasing numbers ofAIworkers are taking the position that computers are not artificial minds, but merely tools to assist the human mind, and that this is true no matter how closely they can be made to imitate human behavior.