Abstract
The term artificial intelligence (AI) stirs emotions. For one thing there is our fascination with intelligence, which seemingly imparts to us humans a special place among life forms. Questions arise such as “What is intelligence?”, “How can one measure intelligence?” or “How does the brain work?”. All these questions are meaningful when trying to understand artificial intelligence. However, the central question for the engineer, especially for the computer scientist, is the question of the intelligent machine that behaves like a person, showing intelligent behavior. Beside discussing these issues, this introductory chapter gives a brief sketch of the history of AI.
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Notes
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An autonomous robot works independently, without manual support, in particular without remote control.
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Higher-order logics are extensions of predicate logic, in which not only variables, but also function symbols or predicates can appear as terms in a quantification. Indeed, Gödel only showed that any system that is based on predicate logic and can formulate Peano arithmetic is incomplete.
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This statement applies to “total correctness”, which implies a proof of correct execution as well as a proof of termination for every valid input.
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Those of us, such as scientists, computer scientists and engineers, who enjoy it may of course continue our work.
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Many EU and German Ministry of Education and Research funding programs for example require that scientists who submit proposals show evidence that their research will open up new markets.
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In the coming demographic shift, assistance robots could become important for the elderly and thus for our whole society.
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Ertel, W. (2017). Introduction. In: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58487-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58487-4_1
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