By definition, Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs are intended to give the appearance of human behavior. Here, we provide you with two programs that fit this description: a poetry generator and an expert system. You will use both programs to see how closely human behavior can be approximated by a machine.

Lab 9.1: Natural Intelligence
Lab 9.2: Haiku To You!
Lab 9.3: Poetic Justice
Lab 9.4: Tic-Tac-Toe
Lab 9.5: Game On!
  1. Discuss intelligence embodied in a machine, and consider Alan Turing's operational test for machine intelligence
  2. Look at some major directions in Artificial Intelligence research
  3. Experiment with two programs that perform human tasks
  4. Compare the output of some AI programs to human behavior.
Module Quiz

Some fifty years after Alan Turing first proposed the Imitation Game , now known as the Turing Test, as an operational test of computer intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a central part of the computer science landscape. The phrase means different things to different people, and each definition illuminates a slightly different perspective of the field. In the text portion of this module, we explore some of these perspectives and their historical bases, as well as the primary areas of AI research.

Few who have read Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, or have seen the film version, would deny that the HAL 9000 computer described therein has the skills and attributes that would allow him to conform to any contemporary definition of AI. As such, HAL serves both as a point of departure for discussing many of the issues currently being investigated by AI researchers, and as the metaphor for this module.

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