artificial intelligence
    n 1: the branch of computer science that deal with writing
         computer programs that can solve problems creatively;
         "workers in AI hope to imitate or duplicate intelligence in
         computers and robots" [syn: artificial intelligence,
         AI]

artificial intelligence
AI

   <artificial intelligence> (AI) The subfield of computer
   science concerned with the concepts and methods of symbolic
   inference by computer and symbolic knowledge representation
   for use in making inferences.  AI can be seen as an attempt to
   model aspects of human thought on computers.  It is also
   sometimes defined as trying to solve by computer any problem
   that a human can solve faster.  The term was coined by
   Stanford Professor John McCarthy, a leading AI researcher.

   Examples of AI problems are computer vision (building a
   system that can understand images as well as a human) and
   natural language processing (building a system that can
   understand and speak a human language as well as a human).
   These may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1993)
   to solve them have foundered on the amount of context
   information and "intelligence" they seem to require.

   The term is often used as a selling point, e.g. to describe
   programming that drives the behaviour of computer characters
   in a game.  This is often no more intelligent than "Kill any
   humans you see; keep walking; avoid solid objects; duck if a
   human with a gun can see you".

   See also AI-complete, neats vs. scruffies, neural
   network, genetic programming, fuzzy computing,
   artificial life.

   <ACM SIGART>.  <U Cal Davis>.  <CMU Artificial
   Intelligence Repository>.

   (2002-01-19)