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History of artificial intelligence

Lecture



This article briefly describes the history of the development of scientific disciplines that have contributed to the field of artificial intelligence in the form of specific ideas, beliefs and methods. As in any historical essay, one necessarily has to limit oneself to describing a small circle of people, events and discoveries, ignoring all the other facts that were no less important. This historical excursion around a limited range of issues.

Philosophy (period from 428 BC to the present)

  • Can formal rules be used to draw correct conclusions?
  • How is such an ideal object as a thought born in such a physical object as the brain?
  • What is the origin of knowledge?
  • How does knowledge lead to action?

History of artificial intelligence
Aristotle
The exact body of laws governing the rational part of thinking was first formulated by Aristotle ( 384–322 BC). He developed a non - formalized system of syllogisms , designed to carry out the correct reasoning, which allowed anyone to develop logical conclusions mechanically, if there are initial premises.

Much later, Raimund Llull (died 1315) put forward the idea that useful reasoning can actually be carried out using a mechanical artifact.

History of artificial intelligence
Raymond Llull
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) suggested that the reasoning is analogous to numerical calculations and that "in our inaudible thoughts, we inevitably add and subtract." At that time, the automation of the calculations themselves was already well under way; around the year 1500, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) designed, but did not build a mechanical calculator; recent reconstruction showed that his project is workable.

History of artificial intelligence
Thomas Hobbes
The first known computer was created around 1623 by the German scientist Wilhelm Schickard (1592–1635), although the Pascaline machine, built in 1642 by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), is more known. Pascal wrote that "an arithmetic machine produces an effect that seems closer to thinking than any other animal activity."

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) created a mechanical device designed to perform operations on concepts, not on numbers, but the scope of its operation was rather limited.

After humanity realized what a set of rules should be capable of describing the formal, rational part of thinking, the next step was that the mind began to be viewed as a physical system.

History of artificial intelligence
Leonardo da Vinci
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) first published the results of a discussion of the differences between mind and matter, as well as the problems that arise. One of the problems associated with purely physical ideas about the mind, is that they, apparently, almost do not leave room for free will: for if the mind is guided solely by physical laws, then a person exhibits no more free will than a cobblestone , "Decided" to fall in the direction of the center of the earth.

Despite the fact that Descartes was a staunch supporter of views that recognize only the power of the mind, he was also an adherent of dualism . Descartes believed that there is such a part of the human mind (soul, or spirit) that is outside of nature and not subject to physical laws.

History of artificial intelligence
Wilhelm Schickard
On the other hand, animals do not have such a dualistic property, so they can be considered as a kind of machine. An alternative to dualism is materialism , according to which rational behavior is made up of operations performed by the brain in accordance with the laws of physics. Free will is simply a form into which the perception of the available options is transformed into the selection process.

If we assume that knowledge is manipulated by the physical mind, then the following problem arises - to establish the source of knowledge. Such a scientific direction as empiricism , the ancestor of which was Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the author of the New Organon, can be characterized by the statement of John Locke (1632-1704): "In human understanding, there is nothing that is not manifested primarily in the senses."

History of artificial intelligence
Rene Descartes
David Hume (1711 - 1776), in his book A Treatise of Human Nature, proposed a method now known as the principle of induction , which is that general rules are developed by studying the recurring associations between the elements that are discussed in these rules. Based on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), the famous Vienna Circle, led by Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), developed the doctrine of logical positivism . According to this doctrine, all knowledge can be characterized using logical theories, ultimately connected with ascertaining sentences that correspond to the input sensory data.

In the theory of confirmation, Rudolf Carnap and Karl Hempel (1905-1997) attempted to understand how knowledge can be gained from experience. In Carnap’s book The Logical Structure of the World, an explicitly defined computational procedure is defined to extract knowledge from the results of elementary experiments. Apparently, this is the first theory of thinking as a computational process.

The final element in this picture of philosophical studies of the problem of the mind is the link between knowledge and action. This question is vital for artificial intelligence, since intellectuality requires not only thinking, but also action. In addition, only by understanding the ways of justifying actions, one can understand how to create an agent whose actions will be reasonable (or rational).

Aristotle argued that actions are based on a logical connection between goals and knowledge about the results of this particular action. Aristotle's algorithm was implemented after 2300 years by Newell and Simon in the GPS program. Now what is created on its base is called the regressive planning system .

Target-based analysis is useful, but does not provide an answer to what to do if several options lead to the goal or no action can achieve it fully. Antoine Arnaud (1612–1694) correctly described the quantitative formula for deciding what action should be taken in such cases.

In the book of Utilitarianism, the utilitarian John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) proclaimed the idea that the criteria for making rational decisions should be applied in all spheres of human activity.

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Artificial Intelligence. Basics and history. Goals.

Terms: Artificial Intelligence. Basics and history. Goals.