What is Artificial Intelligence?

Wikipedia has some interesting information about artificial intelligence that you may want to review before our meeting on this topic. Here are a couple of quotes from that source.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior.".....

"The field was founded on the claim that a central property of humans, intelligence—the sapience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapience) of Homo sapiens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens)—"can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."[8] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-8) This raises philosophical issues about the nature of the mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind) and the ethics of creating artificial beings endowed with human-like intelligence, issues which have been addressed by myth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AI#AI_in_myth.2C_fiction_and_speculation), fiction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction) and philosophy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_AI) since antiquity.[9] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-McCorduck.27s_thesis-9) Artificial intelligence has been the subject of tremendous optimism[10] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-10) but has also suffered stunning setbacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter).[11] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-11) Today it has become an essential part of the technology industry, providing the heavy lifting for many of the most challenging problems in computer science.[12] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#cite_note-AI_widely_used-12)"

As the moderator for this topic I'd like to suggest that we accept a fairly low level of software / computer intelligence as still being a form of artificial intelligence for the sake of this discussion.

So for example I think that the automated call answering system that the City of Ottawa uses is one form of artificial intelligence. That system isn't as smart as a human but it has replaced the function that a human would have done in the past.

Another example are the automated cashier systems at Home Depot. They interact with customers at a high enough level that they can replace a human cashier.

Honda has a new system that can sense if the car is getting too close to the shoulder of the road. The computer can take corrective action by steering the car back onto the road.

The airlines use AI auto pilot systems that can land planes.

Google uses an AI system to provide relevant search information in an instant.

The iPhone 5 can translate from one language to another. So much for needing an interpreter or being limited by not being able to speak every language.

I'm sure there are many other examples of these sorts of AI that we could discuss in the first half of our meeting.

Later on we may want to speculate on what sorts of AI applications will appear in the near and distant future.

Near the end of our discussion we may want to consider the possibility that if and when an advanced AI system is developed that can replicate thinking (not human thinking, just thinking), it would also have at it's disposal all the pre-existing AI building blocks that listed above.

If you are registered to attend the meeting and then find you won't be able to make it please do cancel your reservation so someone else can attend in your absence.

Looking forward to an interesting discussion.

Howard