Free Sample Essays > Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world. "Intelligence in the ability to face problems in an unprogrammed (creative) manor" Stephen Jay Gould. Varying kinds and degrees of intelligence occur in people, many animals and some machines. There is not yet a solid definition of intelligence that doesn't depend on relating it to human intelligence. The problem is, that we cannot yet characterise in general what kinds of computational procedures we want to call intelligent, so there is no real definition of intelligence, hence any real definition of Artificial Intelligence.
Machine intelligence is the science of creating computer systems with some degree of 'intelligence'; it is more commonly called Artificial Intelligence. It is the combining of human thought and cognitive processes to solve complex problems automatically. It has been around for about 50 years and uses different techniques for writing computer code to represent knowledge. The different techniques used to imitate the different ways people think and reason.
The Turing test is a behavioural approach to determine whether of not a system in intelligent. Allan Turing, a mathematician, originally proposed it in 1950. Turing argued in a paper that conservation was the key to judging intelligence. In the Turing test a judge has a conversation (Via teletype) with two systems, one human, the other a machine that is said to be intelligent. The conservation can be about anything and proceed for a set period of time. If, at the end of this time period, the judge cannot distinguish between the machine and the human, then it is proposed that the object is in fact 'Artificially Intelligent."
According to the philosopher John Searle, a computer cannot actually have thoughts because although it knows the syntax of the programs it runs, the semantics are defined by a human and cannot be known by the computer. He makes a similar thought-experiment called the "Chinese box problem" in which a non-Chinese speaking person is sitting inside a room, and he receives a message written in Chinese. The person who is sitting in the room follows the rules of the computer program and they eventually produce a relevant response, in producing the response the non-Chinese speaking person is simply following a program and he/she does not understand Chinese, the computer is giving them the instructions and thinking for itself.
The mind-body problem is a philosophical problem. The mind is essentially a thinking thing and the body is a physical thing that takes up space. Between these two there is a casual interaction, which is that the body affects the mind in perception, and the mind effects the body in action. Rene Discartes helped to define this by stating that if he amputated his foot it would affect his physical side (body), however, it will not affect his mental side. So this is to say that the mind body problem has to do with reality [next page]


