What Is AI?

1. Definitions of AI:
   • Two Contrasting Definitions of AI

   • Some Definitions of "Artificial Intelligence"

   • My definition:

     AI is the branch of computer science that tries to answer the question, "How much of cognition is computable?"

     • A better name for it might be: "Computational Cognition"

     • Rapaport, William J. (1998), "How Minds Can Be Computational Systems", Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 10: 403-419.
       Abstract: The proper treatment of computationalism, as the thesis that cognition is computable, is presented and defended. Some arguments of James H. Fetzer against computationalism are examined and found wanting, and his positive theory of minds as semiotic systems is shown to be consistent with computationalism. An objection is raised to an argument of Selmer Bringsjord against one strand of computationalism, viz., that Turing-Test-passing artifacts are persons; it is argued that, whether or not this objection holds, such artifacts will inevitably be persons.

2. "Welcome to AI Topics" (sponsored by the AAAI)

3. Information on the Turing Test

4. Rapaport's freshman-level lecture notes on AI

5. Some Standard Sources of Information on AI

6. Artificial IQ Test

7. What Is Computation?
   • What Is an Algorithm? What Is Computation?
     • links to items of philosophical interest

   • Turing, Alan M. (1936), "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Ser. 2, Vol. 42: 230-265.
     • Reprinted, with corrections, in Martin Davis (ed.), The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems and Computable Functions (New York: Raven Press, 1965): 116-154.

     • Click on the title to do a Google search of various online versions.
       • The most common on-line version is best read using Microsoft Internet Explorer (or any other browser that uses cascaded style sheets).
         • Warning: That on-line version has several typographical errors!

       • Here is another, more readable, online version!

     • A couple of very nice toy Turing Machines:
       Bradley, Peter (2002), "Turing Machine Overview".

     • Carpenter, B.E.; & Doran, R.W. (1975?), "The Other Turing Machine", The Computer Journal 20(3): 269-279.

     • Leiber, Justin (2006), "Turing's Golden: How Well Turing's Work Stands Today" Philosophical Psychology 19(1): 13-46.

   • Newell, Allen; Shaw, J.C.; & Simon, Herbert A. (1958), "Elements of a Theory of Human Problem Solving", Psychological Review 65(3): 151-166.
     • For instructions on how to access this article from buffalo.edu machines, link to: "Classic (Online) Readings in Cognitive Science"

   • Haugeland, John (1981), "Semantic Engines: An Introduction to Mind Design", in John Haugeland (ed.), Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 1-34.
     Reprinted in Cummins, Robert, & Cummins, Denise Dellarosa (eds.) (2000), Minds , Brains, and Computers: The Foundations of Cognitive Science (Malden, MA: Blackwell): 34-50.

   • Shapiro, Stuart C. (1995), "Computationalism" [postscript], Minds and Machines 5(4) (November): 517-524.

   • Dietrich, Eric (2000), "Cognitive Science and the Mechanistic Forces of Darkness, or Why the Computational Science of Mind Suffers the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune" Techne: Journal for the Society for Philosophy and Technology 5(2).

8. McDermott, Drew (2001), Mind and Mechanism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
   • Toyama, Kentaro (1996/2001), "An Interview with Drew McDermott", ACM Crossroads 3-1.

9. Major Accomplishments in AI

10. A Tom Toles cartoon on whether computers have real intelligence

11. On EPAM

12. The SNePS Approach