Monday, May 19, 2003		Feature

ARTIFICIAL Intelligence or AI is that branch of computer science that deals with making computers behave like human beings, partially, if not fully.

Johan McCarthy coined the term AI in 1965. More precisely it means using special software that enables the computers to find solutions to some complex problems in more human like fashion. Such software uses algorithms that work much like human intelligence.

AI is generally associated with computer science but it has many important links with various other sciences like mathematics, psychology, cognition, biology, philosophy and many others.

Researchers from these various fields have to work together to make AI happen. The potential applications are abundant. They stretch from military, entertainment industry, i.e. games playing, expert systems, robotics, hospitals, banks, insurance industry, natural language understanding, neural networks etc. Game playing includes programming computers to play games just like human beings. In May 1997 an IBM Super Computer named "Deep Blue" defeated world chess champion Gary Kasparov in a chess match. Expert Systems are the computers programmed to make decisions in real-life like situations based on the specific, limited knowledge stored in their database (known as Knowledge base). Some expert systems help doctors diagnose diseases based on the symptoms. Robotics are the computers programmed to see, hear and react to other sensory stimuli. With limited applicability such computers are used in plant assembly.

Currently no computers exhibit full intelligence. The greatest advances have been made in the fields of games playing only. There is little doubt among the community that AI machines will be capable of intelligence in near future. This is also because the study is much involved as it itself includes many different fields of study and the ability to join them together.