[W/K] :: artificial intelligence

  artificial intelligence
       n : the branch of computer science that deal with writing
           computer programs that can solve problems creatively;
           "workers in AI hope to imitate or duplicate intelligence
           in computers and robots" [syn: AI]

  artificial intelligence
       
           (AI) The subfield of computer
          science concerned with the concepts and methods of symbolic
          inference by computer and symbolic knowledge representation
          for use in making inferences.  AI can be seen as an attempt to
          model aspects of human thought on computers.  It is also
          sometimes defined as trying to solve by computer any problem
          that a human can solve faster.  The term was coined by
          Stanford Professor John McCarthy, a leading AI researcher.
       
          Examples of AI problems are computer vision (building a
          system that can understand images as well as a human) and
          natural language processing (building a system that can
          understand and speak a human language as well as a human).
          These may appear to be modular, but all attempts so far (1993)
          to solve them have foundered on the amount of context
          information and "intelligence" they seem to require.
       
          The term is often used as a selling point, e.g. to describe
          programming that drives the behaviour of computer characters
          in a game.  This is often no more intelligent than "Kill any
          humans you see; keep walking; avoid solid objects; duck if a
          human with a gun can see you".
       
          See also AI-complete, neats vs. scruffies, neural
          network, genetic programming, fuzzy computing,
          artificial life.
       
          http://sigart.acm.org/).html">ACM SIGART (http://sigart.acm.org/).  U Cal Davis
          (http://phobos.cs.ucdavis.edu:8001).  CMU Artificial
          Intelligence Repository
          (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/repository.html).
       
          (2002-01-19)