COGS 200 Lecture 1: September 15th, 2016 Readings
16 Apr 2018
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Document Summary
Ai = field that studies synthesis and analysis of computational agents that act intelligently. Agent: something that acts in an environment. Worms, dogs, thermostats, airplanes, robots, humans, companies, countries . We are interested in what an agent does; how it acts. What it does it appropriate for its circumstances and its goals. It is flexible to changing environments and changing goals. It makes appropriate choices given its perceptual and computational limitations. Typically, an agent cannot observe the state of the world directly; has only a finite memory and it does not have unlimited time to act. A computational agent: decisions abt its actions can be explained in terms of computation. The decision can be broken down into primitive operation. In humans, this computation is carried out in wetware ; in computers, carried out in hardware . Central scientific goal of ai: understand the principles that make intelligent behaviour possible in natural, or artificial systems.
