I. Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the man-made intelligence of machines. It is a form of computer science. Ideally, a machine should be able to think and act as human can. As stated in the video below, machines are very good at things we are not. For example, long division and other things that requires us to process information. But, they have trouble processing things through sight and senses. The goal of artificial intelligence is to be able to create a machine that can do both simultaneously.

II. History

The field of Artificial Intelligence was founded at a conference at Dartmouth College in 1956. John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon, became the leaders of AI research. They created computers that could solve word problems in algebra, prove logical theorems, and speak English. Since then many improvements have been made. Artificial intelligence is now used for logistics, data mining, medical diagnosis and many other areas throughout the technology industry. There are constant advances on this technology such as the computer, dubbed Watson (figure 1). A team of scientists built a computer to compete on the television show “Jeopardy.” It handily defeated the greatest contestants, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. There have been many other examples like this. And a computer dubbed Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. Another example is when a Stanford robot won the DARPA Grand Challenge by driving for 131 miles along an unrehearsed desert trail. A video that I found interesting was a video of a Robot dubbed iClub shooting a plastic bow and arrow.

(Figure 1)

The link is to the video of the Robot Archer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCXvAqIDpIw

III. Inventors

There are no individual inventors for AI, but some of the first and major contributors were John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon. John McCarthy was the one who coined the term Artificial Intelligence. He was awarded the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the science. Marvin Minsky co-founded the Artificial Intelligence program at MIT. He was awarded the Turing Award in 1969, the Japan Prize in 1990, the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence in 1991, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal. Allen Newell contributed to the Information Processing Language and two of the earliest AI programs, the Logic Theory Machine and the General Problem Solver. He was also awarded the Turing award in 1975.

IV. Potential Effect on Humanity

A common theme in the media is what happens if and when the machines achieve their full potential. Another point that comes up is how will they react. In media it is portrayed as a servant (R2D2 in Star Wars), a conqueror/overlord (The Matrix), a partner (Cortana in Halo), and countless other examples. Another concept that is often talked about is robot rights. Theoretically, with artificial intelligence, the machines should be able to feel emotion. If that happens, it begs the question; do the machines deserve the same rights as humans? This is extremely controversial and is often portrayed in science fiction. Another potential problem would be extreme unemployment. Machines have proven they can do things more efficiently and more quickly than humans. If it becomes more cost productive to create machines than to use human labor, companies will be required to let people go. These are all controversial ideas that are already argued. These are probably being discussed prematurely though. The video shows how the machines can learn to identify and judge what objects are.

The link is to the video of the learning robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg

V. Review of journal article

The journal article that I chose was the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. It was an article that has been constantly revised. It offered a fantastic introduction in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

VI. References

Various authors. (1975-2011). “The Jounal of Artificial Intelligence Research” Volume 40

H. Papadopoulos, V. Vovk and A. Gammerman (2011) "Regression Conformal Prediction with Nearest Neighbours", Volume 40, pages 815-840

T. De la Rosa, S. Jimenez, R. Fuentetaja and D. Borrajo (2011) "Scaling up Heuristic Planning with Relational Decision Trees", Volume 40, pages 767-813

W. Li, P. Poupart and P. van Beek (2011) "Exploiting Structure in Weighted Model Counting Approaches to Probabilistic Inference", Volume 40, pages 729-765

Wikipedia (2011) “Artificial Intelligence”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence