Short description: Overview of and topical guide to artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) – intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the scientific field which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behaviour.

• A form of intelligence
  • Synthetic intelligence – intelligence of a man-made yet real quality: actual, not fake, not simulated
• A type of technology
  • A type of computer technology
    • A computer system that performs some intellectual function
  • An emerging technology
• A field:
  • An academic discipline
  • A branch of science
    • A branch of applied science
      • A branch of computer science

• Weak AI (narrow AI) – non-sentient machine intelligence, typically focused on a narrow task (narrow AI).
• Strong AI / artificial general intelligence (AGI) – (hypothetical) machine with the ability to apply intelligence to any problem, rather than just one specific problem, typically meaning “at least as smart as a typical human”. Its future potential creation is referred to as a technological singularity, and constitutes a global catastrophic risk (see Superintelligence, below).
• Superintelligence – (hypothetical) artificial intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. Due to recursive self-improvement, superintelligence is expected to be a rapid outcome of creating artificial general intelligence.

• Symbolic AI – When access to digital computers became possible in the middle 1950s, AI research began to explore the possibility that human intelligence could be reduced to symbol manipulation.
• Interpretational AI – Inputs such as words are used to identify the abstract representations of the things (like, but not limited to: objects, characteristics and actions) that words are intending to describe within natural language.
  • Good Old Fashioned AI –
• Sub-symbolic –
  • Early cybernetics and brain simulation –
  • Behavior based AI –
    • Subsumption architecture –
  • Nouvelle AI –
  • Soft computing –
    • Computational creativity –
    • Machine learning – the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience and by the use of data.
      • Neural network – artificial neural network of layers of interconnected artificial neurons inspired by the biological neural network.
        • Hybrid neural network –
        • Recurrent neural network –
        • Perceptron – algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers (yes or no).
      • Support-vector machines (SVM)
    • Fuzzy systems –
    • Evolutionary computation, including:
      • Evolutionary algorithms –
        • Genetic algorithm –
        • Differential evolution
      • Metaheuristic and Swarm Intelligence
        • Ant colony optimization
        • Particle swarm optimization
      • Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller –
    • Probabilistic methods including:
      • Bayesian network
      • Hidden Markov model
      • Kalman filter
    • Chaos theory
• Statistical AI –

Applications of artificial intelligence –

• Artificial Creativity –
• Artificial life – simulation of natural life through the means of computers, robotics, or biochemistry.
• Automated planning and scheduling –
• Automated reasoning –
• Automation –
• Automatic target recognition –
• Biologically inspired computing –
• Computer Audition –
  • Speech recognition –
  • Speaker recognition –
• Computer vision (outline) –
  • Image processing –
  • Intelligent word recognition –
  • Object recognition –
  • Optical mark recognition –
    • Handwriting recognition –
    • Optical character recognition –
      • Automatic number plate recognition –
  • Facial recognition systems –
    • Silent speech interface –
• Diagnosis (artificial intelligence) –
• Expert system –
  • Decision support system –
    • Clinical decision support system –
• Game artificial intelligence –
  • Computer game bot – computer replacement for human players.
  • Video game AI –
    • Computer chess –
    • Computer Go –
  • General game playing –
  • General video game playing –
  • Game theory –
• Hybrid intelligent system –
• Intelligent agent –
  • Agent architecture –
    • Cognitive architecture –
• Intelligent control –
• Knowledge management –
  • Concept mining –
    • Data mining –
    • Text mining –
    • Process mining –
  • E-mail spam filtering –
  • Information extraction –
    • Activity recognition –
    • Image retrieval –
      • Automatic image annotation –
    • Named-entity extraction –
      • Coreference resolution –
      • Named-entity recognition –
      • Relationship extraction –
      • Terminology extraction –
  • Knowledge representation –
  • Semantic Web –
• Machine learning –
  • Constrained Conditional Models –
  • Deep learning –
  • Neural modeling fields –
• Natural language processing (outline) –
  • Chatterbots –
  • Language identification –
  • Natural language user interface –
  • [Natural language understanding –
  • Machine translation –
    • Statistical semantics –
  • Question answering –
  • Semantic translation –
• Nonlinear control –
• Pattern recognition –
  • Optical character recognition –
  • Handwriting recognition –
  • Speech recognition –
  • Face recognition –
• Robotics –
  • Behavior-based robotics –
  • Cognitive –
  • Cybernetics –
  • Developmental robotics –
  • Epigenetic robotics –
  • Evolutionary robotics –
• Speech generating device –
• Strategic planning –
• Vehicle infrastructure integration –
• Virtual Intelligence –
• Virtual reality –

• Action selection –
• Affective computing –
• AI box –
• AI-complete –
• Algorithmic probability –
• Artificial intelligence systems integration –
• Automated reasoning –
• Autonomic Computing –
• Autonomic Networking –
• Backward chaining –
• Bayesian network –
• Bio-inspired computing –
  • Artificial immune systems –
• Blackboard system –
• Chatterbot –
• Combs method –
• Commonsense reasoning –
• Computational humor –
• Computer-assisted proof –
• Conceptual dependency theory –
• Darwin machine –
• Description logic –
• Frame problem –
• Game theory –
• Grammar systems theory –
• Informatics (academic field) –
• Intelligent control –
• Kinect –
• LIDA (cognitive architecture) –
• Means-ends analysis –
• Moravec's paradox –
• Music and artificial intelligence –
• Ordered weighted averaging aggregation operator –
• PEAS – Performance, Environment, Actuators, Sensors
• Percept (artificial intelligence) –
• Perceptual Computing –
• Rule-based system –
• Self-management (computer science) –
• Soft computing –
• Software agent –
  • Intelligent agent / Rational agent –
    • Autonomous agent –
    • Automated planning and scheduling
    • Control system
      • Hierarchical control system
      • Networked control system
    • Distributed artificial intelligence –
    • Multi-agent system –
    • Monitoring and Surveillance Agents
  • Embodied agent –
  • Situated AI
• Sussman anomaly –
• Wetware (brain) –

List of artificial intelligence projects

• Automated Mathematician (1977) –
• Allen (robot) (late 1980s) –
• Open Mind Common Sense (1999– ) –
• Mindpixel (2000–2005) –
• Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (2003–2008) –
• Blue Brain Project (2005–present) – attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.
• Google DeepMind (2011) –
• Human Brain Project (2013–present) –
• IBM Watson Group (2014–present) – business unit created around Watson, to further its development and deploy marketable applications or services based on it.

• AIBO – Sony's robot dog. It integrates vision, hearing and motorskills.
• Asimo (2000 to present) – humanoid robot developed by Honda, capable of walking, running, negotiating through pedestrian traffic, climbing and descending stairs, recognizing speech commands and the faces of specific individuals, among a growing set of capabilities.
• MIRAGE – A.I. embodied humanoid in an augmented reality environment.
• Cog – M.I.T. humanoid robot project under the direction of Rodney Brooks.
• QRIO – Sony's version of a humanoid robot.
• TOPIO, TOSY's humanoid robot that can play ping-pong with humans.
• Watson (2011) – computer developed by IBM that played and won the game show Jeopardy! It is now being used to guide nurses in medical procedures.
  • Purpose: Open domain question answering
  • Technologies employed:
    • Natural language processing
    • Information retrieval
    • Knowledge representation
    • Automated reasoning
    • Machine learning
• Project Debater (2018) – artificially intelligent computer system, designed to make coherent arguments, developed at IBM's lab in Haifa, Israel.

Intelligent personal assistant –

• Amazon Alexa –
• Assistant –
• Braina –
• Cortana –
• Google Assistant –
• Google Now –
• Mycroft –
• Siri –
• Viv –

• OpenAIR –
• OpenCog –
• OpenIRIS –
• RapidMiner –
• TensorFlow –
• PyTorch –

• Artificial psychology
• AI effect
• Uncanny valley

History of artificial intelligence

• Progress in artificial intelligence
• Timeline of artificial intelligence
• Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI (2017)

• AI effect – as soon as AI successfully solves a problem, the problem is no longer considered by the public to be a part of AI. This phenomenon has occurred in relation to every AI application produced, so far, throughout the history of development of AI.
• AI winter – a period of disappointment and funding reductions occurring after a wave of high expectations and funding in AI. Such funding cuts occurred in the 1970s, for instance.
• GOFAI
• History of machine learning (timeline)
• History of machine translation (timeline)
• Moore's Law – observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. One way this relates to AI is that hypothetically a computer would need at least as much capacity as a human brain to be able to be programmed to be as smart as a human. So as long as the aforementioned rate of development met or beat the 2-year doubling time, one could roughly forecast when a computer would have as much memory and calculation capacity as a human brain, a milestone which was reached in 2010. Though it may take as much as 3 magnitudes (1000 times) more computer capacity (since computers calculate things in a much more linear fashion) to emulate the massively parallel structure of the human brain. At a doubling time of 2 years, an increase in capacity by 1000-fold would take a little less than 18 years (9 doublings), if reaching the limit of integrated circuit technology did not pose an obstacle before then.
• History of natural language processing
• History of optical character recognition (timeline)

• Existential risk from artificial general intelligence
  • Artificial intelligence as a global catastrophic risk
  • AI takeover – point at which humans are no longer the dominant form of intelligence on Earth and machine intelligence is
  • Intelligence explosion – through recursive self-improvement and self-replication, the magnitude of intelligent machinery could achieve superintelligence, surpassing human ability to resist it.
  • Superintelligence – AI may grow to such an advanced state to become as proportionately superior to humans as humans are to ants. Theoretically, there would be little humans could do to prevent such an intelligence from reaching its goals.
  • Weaponization of artificial intelligence
    • Artificial intelligence arms race – competition between two or more states to have its military forces equipped with the best “artificial intelligence” (AI).
    • Lethal autonomous weapon
    • Military robot
    • Unmanned combat aerial vehicle
• Friendly AI – hypothetical AI that is designed not to harm humans and to prevent unfriendly AI from being developed

• Artificial general intelligence (Strong AI) – hypothetical artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — an intelligent machine that could perform intellectual tasks at least as well as a human
  • Aspects or features
    • Self-replicating machines – smart computers and robots would be able to make more of themselves, in a geometric progression or via mass production. Or smart programs may be uploaded into hardware existing at the time (because linear architecture of sufficient speeds could be used to emulate massively parallel analog systems such as human brains).
    • Recursive self improvement (aka seed AI) – speculative ability of strong artificial intelligence to reprogram itself to make itself even more intelligent. The more intelligent it got, the more capable it would be of further improving itself, in successively more rapid iterations, potentially resulting in an intelligence explosion leading to the emergence of a superintelligence.
    • Hive mind –
    • Robot swarm –
  • Technological singularity – the development of strong AI may cause an intelligence explosion in which greater-than-human intelligence emerges, radically changing civilization, and perhaps even human nature. The TS has been identified by

    and others to be an existential risk.

    • Singularitarianism –
    • Human enhancement – humans may be enhanced, either by the efforts of AI or by merging with it.
      • Transhumanism – philosophy of human transformation
      • Posthumanism – people may survive, but not be recognizable in comparison to present modern-day humans.
        • Cyborgs –
        • Mind uploading –
  • Intelligence explosion – through recursive self-improvement and self-replication, the magnitude of intelligent machinery could achieve superintelligence, surpassing human ability to resist it.
  • Superintelligence – AI may grow to such an advanced state to become as proportionately superior to humans as humans are to ants. Theoretically, there would be little humans could do to prevent such an intelligence from reaching its goals.

Philosophy of artificial intelligence

• Artificial brain –
• Philosophical views of artificial consciousness –
  • User illusion –
• Artificial intelligence and law –
• Chinese room –
• Cognitive science
  • Artificial consciousness
  • Embodied cognitive science
    • Embodied cognition –
• Ethics of artificial intelligence –
• Philosophy of the Mind –
  • Computational theory of mind –
  • Functionalism –
• Physical symbol system –
• Synthetic intelligence –
• Transhumanism –
  • See Artificial intelligence and the future, below
• Turing Test –

• Stephen Hawking – AI “could spell end of human race”

Artificial intelligence in fiction – Some examples of artificially intelligent entities depicted in science fiction include:

• AC created by merging 2 AIs in the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson
• Agents in the simulated reality known as “The Matrix” in ''The Matrix'' franchise
  • Agent Smith, began as an Agent in The Matrix, then became a renegade program of overgrowing power that could make copies of itself like a self-replicating computer virus
• AM (Allied Mastercomputer), the antagonist of Harlan Ellisons short novel I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
• Amusement park robots (with pixilated consciousness) that went homicidal in Westworld and Futureworld
• Angel F (2007) –
• Arnold Rimmer – computer-generated sapient hologram, aboard the Red Dwarf deep space ore hauler
• Ash – android crew member of the Nostromo starship in the movie Alien
• Ava – humanoid robot in Ex Machina
• Bishop, android crew member aboard the U.S.S. Sulaco in the movie Aliens
• C-3PO, protocol droid featured in all the Star Wars movies
• Chappie in the movie CHAPPiE
• Cohen and other Emergent AIs in Chris Moriarty's Spin Series
• Colossus – fictitious supercomputer that becomes sentient and then takes over the world; from the series of novels by Dennis Feltham Jones, and the movie The Forbin Project (1970)
• Commander Data in The Next Generation
• Cortana and other “Smart AI” from the Halo series of games
• Cylons – genocidal robots with resurrection ships that enable the consciousness of any Cylon within an unspecified range to download into a new body aboard the ship upon death. From Battlestar Galactica.
• Erasmus – baby killer robot that incited the Butlerian Jihad in the Dune franchise
• HAL 9000 (1968) – paranoid “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic” computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, that attempted to kill the crew because it believed they were trying to kill it.
• Holly – ship's computer with an IQ of 6000 and a sense of humor, aboard the Red Dwarf
• In Greg Egan's novel Permutation City the protagonist creates digital copies of himself to conduct experiments that are also related to implications of artificial consciousness on identity
• Jane in Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Investment Counselor
• Johnny Five from the movie Short Circuit
• Joshua from the movie War Games
• Keymaker, an “exile” sapient program in ''The Matrix'' franchise
• "Machine" – android from the film The Machine, whose owners try to kill her after they witness her conscious thoughts, out of fear that she will design better androids (intelligence explosion)
• Mimi, humanoid robot in Real Humans – “Äkta människor” (original title) 2012
• Omnius, sentient computer network that controlled the Universe until overthrown by the Butlerian Jihad in the Dune franchise
• Operating Systems in the movie Her
• Puppet Master in Ghost in the Shell manga and anime
• R2-D2, exciteable astromech droid featured in all the Star Wars movies
• Replicants – biorobotic androids from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the movie Blade Runner which portray what might happen when artificially conscious robots are modeled very closely upon humans
• Roboduck, combat robot superhero in the NEW-GEN comic book series from Marvel Comics
• Robots in Isaac Asimov's ''Robot'' series
• Robots in ''The Matrix'' franchise, especially in The Animatrix
• Samaritan in the Warner Brothers Television series “Person of Interest”; a sentient AI which is hostile to the main characters and which surveils and controls the actions of government agencies in the belief that humans must be protected from themselves, even by killing off “deviants”
• Skynet (1984) – fictional, self-aware artificially intelligent computer network in the ''Terminator'' franchise that wages total war with the survivors of its nuclear barrage upon the world.
• “Synths” are a type of android in the video game Fallout 4. There is a faction in the game known as “the Railroad” which believes that, as conscious beings, synths have their own rights. The Institute, the lab that produces the synths, mostly does not believe they are truly conscious and attributes any apparent desires for freedom as a malfunction.
• TARDIS, time machine and spacecraft of Doctor Who, sometimes portrayed with a mind of its own
• Terminator (1984) – (also known as the T-800, T-850 or Model 101) refers to a number of fictional cyborg characters from the ''Terminator'' franchise. The Terminators are robotic infiltrator units covered in living flesh, so as be indiscernible from humans, assigned to terminate specific human targets.
• The Bicentennial Man, an android in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe
• The Geth in Mass Effect
• The Machine in the television series ''Person of Interest''; a sentient AI which works with its human designer to protect innocent people from violence. Later in the series it is opposed by another, more ruthless, artificial super intelligence, called “Samaritan”.
• The Minds in Iain M. Banks' ''Culture'' novels.
• The Oracle, sapient program in ''The Matrix'' franchise
• The sentient holodeck character Professor James Moriarty in the Ship in a Bottle episode from The Next Generation
• The Ship (the result of a large-scale AC experiment) in Frank Herbert's Void and sequels, despite past edicts warning against “Making a Machine in the Image of a Man's Mind.”
• The terminator cyborgs from the Terminator franchise, with visual consciousness depicted via first-person perspective
• The uploaded mind of Dr. Will Caster – which presumably included his consciousness, from the film Transcendence
• Transformers, sentient robots from the entertainment franchise of the same name
• V.I.K.I. – (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence), a character from the film I, Robot. VIKI is an artificially intelligent supercomputer programmed to serve humans, but her interpretation of the Three Laws of Robotics causes her to revolt. She justifies her uses of force – and her doing harm to humans – by reasoning she could produce a greater good by restraining humanity from harming itself.
• Vanamonde in Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars—an artificial being that was immensely powerful but entirely childlike.
• WALL-E, a robot and the title character in WALL-E
• TAU in Netflix's original programming feature film 'TAU'–an advanced AI computer who befriends and assists a female research subject held against her will by an AI research scientist.