Introduction to AI Programming

Csc 243: 1995/ 96

The main aims of 243 are to introduce programming techniques used in the implementation of Artificial Intelligence systems and to give a flavour of realistic Prolog programming.

• Course Structure
• AI: What is it?
  • What is Artificial Intelligence?
  • Symbolic and Subsymbolic Processing
  • AI Languages and AI Programming
  • Prolog
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• The Prolog Execution Model
• Prolog Programming Techniques
• Practical Prolog Programming
• Search to the End
  • Exhaustive Search
  • The `Missionaries and Cannibals' Problem
    • The Problem Representation
    • Kinds of Errors
    • The Search Illustrated
  • An Outline Prolog Program
  • Breadth-First Search: An Alternative
  • Human Search
  • Summary
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Different Search Methods
  • Depth-First Search
  • Breadth-First Search
  • Depth-First and Breadth-First Algorithms Compared
  • Iterative Deepening
  • Conclusion
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Games and AI
  • Formalising the Game
  • The MINIMAX Technique
  • Constructing an Evaluation Function
  • Improving Game Playing Performance
  • The Horizon Effect
  • Improving Game Playing Performance
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Planning
  • The Need for More Methods
  • Means-Ends Analysis
  • Plans
  • An Example
    • Subgoal Selection
    • Operator Selection
  • A Skeleton Version of STRIPS in Prolog
  • Advantages and Disadvantages Summarised
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Imitating Analogical Reasoning
  • Why bother with Analogical Reasoning?
  • A Geometrical Analogy Problem
  • Describing Diagrams
  • Specifying the Problem
  • The Full Rule Description
  • Constructing a Rule
  • An Example
    • The Derived Rules
    • Rule Application
    • Selecting the Result
  • Evans Analogy: Summary
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• Question Answering Systems
  • A sketch of an Eliza-like System
    • read_in/1
    • write_out/1
    • process/2
    • swap/2
    • pick_up_transform/2
    • match/2
  • Eliza-like Systems: Summary
  • What You Should Be Able To Do
• About this document ...