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Artificial intelligence is changing how we interact online, how we manage our finances, and even how we work. Learn more with Britannica Money.
To reason is to draw inferences appropriate to the situation. Inferences are classified as either deductive or inductive. An example of the former is, “Fred must be in either the museum or the café. He is not in the café; therefore, he is in the museum,” and of the latter is, “Previous accidents of this sort were caused by instrument failure. This accident is of the same sort; therefore, it was likely caused by instrument failure.” The most significant difference between these forms of reasoning is that in the deductive case, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion, whereas in the inductive case, the truth of the premises lends support to the conclusion without giving absolute assurance. Inductive reasoning is common in science, where data are collected and tentative models are developed to describe and predict future behavior—until the appearance of anomalous data forces the model to be revised. Deductive reasoning is common in mathematics and logic, where elaborate structures of irrefutable theorems are built up from a small set of basic axioms and rules.
There has been considerable success in programming computers to draw inferences. However, true reasoning involves more than just drawing inferences: it involves drawing inferences relevant to the solution of the particular problem. This is one of the hardest problems confronting AI.
Problem solving
Problem solving, particularly in artificial intelligence, may be characterized as a systematic search through a range of possible actions in order to reach some predefined goal or solution. Problem-solving methods divide into special purpose and general purpose. A special-purpose method is tailor-made for a particular problem and often exploits very specific features of the situation in which the problem is embedded. In contrast, a general-purpose method is applicable to a wide variety of problems. One general-purpose technique used in AI is means-end analysis—a step-by-step, or incremental, reduction of the difference between the current state and the final goal. The program selects actions from a list of means—in the case of a simple robot, this might consist of PICKUP, PUTDOWN, MOVEFORWARD, MOVEBACK, MOVELEFT, and MOVERIGHT—until the goal is reached.
Many diverse problems have been solved by artificial intelligence programs. Some examples are finding the winning move (or sequence of moves) in a board game, devising mathematical proofs, and manipulating “virtual objects” in a computer-generated world.
Perception
In perception the environment is scanned by means of various sensory organs, real or artificial, and the scene is decomposed into separate objects in various spatial relationships. Analysis is complicated by the fact that an object may appear different depending on the angle from which it is viewed, the direction and intensity of illumination in the scene, and how much the object contrasts with the surrounding field. At present, artificial perception is sufficiently advanced to enable optical sensors to identify individuals and enable autonomous vehicles to drive at moderate speeds on the open road.
Language
A language is a system of signs having meaning by convention. In this sense, language need not be confined to the spoken word. Traffic signs, for example, form a mini-language, it being a matter of convention that ? means “hazard ahead” in some countries. It is distinctive of languages that linguistic units possess meaning by convention, and linguistic meaning is very different from what is called natural meaning, exemplified in statements such as “Those clouds mean rain” and “The fall in pressure means the valve is malfunctioning.”
An important characteristic of full-fledged human languages—in contrast to birdcalls and traffic signs—is their productivity. A productive language can formulate an unlimited variety of sentences.
Large language models like ChatGPT can respond fluently in a human language to questions and statements. Although such models do not actually understand language as humans do but merely select words that are more probable than others, they have reached the point where their command of a language is indistinguishable from that of a normal human. What, then, is involved in genuine understanding, if even a computer that uses language like a native human speaker is not acknowledged to understand? There is no universally agreed upon answer to this difficult question.
(Read Yuval Noah Harari’s Britannica essay on the future of “Nonconscious Man.”)