History and Foundations of Artificial Intelligence

These vocabulary flashcards cover the historical foundations, philosophical debates, and defining concepts of Artificial Intelligence as discussed in the lecture.

Mind-Body Dualism

A philosophical concept proposed by René Descartes suggesting that the mind and body are two separate entities.

Epicurus

The first philosopher to propose the idea that the mind is physical and consists of atoms.

Syllogism

A logical structure that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion given true premises, such as the example that if Socrates is a man and all men are mortal, then Socrates is mortal.

George Boole

A mathematician who in 1847 invented an entire mathematical discipline to define logic as a mathematical field, extending it beyond philosophy.

Turing Test

A test developed to answer the question "Can a machine think?" by determining if a human interrogator can distinguish between a machine and a human through dialogue.

Eliza

A chatbot developed in the 1960s with the profile of a doctor that used simple word-swapping techniques to simulate conversation.

Winograd Schema Challenge

A language understanding test developed as a criticism of the Turing Test, specifically focused on a model's ability to resolve ambiguity in language.

Resolution of Anaphora

The process of determining what a pronoun, such as "it," refers to in a sentence where multiple subjects are present.

Chinese Room Argument

A philosophical critique of the Turing Test suggesting that a machine which simply maps inputs to outputs (like a language dictionary) does not possess true understanding or intelligence.

Nematode C. Elegans

A biological organism used in AI research because every individual is an exact copy with the same number of neurons, allowing for the creation of a complete digital neural map.

Cognitive Modeling Approach

An approach to AI that attempts to model artificial intelligence as a literal copy of the human brain's thinking processes.

Weak AI

A school of thought where machines act as if they were intelligent, but their capabilities are limited to specific tasks or scopes.

Strong AI

A school of thought aimed at developing a single entity capable of solving many different creative problems across various domains.

Rational Agent

An entity that acts in its environment by choosing the best action to achieve its goals based on specific criteria and available resources.

Linear Algebra

A mathematical field essential to machine learning, particularly because many algorithms rely heavily on matrix multiplication.