

Ask YC: AI - Novash

The field of artificial intelligence has been always something I wanted to take a peek on, but never really had the chance. Could people here recommend me some good books to start my journey on this field?
======
jey
Here's the standard AI textbook: <http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/>

I'm assuming you mean "AI" in the sense of "fancy mathematical tricks to solve
domain specific problems", not in the sense of artificial general
intelligence.

~~~
amichail
I actually don't find this sort of research all that interesting.

I like out of the box solutions more:

<http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143>

~~~
whacked_new
Second that thanks. That was expletively amazing. I didn't expect to watch
more than the intro but couldn't stop. That's an intersection of CS and HCI
cleverness raised to the level of art.

------
nickb
Start with this book: <http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/> "Artificial Intelligence:
A Modern Approach" by Russell/Norvig

It's one of the best books on AI and it's a "standard" AI textbook for most of
the intro AI courses.

It's also great as a reference (I have it on my bookshelf beside me) and you
can quickly look up algos and implement them in your fav language.

------
ivankirigin
Norvig, Mitchell, Thrun have good books

Also, google "Andrew Moore CMU" his homepage is full of useful tutorials

That said, "AI" is too vague. What do you want to be able to do?

------
richcollins
Also see Mitchell's machine learning: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/mlbook.html>

------
Tichy
Maybe "Programming Collective Intelligence" would also be a good start.

~~~
neilc
Yeah, that's definitely a nice, practical book for machine learning stuff (but
not really AI proper). For a practical book on AI itself, Norvig's Paradigms
of Artificial Intelligence Programming:

<http://norvig.com/paip.html>

is a great book, and a nice complement to Norvig and Russell, which is
somewhat more theory-oriented.

~~~
bootload
_"... Yeah, that's definitely a nice, practical book for machine learning
stuff (but not really AI proper). For a practical book on AI itself, Norvig's
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming ..."_

It is ironic that the man who wrote the book uses different methods (maths) to
extract meaning from data at google ~
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=90298>

Something smells about AI.

It has been well funded, attracted the best minds (Minsky, McCarthy, Newell)
at places like MIT, Stanford and resulted in lots of useful languages & tools.
[0] From Cyc to Powerset companies have tried to use these techniques trying
to assign human like intelligence to machines yet have failed.

Why?

Bruce Stirling reckons it has to do a lot with the language. [1] Assigning
intelligence to what is essentially a 21'st century equivalent of knitting
mills or steam engines of yesteryear. Maybe thats why Google has taken the
approach it has. Instead of creating intelligent software to find the meaning,
take an insight into users who have pre-assigned intelligence to documents.
And use well known sorting, linking techniques and software engineering along
with not-so-well applied math techniques. Thus make google appear to make
sense of what we search for.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence>

[1] __ITConversations __, _'Bruce Stirling, The Internet of Things, 58m, 26.4
mb, 2006MAR06'_ ~ <http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail717.html>

~~~
marvin
I think that some progress in sensory systems would make AGI easier.
Obviously, humans spend most of their time structuring the complex, physical
world around them, not a stream of text like most AI approaches dictates.

Our genetic code isn't that huge, but the amount of information contained in
our brains is. All that information must be coming for somewhere. I refuse to
believe that evolution has managed to create _that_ awesome compression
algorithms.

Maybe this is what Google does, in a way. They happen to have a huge corpus of
machine-readable data, which is in a sense equivalent to what a sophisticated
sensory apparatus would give you. I intended to disagree with you when I
started writing this comment, but now I'm not so sure. Human intelligence
obviously doesn't spend its time reading petabytes of information on other
people's search habits, but maybe Google is actually onto something.

~~~
pchristensen
I think that what Google is doing is along the same lines of what human brains
do. Google is crunching a ____load of mainly textual data to create an
accurate statistical model of context. Humans use a much smaller amount of
text but use visual, audio, and touch sensory input to create context. Humans
also have the ability to refine their mental model by doing experiments on the
world, whereas Google, as an observer, has to just use what people create.
This means that Google (or any AI) needs a lot, lot, lot more of data to train
its accuracy, which is now possible due to the internet.

~~~
Tichy
Why would Google not be be able to experiment on the world?

------
Novash
I mean AI as Learning Algorythms and Decision Making programs.

~~~
jey
There currently are no good general solutions, so the best tool(s) to use
strongly depends on the specific problem you're trying to solve, resources you
have available, and how good the answer needs to be.

Reading through the Russell & Norvig book would give you a good overview of
the sorts of techniques available.

~~~
robg
Unfortunately, too often, that perspective is lost. I know of no general
solution to what defines intelligence. So I'm very dubious as to whether an
encompassing artificial version is possible.

I see lots of specific solutions to specific problems. That, to me, is the
best approximation of intelligence. To the extent that many specific solutions
can be approximated and optimized, we'll be very well off. It's easy to
denigrate a calculator and spell-checker, but I seem much more intelligent
than I would be without them.

~~~
jey
" _I know of no general solution to what defines intelligence. So I'm very
dubious as to whether an encompassing artificial version is possible._ "

Logical Fallacy Alert! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance>

I don't know how to build a rocket ship nor to do a heart transplant, but I'm
fairly confident that these are both feasible.

~~~
robg
It's not like people haven't been trying. Indeed, the great aspiration to
understand humans is the effort to define our understanding (how's that for a
circular argument?).

Moreover, you prove your own point - the one I was agreeing with initially out
of everything said in this thread. A rocket ship or heart transplant are
specific solutions to specific problems. The analogy to intelligence would be
one universal solution to flight or one universal solution to getting oxygen
and glucose into cells. It's not that a solution isn't possible. It's just
that the hope for THE solution is misguided (see also THE cure for cancer).

I really like the flight analogy because of the length of time people put into
finding THE solution. But what we end up with instead are rockets, and prop
planes, and jet engines, and airfoils, and gliders, and helicopters, and
hoverboards...

------
rkabir
my TA secretly recommended Norvig's book over Winston's, but we used Winston's
"Artificial Intelligence"

For more philosophy, read Minsky's books / papers, and the readings outlined
here: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-
Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-
Science/6-803The-Human-Intelligence-EnterpriseSpring2002/Readings/index.htm)

Minsky's paper "Steps toward Artificial Intelligence" reads like a summary of
6.034 at MIT.

Speaking of which: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-
Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-
Science/6-034Fall-2006/CourseHome/index.htm)

------
mooneater
Having looked through the introductory texts, I am left wanting to better
understand current state of various parts of field.

Any suggestions on where to get more of that higher-level commentary?

~~~
pchristensen
I recommend "Beyond AI". It gives a high level history, present, and future of
AI. It looks through the lens of a search for artificial general intelligence.

<http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/1591025117>

------
mojuba
I'd recommend starting with a definition of intelligence. Once you clearly and
unambiguously define it, consider you have 51% of the task done already.

------
downer
I recommend starting from scratch and ignoring the field. All the field will
teach you is very complex ways to NOT have AI.

~~~
pg
Those lessons can be useful, though. You might make the same mistakes.

~~~
anaphoric
I have taught AI many times now and I must agree.

You don't know how many times I have heard a student claim that they have made
some type of major advance. But on inspection it usually comes down to
something that requires exhaustive search.

I think that there is definitely a place for new ideas in the field, but I
don't think they will come from complete novices. I think they will come from
those who have CRITICALLY read the basic literature. And probably from those
who have read more than just the basics too.

My own pet peeve on the field now is the over emphasis on asymptotic
complexity. Sure its important, but its not exactly an AI result. The
scruffies need to make a come back and start coding! See my own meager efforts
(<http://www.anaphoric.com>)

~~~
downer
Amazing how people with all this knowledge still haven't gotten anywhere close
to AI.

It might even be something simple, overlooked, done a little differently.

~~~
akkartik
Let us know when you find it.

I can't think of any phenomenon less likely area to have a simple algorithm
than intelligence.

~~~
downer
> _Let us know when you find it.

I can't think of any phenomenon less likely area to have a simple algorithm
than intelligence._

Cf. Evolution.

~~~
eru
I do not want to wait five billion years.

~~~
downer
> I do not want to wait five billion years.

You're darn well _gonna_ wait -- and LIKE it!

Fortunately, it takes significantly less time than that -- no more than three
and a half billion years. Haha, and you were worried!

~~~
eru
Intelligent Design does it in 6 days!

