A Brief Guide to Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has now mastered tasks that until recently could be performed only by humans. These tasks include cancer diagnosis, drug design, object recognition, speech recognition, and playing chess, backgammon and Go, which AI systems perform at superhuman levels. This richly illustrated book is a brief but comprehensive overview (without equations) of current AI systems, how they work, their applications, and their limitations. After surveying the impressive capabilities of AI systems in certain domains, the limited ability of AI to perform tasks that humans find trivial is discussed. Finally, the question of whether AI systems can be intelligent is considered, along with the controversial issue of machine consciousness. Written in an informal style, with a comprehensive Glossary and a list of Further Readings, this book is an ideal introduction to the rapidly evolving field of AI.