The Future of Artificial

Intelligence
John Paxton
Montana State University
August 14, 2003
Bannack
 What makes AI difficult?

• Different problems have inherently

different complexities to solve.
 The Sorting Problem

• Input: 2 4 6 7 5 3 1

• Output: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 Selection Sort
• Step 1: 2 4 6 7 5 3 1
• Step 2: 2 4 6 1 5 3 7
• Step 3: 2 4 3 1 5 6 7
• Step 4: 2 4 3 1 5 6 7
• Step 5: 2 1 3 4 5 6 7
• Step 6: 2 1 3 4 5 6 7
• Step 7: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 Selection Sort

• If there are n items to sort, selection sort

takes O(n2) time

• What does this mean? If we double the

size of the input, we can expect the
algorithm to take four times as long.
 Quicksort
• O(n log2 n)
2467531

1 46753

3 675

5 7
 Quicksort
n n log2 n n2
10 33.22 100

100 66.44 10000

1000 99.66 1,000,000

10000 132.88 100,000,000

 Sorting

• It can be proven that sorting n numbers

based on comparisons has a best case of
O(n log n).

• Thus, the inherent complexity of sorting is

O(n log n), even though worse algorithms
such as selection sort exist.
 The Class P
• P = Polynomial
• Any problem whose inherent complexity is
O(np) where p is a constant is in the class
P.
• Problems that are in P typically are
practical to solve on computers.
Travelling Salesperson Problem
• Starting in City A, what is the shortest
circuit that visits cities B, C, and D?
• A–B–C–D–A
• A–B–D–C–A
• A–C–B–D–A
• A–C–D–B–A
• A–D–B–C–A
• A–D–C–B-A
 TSP
• In the preceding problem, there were 4
cities and 3! possible solutions
• In general, if there are n cities, one must
consider (n-1)! possibilities.
• (n-1)! is not O(np) for any fixed p. (n-1)! is
in the EXP class.
• Each problem in the EXP class is O(pn) for
some fixed p.
 Comparison
n n2 (n-1)!
5 25 24

10 100 362,880

15 225 8.7E10

20 400 1.2E17
 The Class EXP

• As you can see from the preceding table,

problems that are in the class EXP do not
have practical solutions on computers
 Relevance to AI

• Unfortunately, many interesting problems

in AI are in the class EXP.

• For example, the TSP problem.

 Satisficing
• What can be done?

• Instead of settling for the optimal answer,

look for a “pretty good” solution instead.
This technique is also known as
satisficing.
Satisficing Example
 Heuristics

• A “heuristic” is a rule-of-thumb that works

in practice, but has no guarantee of being
optimal.
 Water Jug Problem
• Place 6 liters of water in the 8 gallon jug in
as few steps as possible

8 3
 Water Jug Problem
• Place 8 liters of water in the 10 gallon jug
in as few steps as possible

10 4
 Water Jug Problem
• Place 10 liters of water in the 15 gallon jug
in as few steps as possible

15 5
 Past AI Predictions
• Game Playing. Researchers thought that
AI chess playing programs would beat the
best humans by 1970.

• Machine Translation.
– The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
– The whisky is strong, but the meat is rotten.
 Objections to AI
• Theology
• Heads-in-the-Sand
• Mathematical
• Self Awareness
• Capability X is lacking (e.g. enjoy ice cream)
• Lady Lovelace’s objection
• Continuity of nervous system
• Informality of behavior (no rules)
• ESP
 The Future
• Consumer Robots
 The Future
• Gastrobots
(University of South
Florida)

• Sustain themselves
by eating naturally
occurring foods
 The Future
• COG, a robot at MIT

• Track eye movement

• Recognize faces
• Grab objects
• Hear a rhythm, play it
back on drums
 The Future
• Art – Raymond
Kurzweil’s
screensaver program,
Aaron

• Poetry

• Music
 The Future
• Natural Language

• Charles Schwab incorporates iPhrase at

its web site to allow users to use natural
language to ask questions. For example,
“Which of these stocks has the highest
revenues?”
 The Future
• Products that do one thing well.

• For example, Continental Divide Robotics

has developed a system based on GPS
that can locate any person or any object
anywhere in the world and notify a user if it
is “out of bounds”. This could help a
parent monitor a child, for example.
 The Future
• Companionship

• At Microsoft, a product is under

development that learns about you. Who
is important to you? Are you busy? The
product can then monitor incoming e-mails
and phone calls.
 The Future
• Virtual Reality

• Haptek, People Putty

• Create your own 3-D

interactive characters
 The Future
• Computers will get faster

• Software will get better

• AI will creep closer to human capabilities

(search, learning, knowledge
representation)
 The Future

• There are lots of potential

benefits!

• There are certainly some

potential drawbacks!

• Most AI researchers
believe humans will stay
in control
Questions?