Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis

Front Cover
Morgan Kaufmann, 1998 - Computers - 513 pages

Intelligent agents are employed as the central characters in this new introductory text. Beginning with elementary reactive agents, Nilsson gradually increases their cognitive horsepower to illustrate the most important and lasting ideas in AI. Neural networks, genetic programming, computer vision, heuristic search, knowledge representation and reasoning, Bayes networks, planning, and language understanding are each revealed through the growing capabilities of these agents. The book provides a refreshing and motivating new synthesis of the field by one of AI's master expositors and leading researchers. Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis takes the reader on a complete tour of this intriguing new world of AI.


Features


  • An evolutionary approach provides a unifying theme
  • Thorough coverage of important AI ideas, old and new
  • Frequent use of examples and illustrative diagrams
  • Extensive coverage of machine learning methods throughout the text
  • Citations to over 500 references
  • Comprehensive index

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About the author (1998)

Nils John Nilsson was born in Saginaw, Michigan on February 6, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He joined the Air Force and served three years at the Rome Air Development Center before joining the Stanford Research Institute in 1961. He helped develop the first general-purpose robot and was a co-inventor of algorithms that made it possible for the machine to move about efficiently and perform simple tasks. He later worked on the "Computer-based Consultant," which focused on natural language understanding. He wrote several books including Learning Machines: Foundations of Trainable Pattern-Classifying Systems and The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements. He died on April 21, 2019 at the age of 86.

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