Artificial Intelligence

College of Information and Computer Sciences
Programming::Object-Oriented Programming

The study of computer programming revolves only around a few concepts, 3 or 5 as a matter of fact. Let's begin with the venerable C language.

C programming language is a structured programming language since it allows a programmer to divide the complete program into modules kept it separate header files. C is also a procedural programming language since it emphasizes using procedures to accomplish the task which are separated from the data itself. The only programming concepts C uses are then DATA TYPE, KEYWORD, and FUNCTION like scanf.

Assembly language is a very low level language and only uses 2 programming concepts: DATA TYPE and KEYWORD like MOV.

Machine language is the lowest level language and is the only language that is not abstract for a computer to understand. The only programming concept it uses is DATA TYPE like 0.

Let's flow now to the current programming language in style nowadays, OOP. Object-Oriented Programming languages use 5 programming concepts: DATA TYPE, KEYWORD, FUNCTION, OBJECT like cout, and METHOD like toString().

Can there be another type of programming language that will supplant OOP? Only the future can tell.

Here are the questions for this week. Define the following computer terminology.

1. Variable
2. Class
3. Method
4. Statement
5. Expression
6. Application
7. Compiler
8. Intepreter
9. Browser
10. Scope

John Sindayen

Computer Science::Computer Science

It used to be that Computer Science was not considered to be an academic field of study. The reason for that is that academicians considered computers as tools rather than an art or a science.

Consider the following analogy of a monkey with a stick.

SCIENCE: Monkey rubs 2 sticks together and suddenly said, "Eureka! I'm a scientist. I've discovered the elemental fire.

ART: Monkey carves sticks with a stone and suddenly said, "Voila! I'm an artist. I've invented sculpture.

TOOL: Monkey uses stick to get banana from tree and suddenly said, "Hello Banana! I'm a software engineer. I've invented a tool to get bananas.

Nowadays, university academicians accept Computer Science as its own field of study and as its own department, even separate from the Mathematics and the Engineering departments. But computers are still only tools for the artists and the scientists to use.

In certain fields of study, however, Computer Science is not considered a tool, but a philosophy into understanding intelligence. That field of study is Artificial Intelligence, AI.

Most research and development in AI nowadays, however, are made by private companies rather than the US government. If the US government can allocate the budget for AI like they did for landing a man on the moon, then we will make a giant leap in Artificial Intelligence technology.

Now, name five stories, movies, or shows with intelligent robots as characters.

Computer Science References:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/node1.html
http://www.nature.com/news/south-korea-trumpets-860-million-ai-fund-after-alphago-shock-1.19595
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/i-ll-be-back-the-return-of-artificial-intelligence
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/527336/do-we-need-asimovs-laws/

Robots must follow Isaac Asimov's three laws.

John Sindayen