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Can machines really think? Is the mind just a complicated computer program? "Introducing Artificial Intelligence" focuses on the major issues behind one of the hardest scientific problems ever undertaken. Artificial Intelligence is not just a fictional concept. Half a century of research into the construction of intelligent machinery has resulted in machines capable of beating the best human chess players and humanoid robots that can walk and interact with us. Despite early claims that intelligent machines were just around the corner, progress has been slow and difficult. Consciousness and environment are tow of the deeply complex problems are two deeply complex problems encountered. How exactly should we go about building an intelligent machine? Should it work like a mind? Should it work like a brain? Does it require a body? "Introducing Artificial Intelligence" clearly explains the advances made over the past half-century, from Alan Turing's influential groundwork to cutting edge robotics and the New Al.

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The long-anticipated revision of this #1 selling book offers the most comprehensive, state of the art introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence for modern applications. Intelligent Agents. Solving Problems by Searching. Informed Search Methods. Game Playing. Agents that Reason Logically. First-order Logic. Building a Knowledge Base. Inference in First-Order Logic. Logical Reasoning Systems. Practical Planning. Planning and Acting. Uncertainty. Probabilistic Reasoning Systems. Making Simple Decisions. Making Complex Decisions. Learning from Observations. Learning with Neural Networks. Reinforcement Learning. Knowledge in Learning. Agents that Communicate. Practical Communication in English. Perception. Robotics. For computer professionals, linguists, and cognitive scientists interested in artificial intelligence.

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Experience the thrill of the hunt in the third October Daye urban fantasy novel. October "Toby" Daye is a changeling-half human and half fae-and the only one who has earned knighthood. Now she must take on a nightmarish new challenge. Someone is stealing the children of the fae as well as mortal children, and all signs point to Blind Michael. Toby has no choice but to track the villain down-even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael's realm, home of the Wild Hunt-and no road may be taken more than once. If Toby cannot escape with the children, she will fall prey to the Wild Hunt and Blind Michael's inescapable power.

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• ISBN13: 9780756406264
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

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The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. Intelligent Agents. Solving Problems by Searching. Informed Search Methods. Game Playing. Agents that Reason Logically. First-order Logic. Building a Knowledge Base. Inference in First-Order Logic. Logical Reasoning Systems. Practical Planning. Planning and Acting. Uncertainty. Probabilistic Reasoning Systems. Making Simple Decisions. Making Complex Decisions. Learning from Observations. Learning with Neural Networks. Reinforcement Learning. Knowledge in Learning. Agents that Communicate. Practical Communication in English. Perception. Robotics. For those interested in artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach introduces basic ideas in artificial intelligence from the perspective of building intelligent agents, which the authors define as "anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon the environment through effectors." This textbook is up-to-date and is organized using the latest principles of good textbook design. It includes historical notes at the end of every chapter, exercises, margin notes, a bibliography, and a competent index. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach covers a wide array of material, including first-order logic, game playing, knowledge representation, planning, and reinforcement learning.

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• textbook
• Computer Science
• AI

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A breakthrough theory that tools and technology are the real drivers of human evolutionAlthough humans are one of the great apes, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are remarkably different from them. Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and would die in nature without them. Yet, despite our status as the weakest ape, we are the masters of this planet. Given these inherent deficits, how did humans come out on top?In this fascinating new account of our origins, leading archaeologist Timothy Taylor proposes a new way of thinking about human evolution through our relationship with objects. Drawing on the latest fossil evidence, Taylor argues that at each step of our species’ development, humans made choices that caused us to assume greater control of our evolution. Our appropriation of objects allowed us to walk upright, lose our body hair, and grow significantly larger brains. As we push the frontiers of scientific technology, creating prosthetics, intelligent implants, and artificially modified genes, we continue a process that started in the prehistoric past, when we first began to extend our powers through objects.Weaving together lively discussions of major discoveries of human skeletons and artifacts with a reexamination of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Taylor takes us on an exciting and challenging journey that begins to answer the fundamental question about our existence: what makes humans unique, and what does that mean for our future?

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• ISBN13: 9780230617636
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

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UNDERSTANDING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is one of the first four titles that launch an exciting new Pocket Science series, from the editors of America's leading popular science magazine, Scientific American. Comprised of critically acclaimed essays by the world's leading experts on each topic in the series, these collections will become definitive texts on crucial issues of our technological times. The authoritative and prestigious reputation of Scientific American puts these books at the top of any science fan's list. Called AI by followers and practitioners, the field of Artificial Intelligence is dedicated to the proposition that human brains are nothing more than machines, albeit extremely complicated ones, whose abilities will someday be duplicated-and surpassed-by computers. This collection of essays discusses the wide spectrum of knowledge compiled on the pursuit of this elusive goal. It includes a fascinating overview of the subject by Douglas B. Lenat, the president of Cycorp, Inc., and a forward-thinking essay on "The Rise of Robots" by Hans Marvec, the principal research scientists at the robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which conservatively estimates that by 2050, robot brains based on computers will start rivaling human intelligence. Other articles include "Here's Looking at You," which profiles a robot who learns about itself and its environment through trial and error, as well as a profile on Marvin L. Minsky, the mastermind behind Artificial Intelligence. The book-like the entire series-is targeted to intelligent readers who want to expand their understanding of complex scientific subjects and contains essays from top scientists working in the field. Like the magazine, the book encompasses a spectrum of innovation through expert-authored articles that demonstrate the convergence of science, technology, and the world economy, challenging readers with fresh, new ideas and empowering them to make smart, strategic decisions.

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Creating robust artificial intelligence is one of the greatest challenges for game developers, yet the commercial success of a game is often dependent upon the quality of the AI. In this book, Ian Millington brings extensive professional experience to the problem of improving the quality of AI in games. He describes numerous examples from real games and explores the underlying ideas through detailed case studies. He goes further to introduce many techniques little used by developers today. The book's associated web site contains a library of C++ source code and demonstration programs, and a complete commercial source code library of AI algorithms and techniques."Artificial Intelligence for Games - 2nd edition" will be highly useful to academics teaching courses on game AI, in that it includes exercises with each chapter. It will also include new and expanded coverage of the following: AI-oriented gameplay; Behavior driven AI; Casual games (puzzle games). * The first comprehensive, professional tutorial and reference to implement true AI in games written by an engineer with extensive industry experience.* Walks through the entire development process from beginning to end.* Includes examples from over 100 real games, 10 in-depth case studies, and web site with sample code.

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Brilliant, reminiscent of Lewis Hyde's The Gift in its reach and of Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time in its haunting evocation of human lives, offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human history--from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. Brox plumbs the class implications of light--who had it, who didn't--through the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world's ecosystems. Edison's "tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away" produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox's informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us. Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and--only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States--timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: In Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, Jane Brox illuminates the fascinating and forgotten history of man-made light, tracing its development through centuries of sputtering, smoking candles, to the gradual refinement of gas and, finally, electric light. Brox captures the sense of wonder that permeated the Chicago World's Fair as electric light lit up the "White City," and shows how quickly we became reliant on electric light, recounting the trepidation and anxiety that accompanied the mandatory blackouts of World War II and the power outages that have plagued New York City's power grid since the 1960s. Brox also addresses the unexpected consequences of light pollution, detailing the struggles of astronomers who are no longer able to see stars, and migrating birds that confusedly circle lit buildings at night until they die from exhaustion. Brilliant is an eloquent account of how a luxury so quickly became a necessity, and permanently changed human history. --Lynette Mong Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Jane Brox, Author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light Dear Amazon Readers, So much of life as we know it--our long evening hours, our flexible working days, our feelings of safety at night--depends upon cheap, abundant light made possible by the incandescent bulb. Now that new government energy efficiency standards will make filament light bulbs illegal by 2014--and for the first time our new means of illumination may not be as satisfactory as the old--it's the perfect moment to look at the extraordinary story of how we came to inhabit our world built of light. Just five hundred years ago almost everyone lived at the mercy of the dark. In a time before street lighting, travel at night was always perilous, and forbidden to all but a few. Most people were confined to their homes after sunset--authorities in some towns even locked citizens inside their houses for the night. Within their close quarters, many had no hope of more than a few hours of light in evening--meager, troublesome light cast by one or two stinking tallow candles or oil lamps. Since then, each century of painstaking progress in illumination has had its own drama. The 18th century's need for more and more light spurred a world-wide hunt for whale oil, which proved to be so exhaustive it put the very survival of some whale species in peril, while the 19th century race to build a viable electric light involved the work of many scientists throughout Europe and America. In truth, Edison's bulb was not the isolated triumph it often seems to us now. His achievement was only possible after centuries of evolving understanding of electricity, and decades of experiments by dozens of scientists racing to fashion a workable incandescent light. Edison's light assured cheap, abundant illumination for many, but not all. The democratic distribution of light in the United States depended upon the decades-long struggle by rural Americans to have the same access to electricity as those in the cities and suburbs. And controversies continue: as the demands for energy efficiency compete with our desires to have the light we want, we find ourselves in the midst of a new race for the perfect energy efficient light of the future. And as the grave consequences of light pollution become more and more evident we are faced with the question: How much light is too much? When you read Brilliant you'll not only gain insight into the history of artificial light, you'll find that the surprising, complex story of our illumination is also the story of our evolving modern selves. -Jane Brox (Photo © Luc Demers)

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• ISBN13: 9780547055275
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

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"People sometimes ask me what they should read to find out about artificial intelligence. Herbert Simon's book The Sciences of the Artificial is always on the list I give them. Every page issues a challenge to conventional thinking, and the layman who digests it well will certainly understand what the field of artificial intelligence hopes to accomplish. I recommend it in the same spirit that I recommend Freud to people who ask about psychoanalysis, or Piaget to those who ask about child psychology: If you want to learn about a subject, start by reading its founding fathers." -- George A. Miller, Complex Information Processing Continuing his exploration of the organization of complexity and the science of design, this new edition of Herbert Simon's classic work on artificial intelligence adds a chapter that sorts out the current themes and tools -- chaos, adaptive systems, genetic algorithms -- for analyzing complexity and complex systems. There are updates throughout the book as well. These take into account important advances in cognitive psychology and the science of design while confirming and extending the book's basic thesis: that a physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for intelligent action. The chapter "Economic Reality" has also been revised to reflect a change in emphasis in Simon's thinking about the respective roles of organizations and markets in economic systems.

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• ISBN13: 9780262691918
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

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This is a practical, highly-accessible introduction to the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence.This book demystifies artificial intelligence, making it concrete and transparent. It covers knowledge representation, inference, expert systems, natural language processing, machine learning, neural networks, agents, robots, and more. The book includes extensive self-test questions, case studies, figures, worked examples, sample algorithms and a complete glossary.For anyone interested in artificial intelligence; no prior background is required.