AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)
Graham Richards · 2008
General term for the computer simulation of intelligent human performance and the development of programmes which achieve this. Modern AI arguably began with Newell, Shaw and Simon (1958) and it has formed a central strand in Cognitive Psychology ever since. The range of human abilities and psychological traits which it is now possible to simulate is huge: from neurosis to language comprehension, creativity to ‘scientific discovery’. And of course in many respects computers can far exceed human capacities, especially where reasoning, logic and mathematical calculations are concerned. The literature on this is vast, much of it more properly classified as ‘computer science’ than Psychology. Two major traditions have arisen in AI, ‘Computationism’ and connectionism, including parallel distributed processing (PDP). In interpreting the broader significance of these developments, a number of deeper conceptual issues have surfaced, or resurfaced, notably relating to the cluster of inter-woven concepts of agency, free will, creativity, consciousness and ‘personhood’. For a recent overview, see Boden (2006b).