Computers and Thought: A Practical Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Computers and Thought provides a unified, self-contained introduction to artificialintelligence for readers with little or no computing background. It presents an original extended AIprogramming project - the Automated Tourist Guide exercise throughout the main chapters of the textto illustrate the material covered and show how AI actually works.Most chapters illustrate aparticular AI topic, with sections on the background to the topic, methods, applications, and thelimitations of previous proposals. In addition, there are end of chapter summaries and gradedexercises, suggested readings, a glossary, and an appendix on programming.Computers and Thoughtdetails the theory and issues involved in AI and covers computer simulation of human activities,such as problem solving and natural language understanding, and computer vision. Its investigationof AI is usefully extended to models of cognition, the nature of mind and intelligence, and thesocial implications of AI and cognitive science.The computer language is POP-11, an easy to learnlanguage that can be used interactively, like LISP, and that has an appearance similar to PASCAL. Itis not necessary to run the illustrative POP-11 programs on a computer, since a feature of thelanguage is the ease with which it can be understood from the printed page.Mike Sharples, DavidHogg, Chris Hutchison, Steve Torrance, and David Young have all been faculty members at The Schoolof Cognitive and Computing Sciences, Sussex University, Brighton, England Computers and Thought isincluded in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A Boden. A BradfordBook