Machine Learning and AI with Simple Python and Matlab Scripts

1Introduction

1.1 Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the most exciting and active fields of research in recent years. AI attempts to develop software and computing devices that are able to perform tasks which have been associated only with thinking beings for centuries. Mimicking intelligence, creativity, deduction capability and ability to learn from experience are some of the directions that AI undertakes. AI's recent ubiquitous presence in everyone's life makes this technology an integral part of daily activities that is often taken for granted. Most people treat AI tools as black boxes (i.e. devices whose outputs are observable but whose internal details are unknown by users) which spit out solutions to make problems go away. A reader of this book will quickly appreciate that there is no magic behind the way AI operates. By understanding the mechanisms employed in many popular AI techniques, correct solutions are easily obtained for complicated tasks. Through hands‐on programming projects, the reader will be able to grasp how easily many otherwise unsolvable problems can be handled using AI.

1.2 A Historical Perspective

The question of whether a human‐created device can be intelligent goes back to the middle of the twentieth century when the so‐called Turing test was proposed to examine whether or not a machine is capable of thinking [1, 2]. The Turing test assumes that a human interrogator asks questions to both another human and a ...