Some AI Tasks

Human intelligence involves both ``mundane'' and ``expert'' reasoning. By mundane reasoning I mean all those things which (nearly) all of us can routinely do (to various abilities) in order to act and interact in the world. This will include:

• Vision: The ability to make sense of what we see.
• Natural Language: The ability to communicate with others in English or another natural language.
• Planning: The ability to decide on a good sequence of actions to achieve your goals.
• Robotics: The ability to move and act in the world, possibly responding to new perceptions.

By expert reasoning I mean things that only some people are good at, and which require extensive training. It can be especially useful to automate these tasks, as there may be a shortage of human experts. Expert reasoning includes:

• Medical diagnosis.
• Equipment repair.
• Computer configuration.
• Financial planning.

Expert Systems are concerned with the automation of these sorts of tasks.

AI research is concerned with automating both these kinds of reasoning. It turns out, however, that it is the mundane tasks that are by far the hardest to automate.