An example of intelligent action

I have to go shopping in Cardiff. I need to get the following:

• The latest Soundgarden CD.
• A birthday present for a friend.
• This month's Sound on Sound magazine.
• A bottle of wine for tonight's dinner.

What present do I get my friend?

I know he likes modern Jazz. I know Herbie Hancock has new CD out. I decide to get that for him.

What wine do I get?

I am cooking beef with black bean source tonight so a good red wine would be in order. A French Burgundy would be nice.

What reasoning has gone on so far?

Quite a lot

• I know my friend likes Jazz.
• Recently from the Internet Newsgroups I have - updated my knowledge - that the Herb has a new CD out.
• The fact that it is new means that there is a good chance he does not have it already.
• (Also I do not have it so I can tape it).
• I know what meal I intend to cook.
• Red wine goes well with red meat and I know that Burgundy is nice wine.

Where to buy?

There are many possibilities:

• I know Spillers records are generally the cheapest store with a decent stock.
• But I also know they do not have a large stock of Jazz CDs.
• I therefore decide to try Spillers first for both CDs.
• The Virgin Megastore has the largest selection of Jazz CDs so I'll go there if not successful.
• Since I am going to the bottom area of Cardiff I decide to try Oddbins for the Wine

What reasoning has gone on now?

• We have know decided which stores to visit and our basic route.
• This is a planning problem. This is basically a search problem:
  • there are a variety of possible shops
  • I choose them to allow effective shopping.
• A lot of knowledge has been used (e.g):
  • The locations of the shops.
  • What they stock (and general prices).
• We have used this knowledge to help us select our shops:
  • Generally,unconstrained search is hard -- A hallmark of intelligence is the use of knowledge to make search problems more tractable.

How could a computer achieve this?

NOTE: This would be a very difficult task.

1. Capture knowledge -- Encode knowledge in a ``language''. At least two forms of knowledge.
   • Certain -- My friend likes Jazz, Street plan of Cardiff.
   • Probable -- I can find a suitable CD in Cardiff.
   Knowledge encoding is a difficult task. We will see this later in the course.
2. Search knowledge for solution. Could do this by:
   • Enumerating every combination of CD shop, Wine Merchant, Newsagent OR
   • Use information about shop locations etc. to constrain or search. OUR CHOSEN METHOD.