ABSTRACT
Modern artificial intelligence (AI), as it is known today, emerged with the introduction of electronic computers (see Chapter 18) in the late 1940s [1, 2, 14, 15]. These machines were able to store and process information at very high speeds. This enabled researchers to build models and design solutions for complex problems in many problem domains, including those simulating human intelligence and “smart” behavior. Since the early years, progress in AI has been significant. This is true particularly in computer hardware, where the size and price of computers have shrunk while the speed and reliability have increased. On the other hand, the software AI advancements have been somewhat slower, but still many novel complex software tools and algorithms have been developed. However, AI progress there has not been as fast as initially expected. For example, it was predicted that computer chess programs would defeat human experts by the end of the 1960s. Only by 1997 did a computer program (Deep Blue) defeat Gary Kasparov, the human world chess champion [15]. Moreover, some AI experts consider that this victory was achieved only because of progress in hardware development, which made possible what was essentially a brute-force search, as opposed to a true algorithmic AI solution.
