In the Beginning was Information

“Speaking birds”: Parrots and budgies have the ability to faithfully imitatewords and even sentences of human language. They simply reproducewhat they hear. When a parrot says, “Polly wants a glass of water”, thisdoes not reflect an actual desire. Even when it says, “Good morning”, itstill is not a real greeting. There is no real meaning behind this “speech”of the bird; it does not speak English or German or even its own languagewhen it makes these sounds. In contrast to the previous examples, thismimicry does not represent a communication system.A2.3 Does “Artificial Intelligence” Exist?The concept “artificial intelligence” – abbreviation AI – increasinglyappears in catch phrases in many scientific journals as well as in popularliterature [N1, S6, W1, and W7]. This falsely used catchword creates theimpression that there will be no distinction between human intelligenceand that of a computer in the future. The first computers were optimisticallycalled electronic brains. Fortunately this idea has been discarded,since there is no comparison between the human brain and a computer[G10]. But unfortunately the American expression “artificial intelligence”was adopted uncritically, and caused more confusion than enlightenment.The question actually involves the following aspects:– The objective is not (we hope!) to create systems which would artificiallyimprove the intelligence of somebody with insufficient intellect,like one can employ an artificial kidney in the case of poor kidney performance.– The word “intelligence” does not only refer to the intellect, but alsoincludes the gathering, transmission and evaluation of messages. Onoffice specialising in intelligence does not deal with intellectual matters,but is concerned with information.There is no fixed definition of AI, but the envisaged objective could bebriefly described as follows: It involves a certain software technology andnot for example the hardware of a new computer generation, or some newkind of computer architecture. But it does involve the development of programmingsystems for dealing with issues like the following:1. Expert systems: This involves information systems where questionsand answers in some area of specialisation can be stored in the form ofif-then-else rules; new cases are incorporated as they occur. In medicaldiagnosis, in the search for mineral resources, and even in income taxconsultations, the branching nature of the questions and the materialrequires special programming. An expert system essentially comprises adatabase containing single facts as well as the relevant rules and an infer-218