#AI

Artificial Intelligence 4 (EC)

CLICK -  AI Textbook (previous ed)

CLICK - Assessment Letter

In its simplest sense, artificial intelligence refers to computer programs or robots that mimic human intelligence, not only by performing the same functions that humans do (like recognizing speech), but by being able to either reason or learn from examples.

When people talk about artificial intelligence, or AI, and homeland security or terrorism in the same breath, they are referring to one of a number of techniques designed to process, organize and analyze data relating to terrorism events or presumed terrorist behaviors.

One of the challenges to AI systems is simply figuring out what information to collect in order to feed it into an analytic system. It is very difficult to know when patterns are meaningful predictors of the future, and when they aren't atterns are often presumed to be predictive, although they may not be. (That is, just because one terrorist attack involved Saudi nationals who went to flight school does not mean another attack will; collecting all of the information possible about Saudi nationals going to flight school in the United States is not necessarily predictive.)

Such techniques include neural networks, genetic algorithms, data mining techniques and rule-bases systems.(Amy Zalman)