00100	CHARACTERISTICS OF AI AS A SCIENCE
00200	
00300	
00400	1.    The  subject  matter of artificial intelligence as a science is
00500	intellectual mechanisms.  These are the  mechanisms  used  to  obtain
00600	information  from  experience  and  to  solve  problems.  Presumably,
00700	complete success in understanding intellectual mechanisms would  make
00800	it  possible  to  make  a  computer program as intelligent as a human
00900	being or as all human beings put together.
01000	
01100	2. Artificial intelligence as a science  is  a  perhaps  a  bit  more
01200	advanced  than  psychology, but certainly not as advanced as physics.
01300	While something has been discovered, it is entirely possible that the
01400	textbooks  of  artificial  intelligeece  of a century hence will make
01500	little reference to any present theories.  The reason  for  the  slow
01600	progress is the difficulty of the subject.
01700	
01800	The  reason  for  the  somewhat  surprising assertion that AI is more
01900	advanced than psychology in spite of its much  shorter  existence  is
02000	the relative numbers of fundamental facts about the two subjects that
02100	I consider firmly established and likely  to  survive  the  next  100
02200	years.
02300	
02400	3.    In  principle, the problems of artificial intelligence could be
02500	solved by pure thought without experiment.  Once discovered, previous
02600	discoveries in AI have all seemed evident.  In fact, we have not been
02700	smrt enough to do this, and experiment has played an  important  role
02800	especially in moving scientific opinion in the field.
02900	
03000	The  following  are  some  of the facts about artificial intelligence
03100	that I consider established:
03200	
03300	1. Tree search is a major tool for solving many classes of  problems.
03400	There  are  many heuristics (stratagems) for improving the efficiency
03500	of the search.