Note: This is my personal interpretation based on self-study of the lecture slides, notes, videos, and supplementary external resources. As a self-learner without formal enrollment or instructor feedback, my understanding, commentary, and connections between sources may be inaccurate or incomplete. Please refer to the official course materials for authoritative content
Programming vs AI Programming
Programming concepts and AI Programming concepts are analogous but different in their semantic depth.
Consider string cat.
This can be understood as a string value cat, which is a simple atomic data. The string itself does not encode semantic relationships. In other words, when given a string cat, the computer does not get its semantic meaning.
However, when it comes to AI programming concept, it can be understood in the context of a symbol in a conceptual/hierarchical system such that cat is an mammal, which belongs to the animal.
Formally speaking, their biggest differences are:
- all knowledge about domain is in data not code.
- code know about structure of a data (e.g. how properties are stored, how “is a” relationships are stroed)
- code has no reference to any domain concept.
Programming Language’s Symbol
LISP
Since this course’s programming language is LISP, and I am not familiar about it, I did a quick search about it. LISP is a programming language that satisfies the four criteria:
- use primitive data types: strings, numbers, arrays
- use operators: +, -, +, /, etc.
- use flow of control: if, or, and, while, for
- use input/output: le handling, loading, compiling programs
- specifically designed for symbolic programming