Artificial Intelligence: Metaphor, Science and Information Technology

Abstract

To the present days, the scientific direction of computer science metaphorically called "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) as well as corresponding information technologies is becoming of strategic value as the theoretical and the technological basis of digital economy of the 21-th century. The leading economies of the world invest huge money in R&D of AI area. In many countries, e.g. in the USA and Europe the standardization effort in AI scope are initiated. In Russia, the President issued a decree "On development of artificial Intelligence in the Russian Federation" dated 10 October 2019. One must acknowledge, however, that up to the current days there is no common opinion, among AI scientists and engineers, on what is the research subject of AI, which are its R&D goals, scientific contents, methodology and technologies. In the paper, Artificial Intelligence is considered as a scientific discipline that is a section of Computer Science. In it, the knowledge acts as the main research subject and its scientific contents is composed of methodologies, methods and algorithms of the three AI subsections those are knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and knowledge usage for decision making. This point of view is justified in the paper by analysis of AI historical issues, composition of its scientific topics and technologies. The aforementioned analysis is underway with regard to the basic R&D problems that should be in the focus of the AI roadmap of the Russian scientific and industry communities in context of the Presidential decree on the strategy of the development of Artificial Intelligence in Russian Federation.