Scientists started the field of AI research in the 1950's with the now largely failed quest to produce machines that think. However, they did open the door to making improved individual products that can "learn" how to do their limited jobs better, and they also opened the door to the use of AI in games and in recommender systems such as you see here on Amazon.
This book is the second edition of the successful book by Tim Jones on different facets of AI, how they can be used, and how to write programs that implement the necessary algorithms. The book begins with a short but insightful chapter on the history of AI, followed by a series of chapters, each covering a specific AI technique. The last chapter covers the state of AI today. Each chapter begins with a short description of the technique covered, sometimes including parallels to the real world that are behind the algorithmic choices of the technique. Next, the algorithm is described, and a sample implementation is given and discussed. Last, the author presents examples of problems that can be solved by the given technique. This book basically replaces the first edition, as everything in that book is in this one plus the A* pathfinding algorithm, particle swarm optimization, classifier systems, reinforcement learning, and natural language processing. For several of the techniques variations and tuning opportunities are presented, allowing the reader/programmer to easily adapt the technique to a different problem of a similar type. There are also plenty of illustrations and diagrams, making the material easier to absorb. I highly recommend that you purchase this second edition, even if you already have the first edition. It is a worthwhile upgrade. The author assumes that the reader has already been exposed to the basic ideas of artificial intelligence and is proficient at programming in C. I notice that Amazon does not show the table of contents for the 2nd edition, so I do that here.
1. History of AI
2. Pathfind and the A-Star Algorithm **
3. Simulated Annealing
4. Particle Swarm Optimization **
5. Introduction to Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART1)
6. Classifier Systems **
7. Ant Algorithms
8. Introduction to Neural Networks and the BackPropagation Algorithm
9. Introduction to Reinforcement Learning **
10. Introduction to Genetic Algorithms
11. Artificial Life
12. Introduction to Rules-Based Systems
13. Introduction to Fuzzy Logic
14. Natural Language Processing **
15. The Bigram Model
16. Agent-Based Software
17. AI Today
** Denotes a totally new chapter