[FZ1]

> the (possibly unattainable) ideal would be having everything expressed as "pretty much an if-then statement" indeed.

This is flatly incorrect - the point of AI is to have a machine achieve intelligent behaviors without explicit programming.

If an "if-then" must be written by a programmer for every single behavior, then this is called "programming". It is not called "artificial intelligence".

[marcinzm]

No, the point of AI is to have agents achieve goals based on observing an environment. Nothing says they have to be complicated agents or not explicitly programmed. Any book on Computer Science AI will be largely filled with agents that use rather explicit logic and algorithms.

[FZ1]

Still incorrect. And I would urge you to read one of these books you reference - they ALL aim to achieve that agent's action ON ITS OWN - i.e., by learning from its environment, and NOT by being explicitly programmed.

Yes, there are many explicit if-else style programs in Russel & Norvig, & other books - but those are the 'training wheels', until better methods are developed. For actual AI, the training wheels are supposed to come off, and the agent learns and acts on its own.

[marcinzm]

There is a distinction between what is AI and what is state of the art AI. Simple approaches are AI but not state of the art AI. At one point massive rule based systems were considered state of the art for example and those were nothing but explicit if-else statement. Now they're not but they're still AI.

BASIC, for example, would be considered merely a training wheel in any book on programing languages but it is nonetheless a programing language.

[jfkebwjsbx]

Not at all. AI does not need any learning at all.

You are talking about ML, not AI.