Markov Decision Processes in Artificial Intelligence

The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. «This text is unique in bringing together so many results hitherto found only in part in other texts and papers. . . . The text is fairly self-contained, inclusive of some basic mathematical results needed, and provides a rich diet of examples, applications, and exercises. The bibliographical material at the end of each chapter is excellent, not only from a historical perspective, but because it is valuable for researchers in acquiring a good perspective of the MDP research potential.» —Zentralblatt fur Mathematik «. . . it is of great value to advanced-level students, researchers, and professional practitioners of this field to have now a complete volume (with more than 600 pages) devoted to this topic. . . . Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming represents an up-to-date, unified, and rigorous treatment of theoretical and computational aspects of discrete-time Markov decision processes.» —Journal of the American Statistical Association

Presents recent advances in both models and systems for intelligent decision making. Organisations often face complex decisions requiring the assessment of large amounts of data. In recent years Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been applied with considerable success to support decision making in a wide range of complex real-world problems. The integration of MCDA and AI provides new capabilities relating to the structuring of complex decision problems in static and distributed environments. These include the handling of massive data sets, the modelling of ill-structured information, the construction of advanced decision models, and the development of efficient computational optimization algorithms for problem solving. This book covers a rich set of topics, including intelligent decision support technologies, data mining models for decision making, evidential reasoning, evolutionary multiobjective optimization, fuzzy modelling, as well as applications in management and engineering. Multicriteria Decision Aid and Artificial Intelligence: Covers all of the recent advances in intelligent decision making. Includes a presentation of hybrid models and algorithms for preference modelling and optimisation problems. Provides illustrations of new intelligent technologies and architectures for decision making in static and distributed environments. Explores the general topics on preference modelling and learning, along with the coverage of the main techniques and methodologies and applications. Is written by experts in the field. This book provides an excellent reference tool for the increasing number of researchers and practitioners interested in the integration of MCDA and AI for the development of effective hybrid decision support methodologies and systems. Academics and post-graduate students in the fields of operational research, artificial intelligence and management science or decision analysis will also find this book beneficial.

The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. «[A]nyone who works with Markov processes whose state space is uncountably infinite will need this most impressive book as a guide and reference.» -American Scientist «There is no question but that space should immediately be reserved for [this] book on the library shelf. Those who aspire to mastery of the contents should also reserve a large number of long winter evenings.» -Zentralblatt f?r Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete/Mathematics Abstracts «Ethier and Kurtz have produced an excellent treatment of the modern theory of Markov processes that [is] useful both as a reference work and as a graduate textbook.» -Journal of Statistical Physics Markov Processes presents several different approaches to proving weak approximation theorems for Markov processes, emphasizing the interplay of methods of characterization and approximation. Martingale problems for general Markov processes are systematically developed for the first time in book form. Useful to the professional as a reference and suitable for the graduate student as a text, this volume features a table of the interdependencies among the theorems, an extensive bibliography, and end-of-chapter problems.

This title considers the special of random processes known as semi-Markov processes. These possess the Markov property with respect to any intrinsic Markov time such as the first exit time from an open set or a finite iteration of these times. The class of semi-Markov processes includes strong Markov processes, L?vy and Smith stepped semi-Markov processes, and some other subclasses. Extensive coverage is devoted to non-Markovian semi-Markov processes with continuous trajectories and, in particular, to semi-Markov diffusion processes. Readers looking to enrich their knowledge on Markov processes will find this book a valuable resource.

This well-written book provides a clear and accessible treatment of the theory of discrete and continuous-time Markov chains, with an emphasis towards applications. The mathematical treatment is precise and rigorous without superfluous details, and the results are immediately illustrated in illuminating examples. This book will be extremely useful to anybody teaching a course on Markov processes. Jean-Fran?ois Le Gall, Professor at Universit? de Paris-Orsay, France. Markov processes is the class of stochastic processes whose past and future are conditionally independent, given their present state. They constitute important models in many applied fields. After an introduction to the Monte Carlo method, this book describes discrete time Markov chains, the Poisson process and continuous time Markov chains. It also presents numerous applications including Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Simulated Annealing, Hidden Markov Models, Annotation and Alignment of Genomic sequences, Control and Filtering, Phylogenetic tree reconstruction and Queuing networks. The last chapter is an introduction to stochastic calculus and mathematical finance. Features include: The Monte Carlo method, discrete time Markov chains, the Poisson process and continuous time jump Markov processes. An introduction to diffusion processes, mathematical finance and stochastic calculus. Applications of Markov processes to various fields, ranging from mathematical biology, to financial engineering and computer science. Numerous exercises and problems with solutions to most of them

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HARDWARE DESIGN Learn foundational and advanced topics in Neural Processing Unit design with real-world examples from leading voices in the field In Artificial Intelligence Hardware Design: Challenges and Solutions , distinguished researchers and authors Drs. Albert Chun Chen Liu and Oscar Ming Kin Law deliver a rigorous and practical treatment of the design applications of specific circuits and systems for accelerating neural network processing. Beginning with a discussion and explanation of neural networks and their developmental history, the book goes on to describe parallel architectures, streaming graphs for massive parallel computation, and convolution optimization. The authors offer readers an illustration of in-memory computation through Georgia Tech’s Neurocube and Stanford’s Tetris accelerator using the Hybrid Memory Cube, as well as near-memory architecture through the embedded eDRAM of the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Science, and other institutions. Readers will also find a discussion of 3D neural processing techniques to support multiple layer neural networks, as well as information like: A thorough introduction to neural networks and neural network development history, as well as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models Explorations of various parallel architectures, including the Intel CPU, Nvidia GPU, Google TPU, and Microsoft NPU, emphasizing hardware and software integration for performance improvement Discussions of streaming graph for massive parallel computation with the Blaize GSP and Graphcore IPU An examination of how to optimize convolution with UCLA Deep Convolutional Neural Network accelerator filter decomposition Perfect for hardware and software engineers and firmware developers, Artificial Intelligence Hardware Design is an indispensable resource for anyone working with Neural Processing Units in either a hardware or software capacity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining is the fastest growing field in computer science. AI and data mining algorithms and techniques are found to be useful in different areas like pattern recognition, automatic threat detection, automatic problem solving, visual recognition, fraud detection, detecting developmental delay in children, and many other applications. However, applying AI and data mining techniques or algorithms successfully in these areas needs a concerted effort, fostering integrative research between experts ranging from diverse disciplines from data science to Artificial Intelligence. Successful application of security frameworks to enable meaningful, cost effective, personalize security service is a primary aim of engineers and researchers today. However realizing this goal requires effective understanding, application and amalgamation of AI and Data Mining and several other computing technologies to deploy such system in an effective manner. This book provides state of the art approaches of artificial intelligence and data mining in these areas. It includes areas of detection, prediction, as well as future framework identification, development, building service systems and analytical aspects. In all these topics, applications of AI and data mining, such as artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithm and hybrid mechanisms, are explained and explored. This book is aimed at the modeling and performance prediction of efficient security framework systems, bringing to light a new dimension in the theory and practice.  This groundbreaking new volume presents these topics and trends, bridging the research gap on AI and data mining to enable wide-scale implementation. Whether for the veteran engineer or the student, this is a must-have for any library.

Piecewise-deterministic Markov processes form a class of stochastic models with a sizeable scope of applications: biology, insurance, neuroscience, networks, finance… Such processes are defined by a deterministic motion punctuated by random jumps at random times, and offer simple yet challenging models to study. Nevertheless, the issue of statistical estimation of the parameters ruling the jump mechanism is far from trivial. Responding to new developments in the field as well as to current research interests and needs, Statistical inference for piecewise-deterministic Markov processes offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art results. It covers a wide range of general processes as well as applied models. The present book also dwells on statistics in the context of Markov chains, since piecewise-deterministic Markov processes are characterized by an embedded Markov chain corresponding to the position of the process right after the jumps.

The digital world is characterized by its immediacy, its density of information and its omnipresence, in contrast to the concrete world. Significant changes will occur in our society as AI becomes integrated into many aspects of our lives. This book focuses on this vision of universalization by dealing with the development and framework of AI applicable to all. It develops a moral framework based on a neo-Darwinian approach – the concept of Ethics by Evolution – to accompany AI by observing a certain number of requirements, recommendations and rules at each stage of design, implementation and use. The societal responsibility of artificial intelligence is an essential step towards ethical, eco-responsible and trustworthy AI, aiming to protect and serve people and the common good in a beneficial way.

The development of a research, teaching, or application of competitive (economic) intelligence requires a strategic and transverse vision in regards to related issues. It is essential to integrate the role of culture when interpreting results, either from the training of a specialist or in respect to a country or region. The authors of this book, members of an expert group supported by the CNRS in France, bring all of their talents together to create a comprehensive book that does just this and more.