S. Russell, P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Third Edition

Since the publication of its first edition in 1995,  A Modern Approach has become a classic in our field. Even researchers outside AI, working in other areas of computer science, are familiar with the text and have gained a better appreciation of our field thanks to the efforts of its authors, Stuart Russell of UC Berkeley and Peter Norvig of Google Inc. It has been adopted by over 1000 universities in over 100 countries, and has provided an excellent introduction to AI to several hundreds of thousands of students worldwide. The book not only stands out in the way it provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to almost all aspects of AI for a student entering our field, it also provides a tremendous resource for experienced AI researchers interested in a good introduction to subfields of AI outside of their own area of specialization. In fact, many researchers enjoy reading insightful descriptions of their own area, combined, of course, with the tense moment of checking the author index to see whether their own work made it into the book. Fortunately, due in part to the comprehensive nature of the text, almost all AI researchers who have been around for a few years can be proud to see their own work cited. Writing such a high-quality and erudite overview of our field, while distilling key aspects of literally thousands of research papers, is a daunting task that requires a unique talent; the Russell and Norvig author team has clearly handled this challenge exceptionally well. Given the impact of the first edition of the book, a challenge for the authors was to keep such a unique text up-to-date in the face of rapid developments in AI over the past decade and a half. Fortunately, the authors have succeeded admirably in this challenge by bringing out a second edition in 2003 and now a third edition in 2010. Each of these new editions involves major rewrites and additions to the book to keep it fully current. The revisions also provide an insightful overview of the evolution of AI in recent years. The text covers essentially all major areas of AI, while providing ample and balanced coverage of each of the subareas. For certain subfields, part of the text was provided by respective subject experts. In particular, Jitendra Malik and David Forsyth contributed the chapter on computer vision, Sebastian Thrun wrote the chapter on robotics, and Vibhu Mittal helped with the chapter on natural language. Nick Hay, Mehran Sahami, and Ernest Davis contributed to the engaging set of exercises for students. Overall, this book brings together deep knowledge of various facets of AI, from the authors as well as from many experts in various subfields. The topics covered in the book are woven together via the theme of a grand challenge in AI — that of creating an intelligent agent, one that takes “the best possible [rational] action in [any] situation.” Every aspect of AI is considered in the context of such an agent. For instance, the book discusses agents that solve problems through search, planning, and reasoning, agents that are situated in the physical world, agents that learn from observations, agents that interact with the world through vision and perception, and agents that manipulate the physical world through