Said to be the most basic form of artificial intelligence, reactive artificial intelligence although unable to hold memory and use that information to aid them in a situation. The machine simply acts in the moment, making decisions based on what is observable at the current moment. In an article covering the different types of artificial intelligence; Arend Hintze, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology & Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University talks about IBM’s Deep Blue, a reactive A.I created to do nothing other than to play chess (Hintze, 2019). The AI program analyzes the chessboard in its current state while calculating each possible move, then acts on the best possible way. The article covers the process of Deep Blues decision making skills, and its actions based purely on the situation it is in (Hintze, 2019).
Deep Bluebeat international grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the late 1990s in a chess game, as a supercomputer. This is the perfect example of this type of artificial intelligence. Deep Blue can identify the pieces on a chess board and know how each moves. It makes predictions about what moves are next for it and then predicts what its opponent will do. Then it chooses the most optimal moves for itself.
Reactive AI is also seen in Google’s Alpha. Alpha was designed to play the game “Go”. Originally it was designed by DeepMind but later it was acquired by Google. It was a significant milestone in popular AI, but was succeeded by MuZero, also made by DeepMind. MuZero succeeded Alpha because of its ability to learn to play the game without being taught the rules.