It seems Artificial Intelligence is on-topic at Robotics SE.
The central problems (or goals) of Artificial Intelligence research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, communication, and perception.
Does it mean the topic is already covered there? Or the scope of the proposal is different or broader? If so, in what sense?
Proposal: Artificial Intelligence
I don't think so, at least not in all circumstances. It might be on topic if you were writing an AI to control the motion or some aspect of a physical robot, but this is not always the case. It might be somewhat off topic if the AI you were making controlled the color of your background or played mario.
Basically, if you went to Robotics SE, and wanted help coding a certain aspect of your, for instance, video game AI, they would be unlikely to be very happy about it.
Though as far as Asimov's laws are concerned this is true. It would fit in either. However, looking at the front page of Robotics SE, I see mainly questions about physical motors, arduinos and microcontrollers.
Robotics and AI are strongly related. Yet they differ clearly.
There is a sub-field/branch of AI (no disrespect here!) called "embodied AI" that focuses on AI endowed with a body---basically humanoid robots but also self-driving cars and more abstract models. It seems the technical aspect of this branch is at home in Robotics SE.
But there are also AIs without an explicit body. Examples today are all the "AIs" behind Facebook's face detection machinery or Google's voice/image analysis, etc. Or Apple's Siri, which is personified, but not embodied. This is arguably most of the work we hear about these days.
Interestingly, some people claim that you cannot have "true AI" or "strong AI" without some form of body, but that's another debate.
This quite famous blog post also tries to demystify AI in general, including the belief that robots and AI are them same. An exert:
So let’s clear things up. First, stop thinking of robots. A robot is a container for AI, sometimes mimicking the human form, sometimes not—but the AI itself is the computer inside the robot. AI is the brain, and the robot is its body—if it even has a body. For example, the software and data behind Siri is AI, the woman’s voice we hear is a personification of that AI, and there’s no robot involved at all.
Robotics != AI
Basically robots are just containers for AI, so AI topic should have its own branch.
See: What is the difference between AI and robots?
Btw. The proposal now has been started, please join AI beta.
