Mechanism approach to the research of artificial intelligence

Summary form only given. When employing the views of granular computing to the studies of artificial intelligence, it can be seen that there have been various levels of granule existed, system level, element level, and sub-element level, etc., each of which has its own interest of research. As for the system level of granule is concerned, there have also been various views of angle among which structural angle (Structuralism Approach), functional angle (Functionalism Approach) and behavioral angle (Behaviorism Approach) are representatives. Each of the approaches to AI has made progresses and faced problems as well. In this paper, a new approach, named the Mechanism Approach, to the system level of granule in AI research is presented, which focuses on the core mechanism of intelligence formation in general cases. It is discovered that the Mechanism Approach can be implemented via the transformations that are able to converse the information to knowledge and further to intelligence. The new approach is also proven to be able to unify the three approaches mentioned above and thus bring about a unified theory of AI. Both the mechanism approach and the unified theory may make AI research more promising than ever before.