To read the book "Automated Reasoning: Thirty-Three Basic Research problems (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1987, 300 pp., $11.00) by Larry Was it is not necessary to be an expert in mathematics or logic or computer science. However, even if you are such an expert, you will read it with interest, and likely, with enjoyment.

McDermott makes some valid points in his review ... It's too bad that he chose to embed the helpful comments in the context of his by-now-tiresome doubts about the value of logic in AI.

The book "Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, Calif., 1987, 406 pp., $48.95) by Michael Genesereth and Nils Nilsson is about declarative knowledge.

To read the book "Automated Reasoning: Thirty-Three Basic Research problems (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1987, 300 pp., $11.00) by Larry Was it is not necessary to be an expert in mathematics or logic or computer science. However, even if you are such an expert, you will read it with interest, and likely, with enjoyment.

Commentators on AI converge on two goals they believe define the field: (1) to better understand the mind by specifying computational models and (2) to construct computer systems that perform actions traditionally regarded as mental. We should recognize that AI has a third, hidden, more basic aim; that the first two goals are special cases of the third; and that the actual technical substance of AI concerns only this more basic aim. This third aim is to establish new computation-based representational media, media in which human intellect can come to express itself with different clarity and force. This article articulates this proposal by showing how the intellectual activity we label AI can be likened in revealing ways to each of five familiar technologies.

Emphasizing theory and implementation issues more than specific applications and Prolog programming techniques, this book by David Maier and Davis S. Warren, respected researchers in logic programming, is a superb book.

Emphasizing theory and implementation issues more than specific applications and Prolog programming techniques, this book by David Maier and Davis S. Warren, respected researchers in logic programming, is a superb book.

Yoav Shoham's revised doctoral dissertation is not fully comprehensible to all readers, but it provides a good introduction to reasoning about change; the references are sometimes incomplete, however.

Nigel Ford's book purports to be both an introduction to AI and an examination of whether machines are cognizant entities.With this pairing, Ford intends to begin at the beginning, answering the question "what is AI?" and to proceed to his main thesis about whether machines can think. Unfortunately, Ford is unable to move on to the higher plane of his main thesis.

The second Natural Language Understanding and Logic Programming (NLULP) Workshop was held on 17-19 August 1987 at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, (the first NLULP workshop was held three years ago in Rennes, France).