Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Logic & Formal Reasoning


Artificial Intelligence Research in the People's Republic of China: A Review

AI Magazine

Since the 1970's AI research has become very active in China and certain results have been achieved. This paper is intended to review briefly what was and is going on in AI field in China.


Automated design of multiple-valued logic circuits by automated theorem proving techniques

Classics

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.



What Is the Well-Dressed AI Educator Wearing Now?

AI Magazine

I went to a panel on "Education in AI" and stepped back into an argument that I had thought settled several years ago. The debate was between the "scruffies," led by Roger Schank and Ed Feignbaum, and the "neats," led by Nils Nilsson. The neats argued that no education in AI was complete without a strong theoretical component, containing, for instance, courses on predicate logic and automata theory. The scruffies maintained that such a theoretical component was not only unnecessary, but harmful.


What Is the Well-Dressed AI Educator Wearing Now?

AI Magazine

A funny thing happened to me at IJCAI-81. I went to a panel on "Education in AI" and stepped back into an argument that I had thought settled several years ago. The debate was between the "scruffies," led by Roger Schank and Ed Feignbaum, and the "neats," led by Nils Nilsson. The neats argued that no education in AI was complete without a strong theoretical component, containing, for instance, courses on predicate logic and automata theory. The scruffies maintained that such a theoretical component was not only unnecessary, but harmful.


Logic for Natural Language Analysis

Classics

This work investigates the use of formal logic as a practical tool for describing the syntax and semantics of a subset of English, and building a computer program to answer data base queries expressed in that subset. To achieve an intimate connection between logical descriptions and computer programs, all the descriptions given are in the definite clause subset of the predicate calculus, which is the basis of the programming language Prolog. The logical descriptions run directly as efficient Prolog programs. Three aspects of the use of logic in natural language analysis are covered: formal representation of syntactic rules by means of a grammar formalism based on logic, extraposition grammars;. formal semantics for the chosen English subset, appropriate for data base queries; informal semantic and pragmatic rules to translate analysed sentences into their formal semantics. On these three aspects, the work improves and extends earlier work by Colmerauer and others, where the use of computational logic in language analysis was first introduced. The University of Edinburgh


LOGLISP: an alternative to PROLOG

Classics

Our own early attempts (as devoted users of LISP) to use PROLOG convinced us that it would be worth the effort to create within LISP a faithful implementation of Kowalski's logic programming idea. We felt it would be very convenient to be able to set up a knowledge base of assertions inside a LISP workspace, and to compute the answers to queries simply by executing appropriate function calls.In Hayes, J. E., Michie, D., and Pao, Y.-H. (Eds.), Machine Intelligence 10. Ellis Horwood.


Higher-order extensions to PROLOG: are they needed?

Classics

PROLOG is a simple and powerful progamming language based on first-order logic. This paper examines two possible extensions to the language which would generally be considered "higher-order".t The first extension introduces lambda expressions and predicate variables so that functions and relations can be treated as 'first class' data objects. We argue that this extension does not add anything to the real power of the language. The other extension concerns the introduction of set expressions to denote the set of all (provable) solutions to some goal. We argue that this extension does indeed fill a real gap in the language, but must be defined with care.In Hayes, J. E., Michie, D., and Pao, Y.-H. (Eds.), Machine Intelligence 10. Ellis Horwood.


The Knowledge Level: Presidential Address

AI Magazine

This is the first presidential address of AAAI, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In the grand scheme of history of artificial intelligence (AI), this is surely a minor event. The field this scientific society represents has been thriving for quite some time. No doubt the society itself will make solid contributions to the health of our field. But it is too much to expect a presidential address to have a major impact. So what is the role of the presidential address and what is the significance of the first one? I believe its role is to set a tone, to provide an emphasis. I think the role of the first address is to take a stand about what that tone and emphasis should be-set expectations for future addresses and to communicate to my fellow presidents. Only two foci are really possible for a presidential address: the state of the society or the state of the science. I believe the latter to be correct focus. AAAI itself, its nature and its relationship to the larger society that surrounds it, are surely important. However, our main business is to help AI become a science -- albeit a science with a strong engineering flavor. Thus, though a president's address cannot be narrow or highly technical, it can certainly address a substantive issue. That is what I propose to do.