DARPA's Three Waves of AI Research -- A Special Issue of AI Magazine

A fundamental goal of artificial intelligence research and development is the creation of machines that demonstrate what humans consider to be intelligent behavior. Effective knowledge representation and reasoning (KR&R) methods are a foundational requirement for intelligent machines. The development of these methods remains a rich and active area of artificial intelligence research in which advances have been motivated by many factors, including interest in new challenge problems, interest in more complex domains, shortcomings of current methods, improved computational support, increases in requirements to interact effectively with humans, and ongoing funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other agencies. The article by Richard Fikes and Tom Garvey, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning – A History of DARPA Leadership, highlights several decades of advances in KR&R, paying particular attention to research on planning and on the impact of DARPA's support. Fikes and Garvey are joined by David Israel, a principal scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, who provides his own brief commentary on KR&R.