Thinking big – from constraint programming to the Holy Grail: an interview with Gene Freuder

Welcome back to AI pioneers . In this interview we speak to eminent computer scientist Gene Freuder, tracing constraint programming from the early days of machine vision to the rise of generative AI. We discuss the applications of constraint programming, where the field of AI might be headed, how to give a good conference talk, and more. Could you tell me a bit about your background and what drew you to the field of constraint programming? I started out with pure math as an undergrad until it became too abstract even for me, so I drifted towards mathematical logic. This might sound strange because some might say it's even more abstract, but I felt at least it had a subject - mathematics. And then I found myself in artificial intelligence. I was at the MIT AI lab, as a part of what was known as the Copy Demo project . This project had a machine vision component where a basic form of constraint processing was used.