elon@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (Elon Danziger) (06/09/91)
I was recently referred to three books about AI, namely GODEL ESCHER
BACH, AI AND NATURAL MAN, and MACHINES WHO THINK (I have the first two and
can get the last). What I would like to do is to try to write some type of
AI program--probably in Pascal. I have quite a bit of experience with
Pascal, but not that much with AI. My question is, can anyone point out
anything particularly interesting that I could program (given the limitation
that I have a Mac IICX, and limited space and memory)? I've seen some
really impressive accounts of AI in AI AND NATURAL MAN, but I'm not sure how
feasible it is to try to program some of the examples on my computer.
I want to make clear that I am more interested in getting a feel for AI
than trying to do something original.
Thanks in advance.
-Elonmcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) (06/09/91)
Most AI programs would be very long and unwieldy in Pascal because of the complex data structures involved. The usual programming languages for AI are Lisp and Prolog. Textbooks for either of these languages usually feature lots of AI examples. I believe XLISP (a public-domain Lisp interpreter) is available for the Macintosh, though I don't know where you'd get it. A good AI-oriented Lisp textbook is Winston and Horn's "Lisp", 3rd edition. As for Prolog, there is a good public domain Prolog for the PC but not for the Mac as far as I know. You can download the PC one by anonymous ftp from aisun1.ai.uga.edu. A suitable Prolog textbook is "Prolog Programming in Depth," by Covington, Nute, and Vellino. -- ------------------------------------------------------- Michael A. Covington | Artificial Intelligence Programs The University of Georgia | Athens, GA 30602 U.S.A. -------------------------------------------------------
scotp@csc2.essex.ac.uk (Scott P D) (06/12/91)
In article <P3P935w164w@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us> elon@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (Elon Danziger) writes: > > I was recently referred to three books about AI, namely GODEL ESCHER >BACH, AI AND NATURAL MAN, and MACHINES WHO THINK (I have the first two and >can get the last). What I would like to do is to try to write some type of >AI program--probably in Pascal. I have quite a bit of experience with >Pascal, but not that much with AI. My question is, can anyone point out >anything particularly interesting that I could program (given the limitation >that I have a Mac IICX, and limited space and memory)? Don't be put off be those who tell you that you have to use Lisp or Prolog to do real AI. While there are good reasons why those languages are widely used, you can do a lot of interesting work using Pascal. If you stick to problems that don't need fancy knowledge representation schemes you can do a great deal with a straightforward procedural language. In fact quite a lot of machine learning research work is done using Pascal or C. The "Manhattan Cab Driver" would make a good start. The system is given a town plan, which consists of a rectangular grid of roads. To make the problem interesting some of the roads are closed and some are one-way streets. Then the system is given a start point and a destination. Its task is to find a good (eg shortest) route from one to the other. This problem will allow you to try out a variety of search techniques. Provided you are familiar with building and manipulating lists using pointers, you should have no problem doing this in Pascal. You could also arrange for the town plan to be displayed and thus illustrate how the searches proceed. I don't think you will find any of the three books you mention to be particularly helpful in writing AI programs. I would suggest you try to get hold of a decent introductory textbook on the subject: Rich & Knight's "Artificial Intelligence" (McGraw-Hill, 1991) is pretty good and isn't built around either Lisp or Prolog. It would also provide you with further ideas for programming projects. Paul Scott, Dept Computer Science, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.
simon@engcon.marshall.ltv.com (SHSIMON) (06/14/91)
If you have read those book, I commend you. If you want to get into creating new AI programs, you may want to learn LISP and PROLOG, but for simple investigation, PASCAL is fine...although, I suggest you learn C also. I hope you can read other languages and translate. There is a book called AI in PASCAL, written by the same author who wrote AI in C. I do not remember his name, but the local bookstores, libraries, and grad students at the AI dept at Princeton should be happy to help...focus on finding the AI in C book; it is more easily available. I think he has a copy of ELIZA. There are also books on AI in BASIC. BASIC Artificial Intelligence by Mike James (1986) has some good programs. I personally do not like BASIC, but I can't argue with successful implementations...again the programs can be translated to PASCAL and the ability to translate ideas is very, very important in AI. By the WAY, just for another point of reference, one of the very early expert System Shells called EXPERT was originally written in FORTRAN. Good Luck, Hank