[ont.events] Theoretical Aspects Seminar/Tractability and Belief

eas@utcsrgv.UUCP (Ann Struthers) (11/19/84)

			 THEORETICAL ASPECTS SEMINAR

			 Tuesday, November 29, 1984

				   3:00 PM

                       Sandford Fleming Building 1105

			

			Professor Hector Levesque
		      Department of Computer Science
		          University of Toronto


		         "Tractability and Belief"



The current design practice in Artificial Intelligence is to base the
behaviour of complex systems on inference: some propositions that a
system is to believe are represented explicitly, and their implications
are calculated as neded to fill in the details.  For sufficiently
expressive representation languages, however, it is impossible to 
decide in an acceptable amount of time just what is implicit in a set
of propositions.  This talk will attempt to motivate some compromises 
that will allow the management of what a system believes to be kept
tractable.  Although some prelimiary results will be presented, the
emphasis will be on research directions.