[comp.ai.digest] Seminar - Should McCarthy and Feigenbaum Talk to Each Other

VAL@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP (04/23/87)

		SHOULD JOHN MCCARTHY AND ED FEIGENBAUM
			TALK TO EACH OTHER?

		     Thursday, April 23, 4:15pm
			Bldg. 160, Room 161K

			   Matt Ginsberg

In this talk, I discuss one possible way to bridge the apparently
widening gap between the "neats" and the "scruffies" in AI.  According
to Kuhn, a necessary step in resolving the differences between the
two camps is that one attack problems of interest to the other.

I attempt to do this by suggesting that the scruffy programs
are doing essentialy two things: a recognizable approximation
to first-order inference (such as MYCIN's backward chaining), and
some sort of bookkeeping with the results returned (e.g., manipulation
of certainty factors).

Formalizing this bookkeeping is attractive for a variety of reasons:
it will allow precise statements to be made about what the scruffies'
programs are doing, and may lead to more effective implementations of
their ideas.  There are also advantages for the neats, since understanding
some of the proposed extensions to first-order inference in this fashion
appears to lead to computationally tractable algorithms for some simple
non-mononotonic logics.

If time permits, I will present a formalization which appears to
have the properties described in the previous paragraph.