Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In the 1950's, AI research mainly focused on game playing. In 1956, Arthur
Samuel wrote the first heuristic game-playing program with learning ability. In
the same year, Alan Newell, Herbert Simon etc. invented a heuristic program
called the Logic Theorist, which proved correct 38 of the first 52 theorems from
the “Principia Mathematica”. Their work heralded the beginning of research on
cognitive psychology with computers. Noam Chomsky proposed the Syntactics,
the pioneer work of Formal Language research. In 1958, John McCarthy
invented the Lisp language, an important tool for AI research which can process
not only numerical values but also symbols.
In the early 1960's, AI research mainly focused on search algorithms and
general problem solving (GPS). Allen Newell etc. published the General Problem
Solver, a more powerful and universal heuristic program than other programs at
that time. In 1961, Marvin Minsky published the seminal paper "Steps Towards
Artificial Intelligence" established a fairly unified terminology for AI research
and established the subject as a well- defined scientific enterprise. In 1965,
Edward Feigenbaum etc. began work on the DENDRAL chemical-analysis
expert system, a milestone for AI applications, and initiated the shift from
computer algorithms to knowledge representation as the focus of AI research. In
1965, Alan Robinson proposed the Resolution Principle. In 1968, Ross Quillian
introduced the Semantic Network for knowledge representation. In 1969, IJCAI
(International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence) was founded, and
since then, the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (also
shorted as IJCAI) was held biannually in odd-numbered years. Artificial
Intelligence, an international journal edited by IJCAI, commenced publication in
1970.
In the early 1970's, AI research mainly focused on Natural Language
Understanding and Knowledge Representation. In 1972, Terry Winograd
published details of the SHRDLU program for understanding natural language.
Alain Colmerauer developed Prolog language for AI programming at the
University of Marseilles in France. In 1973, Roger Schank proposed the
Conceptual Dependency Theory for Natural Language Understanding. In 1974,
Marvin Minsky published the frame system theory, an important theory of
Knowledge Representation. In 1977, Edward Feigenbaum published the
well-known paper “The art of artificial intelligence: Themes and case studies in
knowledge engineering” in the 5th IJCAI. He stated that Knowledge Engineering
is the art of bringing the principles and tools of AI research to bear on difficult
applications problems requiring expert knowledge for their solution. The
