T H E L I MI T S O F AR I F I C I AL I N E LL I GE N C E

'
Ar t i l e f o r
E n y l o p e d i a o f Ar t i f i i a l

n te

l l i ge n c e

c c

'

By

a co b

S c hwa r t z

T e c h n i c a l Re p o r t
Ma r c h 1 9 8 6

# 212

T H E L I MI T S O F ART I F I C I AL I N TE LL I GE N CE
'
Ar t i l e f o r
E n y l o p e d i a o f Ar t i f i i a l

I n t e l l i ge n c e

c c

'

By

J a

cob

S c hw a r t z

T e c h n i c a l Re p o r t
Ma r c h 1 9 8 6

# 212

T h e L im its

A rticle

for

A rti c ial I nt ell ig en ce

of

E ncyclopedi a

J T

of A rtifici al Intelligence

Schw artz
Robotics A ctivity
Cour an t Ins titute
N ew ! ork University
.

In tr od uct ion

qu estion of w h at intrinsic li mits constr ain the artifici al in tell igence

enterprise w hich can be defined as the attempt to co ns truct electronic
systems exhibiting human or superhum an levels of c ap ability in areas
tr adition ally reg arded as ment al h as been deb ated within very wide
On one side one finds a subst anti al co mmunity of researchers who believe
firmly th at such systems w ill prove possible T heir co mmon (but not
univers al ) assumption is th at the org anic br ain is in effect a co mplex
electrochemic al system oper ating in some (doubtless highly p ar al lel ) but
essenti al ly computer like f ashion an d hence gives direct proof of the
real iz ability of in telligence by mech anism ; v ide M arv in Minsky s at footed

The br ain is a me at m achine Opposing this v iew one finds the assertion th at
ment al processes are essenti al ly indecompos able lie outside the n arrow reach
of scientific reductionism and th at their indeco mp osability sets fund ament al
l imits to any attempt to duplic ate intelligence by mech ani sm From this point
of view e g as represented by the wri t ings of Hubert Dreyfus the history of
arti ficial intelligence rese arch to d ate
consisting alw ays of very limited
success in p articul ar areas follow ed imm edi ately by f ailure to re ach th e
bro ader go als at which these initi al successes seem at first to hint gives
empirical proof of the presence of irreducible wholes fun d ament al ly incap able
of b eing comprehended
much less duplicated by c e n arrowly technical
procedures of artifici al intelligence researchers
T his philosophical deb ate co ncerns the existence of fun damental limits to
the artifici al intelligence enterpri se which however is only one of several
kinds of potenti ally significan t limit that need to be cons idered Even if no
such fund ament al limits existed i e even if a hypothetical i nfinitely fas t
computing engine possessed of infinite amounts of memory coul d in principle
duplicate al l as pects of hum an ment al c ap ability it wo ul d still rem ain
neces s ary to ask just how much comput ation an d d at a stor age such
duplic ation would require Suppose for ex ample th at it co uld be shown th at
the minimum co mput ation al resource required to duplicate some human
ment al function is impl ausibly l arge rel ative eith er to the extreme limits of
ally re aliz able comput ation
o r to the l argest computers likely to be
hysic
p
constructed over the next decades or centuries In this cas e construction of
s ignificant artifici al intelligences would be blocked by inescap able pr actical
The

limits even if fun d ament al limits did not exist Fin ally even if no such
comp u ta tion a l f actors proved to limit the possibility of artifici al intelligence
one wo uld still w ant to assess the existing st ate of the field and project the
r ate of progress likely to result from application of its pr esent intellectu al
tools to the profound problems with which it must wrestle
T he next five sections of the pr esent article develop points relev ant to
the three kinds of li mits defined in the preced ing p ar agr aph A fin al section
discus ses cert ain other concerns implicit in the deb ate betw een the
enthusi asts of artifici al intelligence an d their opponents which may expl ain
some of the vehemence which h as crept into this deb ate
,

2 T h e ! u esti on
I nt ell i genc es
.

of

F u nd am ent al L im its to th e C on stru ctab il ity

of

A r tifici al

C omm ent on th e Ph il os ophical I ssu e

In his deservedly famous 19 50 article A l an T uring proposed to repl ace

orp hou s philosophical deb ate about whether m achines could re ally t hink
by the more pr agm atic question of whether they could imit ate the beh avior of

thinking beings well enough to m ake the assumption th at they are thinking
the most comfort able b asis for co ntinuing inter action with them The
pr actical force of T uring s argument seems overw helming If at some future
time p eople find themselves surround ed by artifici ally produced beings
cap able of performing the s ame v ariety of daily t asks physical and
intellectu al th at one would expect of a person an d in p articul ar c ap able of
conversing on an unrestricted v ariety of topics in entirely e as y exible
m anner artifici al intelligence will h ave been att ained T his is not to deny the
possibility th at hum an s in this situ ation may choose to reg ard themselves as a
kind of nobility distinguished in view of their long an d imperfectly
understood biological pedigree from more fully understood and eas ily
rep airabl e/rep l aceabl e cre atures
Such an attitude can even find objective
justification in the reflection th at as long as any S ignificant asp ects of hum an
function rem ain in completely understood hum anity incorpor ates a pool of
c ap abilities tested by long evolution which d eserves protection and cautious
nurture proportional to its long history an d mysterious potenti al ; these strong
points also apply to wh al es and snail d arters
N everthel ess in the re al presence of robots exhibiting hum an levels of

flexibility and cap ability the question as to whether these beings really

thought or merely appeared to think and feel would lose pr agm atic force
though of course its ideological import an ce might grow perh aps even
gre atl y It m ak es l ess sens e for the pr esent article to pursue this deb ate th an
to assess the prob ability th at such a situ ation will re ally arise
A V ery B ri ef

C omp u t er
A s alre ady noted p art of the conf idence with which artifici al in telligence
researchers view the prospects of their field stems from the m ateri alist

mind is simply a n ame for the i nform ation proces sing

as sumption th at
an d th at the br ain is a physic al entity w hich acts
activity of the br ain
accordi ng to th e l aws of biochemistry in a m anner uninfluenced by any

irreducible soul or other unit ary purely ment al entity incap able of an al ysis
into a caus al sequence of element ary biochemical events Compellin g
evidence for the equ ation of ment al function w ith the physical activity of the
br ain is e asily dr awn from m an y br anches of science an d in p articul ar from
experiment al neurobiology For ex ample dis crete lesions at the rear of the
cerebr al cortex produce discrete blind spots (scotom as ) in the visu al field
which turns out to wmmunicate in 1 1 continuous f ashion with the f amily of
senso ry neurons comprising the retina of the eye Simil arly stimul ation of
points on the upper centr al portions of the cortex (tempor al motor are a) will
produce element ary tw itching motions of p articul ar mus cles
Physical
m anipul ation of nervous tissue can al so gener ate an d/or remove sensations
h avin g profound motiv ation al signi fican ce e g direct application of an excess
to the cu t aneous nerv es causes sh arp p ain ; conversely
of pot as sium
application of Novoc aine to an appropri ate br anch of the f aci al nerve blocks
dent al p ain in p articul ar are as thus permitting dent al m anipul ations which
would be unbe ar ably aversive were the nerves co mmunicating this sens ation

of p ain not turn ed off

T hes e element ary rem arks plus thous an ds of far
more pr ecise observ ations obt ained by direct reco rding of the electrical
activity of individu al neurons
show th at neuron al activity reects extern al
stimuli an d behavior (even intended beh avior before its overt expression) in
det ailed and qu antit ative f ashion at leas t for those sens ory and motor
systems for which such correl ations can be expected a p riori to be understood
most easily
A s might al so be expected det ailed u nderst anding of the m anner in
which neuronal activity reflects and governs a living creature s inter actions
with its environment is most complete for the s implest anim als p articul arly
those whose nerv ous systems co nsis t of rel atively few neurons w hich being
p arti cul arly l arge are rel atively e as y to identify an d ex amine in di vidu ally A
typical but p articul arly w ell studied ex ample of this is the marin e sn ail
Ap lysia Ca li
forn ica whose nerv ous system consists of roughly
neurons divided in to nine sep ar ate g angli a within w hich hun dreds of
in di vidu al
cells h ave been specifical ly identified
det ailed
Fairly
underst an ding of the p atterns of neuron al activity an d in terconnection
governing m an y of the most typical an d vit al reactions of this simple creature
h as been att ained For ex ample much is known about the m anner in which
its nervous system controls he artbe at respir ation gill withdr aw al reflex
releas e of ink in r espons e to a sens ed d an ger feeding reproduction etc
Moreover Ap lysza is cap able of ce rt ain rudiment ary types of learning
T h e B rain

as 3

Bioch emical
,

ases re actions to cert ain

includi
g
which
progressively
incre
n
n
i
t
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
s
e
s
(
st imuli an d hab itua tion which progressively reduces other reactions ) and
the bi ochemical b ases for these forms of neuron al pl asticity h ave been at le ast
p artly elucid ated Fin ally the nervous activities controlling sens ation and
beh avior in Ap lysia h ave been shown to be i nherent properties of the nervous
system which persist even w hen this system is dissected out of the body of
Ap lysia and m aint ained artifici ally in a s uit able nutrient b ath provided th at
the af ferent sign al s expected along cert ain sensory nerves are supplied
electric al ly af ter the sensory org an s th at woul d norm al ly give rise to them
h ave been removed In this l as t case the an al ogy with a robot s co mputer
br ain det ached from its body and running in an art ifici ally emul ated
environment of input and proprioceptive sign al s is overwhelming
Some may object to f acile extr apol ation from the reflexive beh aviors of a
simple
neuron cre atur e to the v astly more sophisticated activity of the
roughl y hundred billion neurons of the hum an br ai n Nevertheless the
( admittedl y highl y inco mpl ete) biologic al evidence av ail able thus far seems to
favor just such an extr apol ation : living creat ures of wh atever co mplexity
seem to sh are a common neuron al biochemistry in much the s ame w ay th at
they sh are a common genetic code
T hus wh at neurobiologic al evidence there is hints strongly th at no
difference of fund ament al principle sep ar ates the br ain from any other other
form of computer or can be expected to limit the r an ge of possibilities which
artifici al intelligence rese arch can legitim ately explore
,

t
i
a
i
n t t ve E stima tes C on cern ing th e B rain s

C omp u t in g Pow er
E ven the resolutely mech anistic conclusion dr aw n in the preceding
subsection leaves open tw o possibilities either of which could still rule out
the possibility of att aining human like levels of ment al cap ability by artifici al
means In the first pl ace the m ass of comput ation al activity performed e ach
second by the living br ain and/ or the m ass of inf orm ation av ail able to the
br ain for use durin g these comput ations might be so l arge as to make
electronic dupli cation of the br ain s activity impl ausible Moreover even
were this not the cas e the al gorithms which regul ate the comput ation al
activity of the br ain might be so m arvelously subtle as to frustr ate their
rediscovery by artifici al intelligence rese archers for a very long time O ur
next t ask is to ex amine thes e possibilities
Th e hum an br ain consists of approxim ately 1 0 1 1 neurons though this
estim ate is uncert ain to within a f actor of 10 Neurons typically (though not
inv ari ably ) co mmunicate by tr ansmitting discrete electrical spikes (action
potenti als ) to a popul ation of follower neurons A s far as is known the
precise amplitude an d sh ape of such a spike an d the precise time of its
arriv al within an interv al of 2 mil liseconds or so are physical det ails which
the nervou s system is not able to exploit This allows one to model each spike
ua

single inform ation c arrying bit which can be present or absent in a

neuron s output stre am We can therefore reg ard a neuron as producing
output inf orm ation at r ate of approxim ately 100 bits/second T his leads to an
13
estim ate of 10 bits/second giv e or t ak e a f actor of 10 0 for the in tern al

b andwidth of the br ain

The co mput ation al activity of individu al neurons involves a cons ider able
v ariety of mechan isms still very imperfectly understood Nevertheless a
consider able m ass of experiment al evidence supports the follow ing gener al
pict ure Inform at ion is tr ansmitted by a neuron to its follower neurons at
inter neuron junctions c alled synap ses A single neuron can h ave as m any as
such syn aptic inputs though in some c as es m an y fewer and in o ther
cases as m any as
inputs are known to converge on single neurons
15
T hus the tot al number of syn aps es in the br ain can be estim ated as 1 0
though t his estim ate is uncert ain by a f actor of roughly 100 Input sign al s
tr ansmitted to a neuron (g ener ally chemic ally) acros s a syn apse trigger a wide
v ariety of re actions A common effect and O ne which seems cert ain to be of
p articul ar import an ce for the f as t est comput ations performed by the br ain is
mo d ul ati on of the ionic conductivity of the affected neuron s membr ane
which either r aises the volt age of a portion of its interior (excit ation) or
lowers this volt age ( inhibition) The affected neuron th en combines the
v olt age ch anges gen er ated by s uch syn aptic effects (after attenu ation in sp ace
termined by the det ailed chemistry an d geometry of
an d time in a m ann er d e
the neuron an d its syn apses) and if the r es ultin g combined (e g summed)
volt age exceeds a reaction thres hold the neuron gener ates an o utput spike
w hich is then tr ansmitted to al l its output syn apses
Other form s of syn aptic input are known to h ave slower but longer
l asting biochemical effects th an the ionic effects w hich prob ably suppo rt the
b ulk of the br ain s inform ation tr ansmuting activity Stimul ation of cert ain
syn apses can for ex ample trigger enzym atic activities within a neuron which
mo dify its biosynthetic activities in significant w ays e g by incre asing or
decre asing its sus ceptibility to subsequent f ast excit atory or inhibitory stimuli
acting ionic ally D ependin
on
t
h
such
syn
aptic
e chemic al effects involved
g
modification of f aster syn aptic responses can exert an effect either for
relatively short periods ( e g
5 0 mill iseconds ) or for periods of sever al
seconds minutes or d ays ; perh aps even perm anently Other syn aptical ly
triggered enzym atic re actions can initi ate sequenced biochemic al ch anges
which for ex ample enh ance a neuron s subsequent electric al response for
sev er al tens of milliseco nds but then inhibit its respons es for a longer period
le adin g to complex p atterned al tern ations of beh avior The v ari ed sin gle
neuron beh aviors which can be engendered by the w ide spectrum of
enz ym atic actions th at h ave been demonstr ated experiment ally h ave been
explored in simple anim als such as Ap lysia some of whose neurons are
known to h ave highly individu al ized p atterns of continuing or periodic or
burst activity
as a

it is not e asy to summ arize such a wide r an ge of synaptic

response p atterns by a few numbers representing the inf orm ation processing
power and stor age c ap acity of a single neuron the following estimates do not
seem wildly unf air One byte may well suf fi ce to represent th e long term
strength of e ach of a neuron s syn apses with sufficient accur acy Four
bytes can then be t aken to give a s ufficiently complete
addition al
represent ation of the short term biochemical st ate of both sides of a syn apse
as determined by its
and of the st ate of the co rresponding syn aptic gap
stimul ation history up to a given moment Such very rough qu antit ative
guesses lead us to estim ate the long term memory av ail able to the br ain as
16 by es
the
amount of shorter term d at a need ed to
a
n
d
0
t
1
very
roughly
)
(
16
x
char acterize the st ate of e ach of its syn apses as 4 1 0 bytes The logical
activity of e ach neuron can then be reg arded very roughly as a process w hich
combines
input bytes with roughly
syn apse st atus bytes 100
times e ach seco nd ; we can guess the amount of (an alog) arit hmetic required
7
element ary arithmetic oper ations per
1
0
for this to be ( ag ain very roughly)
neuron per second leading us to es tim ate the computing r ate need ed to
emul ate the entire br ain on a neuron b y neuron b asis as roughly 10 13
arit hmetic oper ations per second ( Of co urse much lower comput ation r ates
might s uffice to represent the logical co ntent of the br ain s activity if w e
co ul d find out wh at this w as )
Even thou gh it is not inco nceiv able that the estim ates offered in the
preceding p aragraph might h ave to be increased by f actors by 10 3 or even
it seems much more likely th at they overst ate the us able arithmetic an d
memory stor age c ap acity of the br ain by l arge f actors Indeed an atomical
inspection and direct recording of neuron al activity both m ake it appe ar th at
the degree of precision in the wiring of the br ain is low and th at (perh aps in
consequence) th e br ai n typically employs hundreds of neurons to perform
closely simil ar calcul ations whose results are then only used in some co arsely
Nevertheless our es tim ates
aver aged m ann er as ment al act ivity proceeds
10 18 arit hmetic oper ations per seco nd and 10 16 or 10 bytes of memory
s ti ll allow for stupendous amounts of cal cul ation and might
av ail able
therefore represent a very significant obst acle to the easy adv an ce of artifici al
intelligence Th e l argest general pu rpose superco mputers are not likely to
12
m
a
s
0
nce level of more th an 1 arithmetic oper ations per second
att ain perfor
durin g the next decade (However speci ally designed systolic arr ays might
att ain higher speeds for p articul ar O per ations ) T hough rot ating memories
cap able of storing 10 12 bytes do not appear entirely infeasible electronic
memories seem entirely unlikely to exceed 10 12 or even 10 1 1 byt es w ithin a
decade Th e estim ated intern al communication b andwidth of the br ain
roughly 1 0 12 b ytes/sec seems somewh at e as ier to m atch artifici al ly e g by a
4
switching network of 10 ports e ach c ap able of h an dling 100 meg abytes per
second
Th ough

We conclude th at the very l arges t supercomputer systems likely to be

developed over the next decade or two may still f al l for short of the raw
6
inf orm ation processing cap abilities of the br ain perh aps by a f actor of 10 or
more However differences in the al gorithmic effectiven ess w ith w hich this
computing power is employed can outweigh even so l arge a f actor We now
t urn to discuss this point
-

T h e K in d

of Pr ogra m w hi ch th e B r ain is L ik el y to E mpl oy

A lgorithms

regul ating the comput ation al activity of the living br ain

which are exception al ly effective an d which al so are subtle enough to defy
rediscovery might repr esent ano ther significant limit to the progres s of
However it seems unlikely th at such algori thms pl ay a
artificial i
n telligence
role in the funct ioning of the br ain so th at algorithmic consider ations seem
likely to f avor artificial systems over n atur al systems This adv ant age could
help artifi ci al systems overcome the subst anti al advant age in raw computing
power w hich w e h ave as cribed to the br ain The neurologic al argument
which s eems to justify s u ch a co nclusion is as follow s If for the moment w e
set all effects of postn at ally learned inform ation aside neuroembryological
evidence hints at the follow ing picture of the inn ate ( genetically determined)
c ap abiliti es of the br ain (including its learning cap abilities ) Within a
developing nervous tissue p articul ar subpopul ations of cells t ak e on
speci alized morphologic al and bioch emical ch ar acteristics
(Such cell
speci aliz ation is of course the b asic mech anism of embryological development
in gener al ) A lmost nothing is yet known concerning the tot al n umber of
speci alized neuron al sup pul ations w h ich dev elop ; how ever w h at
morphological and physiological evidence there is seems consistent with the
assumption th at thes e number sever al thous ands or ten thous ands E ach of
these cell popul ations grows to a genet ic ally determined extent thereby
gener ating a l arge or sm al l portion of the nervous system
Cell migr ation over l arge or sm all dist ances an d genetically determined
tempor al sequencing of grow th ph as es among v arious neuron al
subpopul ations al so pl ay a role in determining fin al tissue morphology and
neuronal connection p atterns A s they speci al ize neurons grow thin
projections (axons and dendrites ) w hich can extend as little as a few microns
or as much as a meter in length
Th e p aths al ong which th ese neuron al
projections grow seem to be determined by such biochemical f actors as the

abi lity of the growth cones present at the tip of a growing axon to re act to
chemicals present on the surfaces of the cells they touch T hese re actions
seem to result in selective affiniti es and adhesions and to be supplemented
by more diffus e chemical gr adients present in developing tissue Th e ph as ed
g rowth of sm al l spots of tissue to which p articul ar sorts of axon al growth
cones h ave positive or neg ative affinities can cause these growth cones to
move sh arpl y in p articul ar directions allowing intric ately interwoven
neuron al morphologies to develop Once the developing projections from a
.

'

'

given neuron al subpopul ation h ave reached their t arget tissue simil ar
chemic al mech an isms may be us ed to reco gnize v arious subpopul ations
present in th at tissue an d to guide the form ation of connections h aving

specific strengths among the members of p articul ar immigr ant an d n ative

neuron subpopul ations Moreover if the source tissue sending proj ections to
a t arget tissue is l arge enough for its geo metric extent to h ave inform ation al
si gnificance cells w ithin both these areas can be m arked perh aps by chemical
gr adients in a m anner representing their location and such m arkings can
then strengthen or weak en the affinities which axons with given origins h ave
for cells at corresponding locations in an extended t arget tissue Such
g eometrically conditioned af finities would allow sep arate neuron al are as to
connect to each other in geometrical ly regul ar an d inform ation ally significant
sp ati al p atterns which v arious le arning like postn at al growth processes can
then refine
B asic development al mech an isms of roughl y the kind jus t sketched seem
to define the inn ate structur es present in the br ain immedi ately after birth
Th e forms of inf orm ation processing w hich such st ructures can most n aturally
re al ize can be abstr acted approxim ately as follows A s sume v arious
popul ations of cells numbered by an index i running from 1 to N Th e t th
popul ation can co nsist of m any cells which can be distributed geometrically
in 1 2 or 3 dimensions an d thus can o ccupy positions co rrespond to v alues
of a p ar ameter I v aryin g over the interior either of the u nit interv al squ are
or cube in a m anner which we suppose to be continuous We can then
describe the aver age intern al st ate of type i neurons located at point x by a
function ( ) whose v alues are vect ors of as m any components as are needed
to describe this st ate with sufficient accur acy In the absence of fur ther
excit atory or inhibitory input this intern al st ate s, w ill dec ay af ter 4 :
milliseconds to a st ate s
(I t
The r ate at which tissue i gener ates output
spikes is a function
of its intern al st ate If outputs from subpopul ation i
impinge upon the j th cell popul ation at al l we can describe their effect as
follows : inform ation tr ansmitted from popul ation j is received after some
ch ar acteristic del ay dip A spike tr ain tr ansmitted with intensity
from
a point x , in the i ih cell popul ation will be received with intensity
,

where the kernel K! defines the extent of blurring which occurs during
tr ansmission as determined by such f actors as the affinity which axons
origin ating at pl ace x in popul ation i h ave for p articul ar points in their t arget
tissue the extent an d typical direction of dendritic an d axon al spreading
w ithin this tissue etc The v arious inputs of types :2
i, impinging on a
type j neuron at position x, modify the evolution of its intern al st ate c ausing
this st ate to t ak e on the v alue

[ 0 )
15 9

5 09 )

fter

seconds
O ur simplified picture of the p atterns of excit ation th at develop in
of equ ations h av in g the
nt
ned
neur
tissue
is
then
su
m
med
up
a
system
a
l
u
r
a
i
)
(
integrodifferen ti al form
a

dt

f;

:1;

K11

j.

d y) .

1,

(1)

dec ay functions fj del ays dd and kernels K} (x y ) appearing in this l as t

equ ation are intended to represent all relev ant neuro an atomical and
biochemical as pects of a p articul ar neur al system in abstr act form
Systems of equ ations of the form ( 1) are cap able of re al izing a great
v ariety of periodic and aperio d ic beh aviors including arbitrary Bdolean
sw itching actions Neverthel ess the al gorithmic structure of a neur al system
beh aving in a manner des crib able by a system of such form is s ignificantly
r estricted at least if the number N of dis tinct neuron al species al low ed in the
model is rel atively sm all (e g not more th an sever al thous and) an d if the
b eh avior of the system is as st able in reg ard to f air sized perturb ations of the
kernels K1, del ays
response functions fl an d inj ections of r andom noise as
m amm ali an nervous systems seem to be In p articul ar it w ould seem to be
impossible for such systems to use an y delicately b al anced al go rithm
involving closely co ordin ated iter ated motions of d at a between intricately
arr anged stor age points
Better underst anding of the m anner in which the br ain m akes us e of the
enormous m ass of le arned inform ation which it is able to store will doubtless
r eve al less constr ained w ays in which it can deal w ith m as sive amounts of
inf orm ation h aving a discrete ch ar acter r ather th an the im age like ch ar acter
of the functions s (x ) appe aring in
Nevertheless combin atori ally complex
forms of inform ation processing seem unlikely to be us ed in p articul ar
b ecause they seem unlikely to h ave arisen in the course of org anic evolution
w hich typic ally proceed s by progressive ad apt ation and enl argement of
existin g structures r ather than by sudden leaps In contr as t artif ici al d at a
an al ysis systems can often m ake enormo usly effective use of delicately
b al anced p atterns of d at a processing and motion w hich often speed up the
gener ation of need ed intermedi ate or fin al results by m an y orders of
m agnitude A lgorithmic consider ations seem therefore to f avor artifici al
systems over n atur al

The

'

Limits S et by th e !

t ita tive T h eory of C omp u tation al C omp l ex ity

Th e abstr act model of nervous tissue set out in the preceding section
serves more comfort ably to gener ate s urmises concerning the oper ation of

u an

sensory functions such as vision t actile sens ation an d he aring th an to

represent the br ain s ability to deal with more discrete or symbolic m ateri al
i e to re ason Th e most rem ark able and perh aps fund ament al p art of this
is the br ain s ability to org anize inform ation pr esented in rel atively
disordered form into intern al ly org anized structures on which sophisticated
coherent courses of symbolic an d of re al world action can be b ased It is the
present l ack of this ability th at m akes it necess ary to p rogram computers
r ather th an simply to tea ch them ; teaching would be v astly more convenient
and which w ould bring the era of artifici al intelligence v ery close if it became
possible T o cl arify this b asic distinction note th at the ability of computers to
ret ain and utilize tlly structu red materia l is al ready enormously
accept
superhum an e g a computer can acquire and proceed to use the very
complex set of rules for compiling a progr amming l an gu age in just a few
seconds ; nothing in the biologic al w orld other th an the tr ansmission of a full
set of genes during conception m atches this enormous r ate of info rm ation
tr an sfer On the other h and al though a computer can easily acquire and
ret ain the whole text of the E ncyclop edia B rittan ica (even by re ading its
p ages successively ) computers are at present incap able of m aking an y active
use of the inform ation which thes e volumes co nt ain since this text f al ls far
short of the degree of rigorous order and st an d ardiz ation which pr esent
computers require If this basic obst acle co uld be overcome computers could
immedi ately proceed to ingest the inform ation cont ained in all the w orld s
libr aries an d use this inf orm ation with superhum an effectiven ess For this
reas on a b asic go al of artifici al intelligence r esearch h as been the disco very
of principles of self org aniz ation robus t enough to apply to a wide v ariety of
inform ation sources A ny such org anizing principle would h ave to allow
coherent structures c ap able of directly guiding some form of computer action
to be gener ated automatically from rel atively disorg anized fr agmented input
Th e pres ent st ate of artifici al intelligence rese arch is most fund ament ally
ch aracterized by the fact th at no such robust principle of self org aniz ation is
as yet known even though m an y possibilities h ave been tried
Indeed high
hopes for the success of one or another app arently promising gener al
principle of this type h ave ch ar acterized successive periods of research in the
history of the subject A typical attempt of this kind particul arly intriguing
because of the great gener ality and potenti al power of the m athematical tools
which it proposes to employ h as been the attempt t o use form al isms dr awn
from sym b olic logic as the b asis for a self org aniz ation cap ability
Mathem atical axioms and theorems are mutu al ly co nsistent fragments of
inf orm ation w hich can be accumul ated sep ar ately and indefinitely ;
m athem atical proofs b as ed on these axioms an d theorems are highl y
structured wholes w hich arise from these fr agments according to the simple
well understood principles of form al logic If they could be gener ated
autom atic ally these proofs or v arious proof like structures e as ily deriv able
from them could be used almost immedi ately to produce m an y other
,

'

10

symbolic structures including co mputer progr ams Here a door to the most
Unfortun ately
ambitious go als of artifici al intelligence seems to swing open
t his prospect like al l others th at h ave been explored to d ate h as prov ed to be
blocked by fun dament al consider ations of comput ation al efficiency w hich w e
w ill now rev iew
The modern qu antit ative theory of comput ation al infe as ibility deriv ing
from the work of Go del an d Church al lows one to prove rigorously th at
enormous co mput ation al costs w ill alw ays m ake it impossible for
progr ammed systems to answer cert ain gener al cl as ses of questions in all
cas es
Th e origin al Ch urch Godel result is qu al it ative r ather th an
qu an tit ative and can be s ummed up in a short unsolvab ility st atement : there
can exis t no co mputer progr am P which is cap able of ex amining every other
progr am ! an d determining correctly in finite time whether ! will run
forever or h al t eventu al ly Since m an y other combin atori al problems can
easily be proved equiv alent in difficulty to this b asic unsolv able problem
they are just as uns olv able Recent more qu antit ative work along thes e s ame
lines h as shown th at there exist signific an t cl as ses of m athem atical problems
which although algorithmically solv able in the sense th at one can write
progr ams c ap able of solving e ach of the problems in such a cl ass are
nevertheless intracta ble since m ost of the problems in e ach of these cl asses
c arry minim al co mput ation al costs which rise with enormous r apidity as the
pro gr am cl ass es are pro gressively gener alized in directi ons w hich eventu ally
carry them over into the Church Godel zone of complete uns olv ability A s
this h appens seemi ngly sm all loosenings of the constr ain ts definin g a
p articul ar cl ass of problems alw ays increase the cos t of de aling with the
gener al ized class enormously
Problems in comput ation al l ogic whose efficient solution w ould provide
v ery gener al an d powerful tools for development of artifici al intelligence
illus tr ate th ese gener al rem arks A ny m athem atic al st atement can be written
in a conven ent yet perfectly rigorous w ay usin g the simple not ations of
i
predicate logic For ex ample the predicate st atement
.

'

(F O R
(R E AL (x )

R E AL (y )

ALL

x y
,

R EAL ( )
z

z, u, v, w

R E AL ( )

(2 )

R E AL ( )
v

R E AL (w )

imp lies

( (x

(y

(z

2 12 s
w

) )

(1

(u

z 12

c aptures the g eometric f act th at a broken line in three dimensional sp ace is

al w ays at le as t as long as a st raight line conn ecting the s ame endpoints (In
the preceding formul a cl auses of the form R EAL ( ) expr ess the f act that the
v ari abl e x designat es a real number ) Bec aus e of their gre at gener al ity
predicate form alisms like th at s een in the preceding formul a provide very
interesting testing grou nds for artifici al intelligence res earch An y method
.

11

which al lowed the truth or f al sity of l arge cl ass es of form alized st atements of
this kind to be d ecided autom atically and efficiently would also allow one to
perform m any other oper ations including the autom atic composition of m an y
kinds of computer progr ams the pl anning of gr asping positions and motions
for robot arms and m any m any other geometric an d sp ati al an alyses
However a consider able body of rigorous theoretical an alysis now rules out
this possibility Specifically it h as been show n th at algorithms for deciding
the t ruth of entirely gener al predicate st atements cannot exist nor can there
exist al gorithms c ap able of performing any entirely gener al process of form al
re asoning co nstruction or problem solving equiv alent in difficulty to the
t ask of cl as sifying entirely gener al predi cate st atements as t rue or f alse
Indeed the existence of such algorithms is directly ruled out by the b asic
Church Godel theorem referenced above On the other h and algorithms
c ap able of d eciding n arrower but still quite interesting subcl as ses of predicate
st atements do exist For ex am ple a f amous theorem of T arski as serts the
existence of an al gorithm cap able of deciding any st atement co ncerning real
numbers which can be written using only the four element ary arithmetic
an d
oper ations of ( addition
subtr action
multiplication
division)

comp arisons between r eal numbers (e g cl aus es of the form x is gre ater
th an
the element ary Boole an connectives (an d or implies not) an d the
st and ard predicate qu antifiers (F O R ALL 1 F O R S OME x ) However the t ask
which this al gorithm accomplishes lies close enough to the Church Godel
zone of u nsolvability th at even app arently slight gener al iz ations of this
problem prove to be al gorit hmic al ly unsolv able For ex ample the s ame
decision problem for the cl ass of st atements h aving ex actly the s ame
stru cture but in which v ari ables design ate whole numbers (integers ) r ather
th an arbitr ary re al numbers (which for technical re asons are somewh at e asier
to de al with ) is unsolv able
Moreover since the T arski decision problem for real arithmetic is ne arly
unsolv able any algorithm c ap able of deciding the truth/fal sity of an y
st atement of the fo rm described must require eno rmous and in deed
prohibitive co mput ation al resources in the w orst case Specifically a
theorem of Ferr ante and Rackoff proved in 197 5 shows th at the running
t ime even of the f astest possible algorithm cap able of deciding the trut h or
f alsity of every st atement 5 of T arski form must rise exponenti al ly with the
length of s for some (though not for all) such st atements 5 T hus in
unf avor able cas es the minimum running time of such al gorithms w ill be
prob ably in excess of billions of years m aking their existence a m atter of
theoretical interes t r ather th an of pr actical signific ance Th eorems of this
s ame sort apply to m any other cl asses of m athem atical st atements h aving
decision problems of roughly the s ame degree of inherent difficulty as the
T arski cl as s an d imply even higher degrees of comput ation al difficulty for
more gener al st atement cl asses For ex ample al though the ful l cl ass of
st atements of T arski form beco mes un decid able if applied to integers r ather
,

12

th an re al numbers the subcl ass of st atements involving onl y arithmetic

subtr action and comp arison o per ations (but no mul tiplications or
addition
divisions ) rem ains decid able even if applied to integers However here ag ain
w e lie close enough to the zone of absolute unsolv ability for comput ation al
costs to rise prohibitively high More specifically a theorem of Fisher an d
Rabin ( 19 74 ) shows th at these co sts must be just as l arge as the T arski case
costs des cribed above
T hese gener al st atements of comput ation al inf e asibility pl ay the s ame
role in computer science gener al ly an d artifici al intelligence p articul arly th at
the first an d second l aws of thermodyn amics pl ay in physics and engineering
i e th ey set limits to wh at it is re as on able to attempt While they do not at
all rule ou t the possibility of artifici al intelligence they do suggest th at it
c annot be att ained by progr amming any unit ary mech anism of complete
gener ality from which al l th at is need ed will follow by simple speci al iz ation
Instead it may be necess ary to develop a rel atively l arge number of artifici al
systems which mimic p articul ar types of reas oning an d ment al functions in
cases speci alized enough to admit of p articul arly effici ent tre atment an d by

systems whose cover age w hil e bro ad enough to be v ery useful is less
comprehensive th an is as s umed by n aive m athem atic al st atements of the
problems they address Th e individu al functi ons thereby produced w oul d
then h av e to be integr ated into a softw are structure cap able of a very
adv an ced level of functi on which hopefully wou l d al so as s ist subst anti al ly in
its own further development Painfully det ailed m anu al development of very
many sep ar ate subcomponents of a highly w mplex tot al system cap able of
exhibiting a high level of intelligent function will only be avoided if some
rel atively uniform principle al lo w ing co mputers to le arn in hum an like
f ashion is somehow developed A t present w e h av e no re al inkling of how
this might be done though the preceding m odel of neur al fun ction suggests
th at it ought somehow to be possible It is equ al ly unknown whether this
present in cap acity is a consequence of gro ssly ins uff icient computing power
as some of the estim ates m ade e arlier in this article seem to suggest
or
simply refl ects the f act that we h ave not yet found those simple yet effi cient
mech anical le arning techniques whose dis cov ery w ill en able much more r apid
adv ance
,

'

Limita ti ons of th e Pres en t S tate of Kn ow l ed ge in A rt ificial I n tell ig ence

Since p rinciples of sel f org aniz ation al lo w ing gener ation of bro adly
useful symbolic structures from more disorg anized and fr agment ary input
w ould be cruci al to the progress of artifici al intelligence work ai ming at the
discovery of such principles h as been much emph asized Signs of progress in
this di rection h ave alw ays gener ated p articul ar excitement Unfortun ately all
such efforts to d ate h ave run agroun d on the co mput ation al cost difficul ties
outlined in the preceding section T his fund ament al f act constr ains the
immedi ate perspectives of the field severely Of course the m any intriguing
-

13

techniques developed d uring twenty ye ars of artifici al intelligence research do

not l ack application ; indeed their applications can be expected to grow
ste adily in scope and number H owever in the absence of any unifying
principle of self org aniz ation these applic ations must be seen as ad apt ations
of diverse ide as r ather th an as system atic acco mplishments of a still mythical

technology We are still at the point at which the success of such

A I
app lications depends far more on clever speci al algorithms and code reecting
p articul ar appli cation content th an on use of the sti ll impoverish ed gener al
purpose tools of artifici al intelligence Moreover since speci aliz ation is still
gener al ly vit al to success it is h ard to ch aracterize the extent to which su ccess
in any one applic ation should be re ad as repr esenting adv ance of the artifici al
intelligence field as a whole : to the degree th at an application comes to
depend on speci al techniques sp eci al d at a l ayouts and speci al algorithmic
appro ach es we can no longer rightly reg ard it as evidence for the vi ability of
a gener al appro ach distinguish able from artful progr amming in gener al
N evertheless some of the more speci aliz ed rese arch efforts inspired by
gener al artifici al intelligence notions h ave succeeded mod estly in mimicking
limited but interesting asp ects of ment al c ap abilities such as vision and
n atur al l angu age underst anding
T o cl arify this ass essment the present st atus of work along v arious
sig nificant lines will be summ arized in this section It is useful to arr ange this
work under three m ai n headings : sensory functions motor control and
reasoning More det ailed articles on the v arious are as reviewed should also
be consulted
,

S ens or y Fu ncti ons

Th es e include an al ysis of im ages ( computer vision ) an al ysis
l an gu age m ade av ail able in written form and of co ntinuous speech

of

A n al ys is

In spite

of

n atur al

Im ag es

of a

great de al of work on the first steps of im age processing

(e g deblurring edge detection) we are still far from being able to duplicate
the eye s rem ark able ability to detect objects in the presence of l arge amounts
of v is u al disg u ise
N evertheless our ability to identify objects w ithin scenes is
steadily improving p articul arly for scenes cont aining onl y objects w hose
geometry an d color ation is known in adv ance E ven if l arge p arts of the
objects present are obscured such scenes can be h an dled more e as ily th an
entirely gener al images (6 g im ages of outdoor scenes cont aining shrubbery )
T his reects the f act th at the problem of identifying known bodies and

determining their orient ation (the model b as ed vision problem) is entirely

obj ective ; in contrast the problem of imposing useful perceptu al groupings
on entirely gener al scenes is at le as t p artly psychological i e to solve this
seco nd problem we need to m atch the functions of the hum an visu al system
well enough for introspection to serve as an accur ate guide to the w ay in
.

14

w hich

robot vision system will react to a scene

A mong the m any methods which are becoming av ail able for h an dling the

e asier model b ased vision problem are: dir ect m atching of curv es h aving
fix ed geometric po sition on known object s urfaces ; Use of projective
inv ari ants of object silhouettes ; probing techni ques applicable for objects
known to be presented in one of a finite numb er of al lowed positions (e g
objects lying on a t able top or conveyor belt ) or on w hich one or more
ch ar acteristic fe atures can be reli ably located ; geometric reasoning using
fe atur es (such as corners str aigh t corners str aight ed ges circles ) which can
be detected directly or by st atisti cal (e g Hough transform) methods
A nother promising object recog nition technique is comput ation of
inv ari ants of loc al sh ape (rot ation al inv ari an ts ) for the edges of two

dimensi on al figur es an d for the ridges (curves alon g which at le ast one of a
surf ace s extr insic curv atures is l arge) of 3 di mension al objects A ny sh arp
color or reectivity boun d ari es present on the surf aces of (p ainted or
otherwise m arked ) 3 dimension al ob jects can also be used T o the extent th at
is is possible to define inv ari ants st able ag ainst the disturbing effects of
observ ation al noise ch an ges in illumin at ion level view ing angle specul arity
etc this technique can support recognition even of heav ily obscured objects
an d al lows use of h ashing techniques w hich gre atl
reduce
t
he
c
o st of
y
identifying objects selected from l arge voc abul aries of potenti al c an did ates
Bey ond this sophisticated use of color and texture cues av ail able on object
surf aces may prove possible Here however we come to the point at which
the hum an (or m amm ali an ) visu al system displ ays a sophistication th at
rese archers seem far fro m being able to m atch ev en after sever al dec ades of
determined effort In so me r em ark able w ay the eye is able t o integr ate the
evi d enti al w eight of fr agment ary clues and to m ake use not only of dotted
an d d ashed lines but of comput ation al l
y elusive tex ture bound aries v ague
differences of sh ading an d curves which are very b adly broken up by
obscuring obj ects (e g foli age) and complex sh ado w p atterns All this can be
do ne in a m ann er resist ant to the conf using effects of v ery large ch anges in
il lumin ation p attern intense specul arities im age blurring and the myri ad
other effec ts all too painfully f amili ar to the vision researcher Fin ally all
this is possible for scenes cont aining l arge numbers of obj ects some
unf amili ar seen in a gr eat v ariety of app arent siz es from sh arp and severely
distor ting an gl es an d in the absence of binocul ar inf orm ation
A t the pres ent time we h ave little underst anding of ho w al l of this is
acco m
plished and at wh at comput ation al cost
However it is clear th at image pro cessing tends to be very expensive
comput ation ally (e g initi al analysis of an im age often requires ex amin ation
of
an d
between
sep ar ate im age pixels ) so th at
subst anti ally f as ter p rocessors th an are now av ail able may prove to assist the
development of this very ch al lenging subject T hese processors may include
a

'

15

speci al purpose chips able to apply b asic im age an al ysis oper ations at high
speed

Robot systems equipped with t actile sensors acquire t actile im ages

w hich are of much lower resolution th an visu al im ages but can be an alyzed
using techniques like those applic able to visu al im ages
.

R ec ogn it ion

C ontin u ou s Sp eech
The ability to interpret co ntinuous speech i e to he ar con tinuously
v arying soundw av e p atterns gener ated by speakers of a famili ar l angu age and
to tr ansform them into roughly equival ent written s equences of phoneme
indicators (or i nto st and ard word spellings) is a b asic cap ability of the human
auditory an d nervous system sh ared to some extent with an enormous r ange
of other living creatures e g birds sensitive to p articul ar birdsongs The
history o f efforts to give computers a compar able ability provides a nice
illustr ation of the possibilities an d difficulties f acing artifici al intelligence
research focus ed on sens ory areas
Processing of speech begins with spectr al an alysis of an impinging sound
system to extr act energy intensities in a r an ge of frequency ch annels Th ese
intensities define a famil y of physic al p ar ameters of the impinging speech
sign al which v ary continuously through time and hence al low the received
sign al to be reg arded as a continuous curve C ( t) in n dimension al sp ace
where n (which typically h as a v al ue lying somewhere in the r an ge of 5 to
20 ) is the n umber of distinct energy intensi t ies (or other physical p ar ameters
o f the incoming so und ) extr acted
T hese initi al p arameters can then be
Supplemented by add ing v arious deriv atives smoothed deriv atives or o ther
locally defined time inv ari an t fun ction als as addition al p arameters to produce
a modified continuous curve C 1 ( t)
h aving a somewh at l arger number n , of
p ar ameters as an improved description of the incoming signal T his
description can in turn be subjected to an appropri ate nonlinear
tr ansform ation to norm aliz e it for such speaker dependent v ari ables as pitch
of voice and speech r ate
T his yields a p arametrized multi dimension al curve
C (t) s u it able as input to the next more symbolic steps of processing
T he necess ary tr ansition to a symbolic st age of processing can be
accomplished in a v ariety of w ays
A typical technique is to divide the n
dimension al sp ace E through which the curve C ( t) runs into a co llection of
overl apping regions
each of which corresponds to one of the basic
phonemes p , recognized by the l angu age to w hich an utter ance belongs
P ass age of the curve C through a region Rj is then reg arded as in dication th at
the corresponding phoneme p 1 h as been pronounced Since the regions RI ca n

overl ap the specific phoneme being pronounced (or more properly heard
at an y given moment ) is somewh at ambiguous
(Inste ad of phonemes the
b asic symbols into which C ( t) is (ambiguously) converted can be l arger speech

units e g full syll ables or demisyllables consisting of a cons on ant

of

16

preceding or following a vowel or phoneme fr agment ) Numerical

prob abiliti es for the presence of an y given phoneme ( or other primitive
symbolic element) can al so be co mputed e g by using a smoothly v arying
instead of the
fun ction fj positive o nl y w ithin Ri an d then forming
simpler Boole an qu antity C ( t) e Rj
.

T his

converts the incoming acoustic sign al into

ndg n
u

sequence of the form

ot)

m}

(3)

sets of phoneme ( or syll able or demisyll able)

'
symbols : j Th e members of each such set repres ent all the phonemes which
design ate soun d s close enough to the incoming sign al during a specific inst ant
Wh at
of time th at they might h ave been pronounced du ring th at ins t an t
rem ains is to dis ambigu ate the sequence into a fin al perceived phoneme string

w hose succes sive elements

are

1)

(4)

0>
belongs
to
the
c
each of whose successive symbols
o rresponding set
,
I
in the sequence
A s cleverly pointed out by John Cocke this is like the
problem of d ecoding an En glish l angu age mess age th at has been ambiguously
spelled out by di aling it ona st and ard telephone di al an d by tr ansmitting the
resulting digits only (note th at each digit tr ans mitted then refers ambiguous ly
to one the three possible as soci ated letters )
Such dis ambigu ation must of
course rest on other kn owledge concerning the phoneme (or syll able or
demisyll abl e) sequen ces th at can legit im ately occur in the l angu age to which
the expected utterance belongs
Sever al appro aches to this go al are possible :
(i) One can use some form of (possibly multi level ) gr amm ar to define the
set of al l word sequences an d from this the set of al l syll able
demisyllab le an d phon eme seq u ences which are leg al (or l ikely to ox ur)
in the l angu age of the utter ance being an al yzed The comput ation al
pr oblem then becomes t hat of finding the gr amm atical ly v al id phoneme
sequence sequences (4) consistent w ith the ambiguous input sequence
des criptor
o

a
t
roceed
( le ast for some of the phonemic or syll abic levels
p
th at wo ul d otherwise h ave to be described by form al gr amm ars) in
purely st atistical f as hion Th is can be done by reg arding utter ances in
the l angu age to be an al yz ed as outputs frOm a M arkov source whose
ch ar acteristics can be as cert ained by co llectin g d at a on the frequency w ith
w hich a giv en phoneme follows a preceding sequence of one t w o or
more kn own phonemes T hen the most accept able interpret ation (4) of
th e ambiguous input sequence (3) can be defined as the most prob able
and can be cal cul ated by some dyn amic
sequence consistent with
progr amming proced ure e g the Viterbi algorithm A prob abilistic
appro ach of this kind can m ake good use of numerical me asures of
likelihood as soci ated with the v arious al tern atives appe aring in e ach of

(ii ) One

can

17

the sequences co nstituting

Subst an ti al rese arch efforts mounted during the l ast few ye ars h ave
significan tly increased the speed and robustness of interpret ation techniques
of the kind just described VLSI chips able to acco mplish the i niti al (an alog )
steps of processing (spectr al decomposition
sign al filtering and
differenti ation sign al norm aliz ation) an d perhaps even gener ation of the first
level phoneme stre am (3) should soon be av ail able
The interpret ation problem is e as ed subst an ti ally for words spoken in
isol ation sin ce in this case direct m atching techniques able to sp an a word s
whole extent are comput ation ally fe as ible ; devices c ap able of reco gnizing
voc abul aries of sever al hun dred words spoken in isol ation are al ready
For co ntinuous speech the still very onerous
av ail able co mmerci ally
comput ation al cost of dis ambigu ating (3) into (4 ) has forced researchers to
concentr ate much of their attention on v arious heuristic schemes for reducing
this cost However neither powerful al gorithms for accomplishing this
efficiently nor any re al an alysis of the inh erent comput ational difficulty of
the problem is yet av ail able T echniques applied h ave r an ged from
system atic use of prob abilistic techniques or rel ax ation l abeling ideas to
entirely ad hoc schemes for combining clues detected by multiple
interpret ation processes acting at numerous phonemic synt actic and even
sem antic levels
One is entitled to feel a cert ain O ptimism concerning continued progress
of work in this area since the inherent time sequence of the sign als bein g
as sists
powerfully as do the gre atly increased levels of
an al yzed
co mput ation al p ower m ade av ail able by VLSI technology Perh aps the
over all theme th at emerges here is the acces sibility of the simpler hum an
input mod al ities to autom ation given sufficiently l arge in cre as es in
comput ation al c ap ability
.

A n al ys is

of

N at u r al L angu ag e

Simple form al gramm ars (e g co ntext free gr amm ars ) of the kind used
to define the s tructure of progr amming l an gu ages serve rem ark ably well to
define the b as ic st ructure of n atur al l angu age synt ax However n atural
l an gu age admits a far gre ater v ariety of synt actic irreg ul arities speci al us ages
fr agment ary an d semi gr amm atical us ages and specialized
an d idioms
subl angu ages an d j argons such as doctor s English crimin al argot and
Jiv etalk Comp ared to artifici al l an gu ages n atur al l angu age appe ars as an
overgrown jungle whose effective description even at the purely synt actic
level requires gramm ars whose symbols c arry m any kinds of attributes (e g

count noun anim ate

treat m any words in speci al w ays an d require
el abor ate sometimes explicitly procedur al h andling N atur al l angu age also
involves m any synt actic and sem an tic ambiguities which can only be resolved

using extensive re al world knowledge e g St anding in the pen the

.

13

c attlem an took his pen from his pocket In spite of decades of work on
comput ation al linguistics we are still far from po ssessing any computerized
n atur al l angu age an al ysis system th at can either deal with the very w ide r ange
of phenomen a ( especi al ly errors an d sentence fr agments) appe aring in
inform al English or handle more th an a very few of the speci alized
subl angu ages with which p eople de al commonly or co mf ort ably or resolve
ambiguities at all well
A ttempts to tre at the sem antics of n atur al l angu age autom atically
co nfront artifici al intelligence research w ith problems far deeper and
seemingly l ess tr act able th an those of synt actic an al ysis A l angu age s
sem antics imbeds its set of gr amm atical sentences in a d eductive fr amework
m aking it possible to use the overt text of a discourse to deduce f acts not
explicit in this text Moreover cert ain combin ations of gr amm atical
sentences w ill then be sem antic ally inconsistent al lowing cert ain otherwise
For
sentences to be dis ambiguated on sem antic groun ds
ambiguous

ex ample without sem antics th e sentence I noticed a man on the ro ad

w earing a d ark h at would admit an an al ysis in which the ro ad r ather th an

the man w as we aring the hat as in I noticed a man on the ro ad le ading to

the North end of town Seman tic rel ationships allo w res olution of m an y
other ambiguities which n atur al l an gu age synt ax allows e g ambiguities of

qu antifier orderin g ( A wom an gives birth in the U S every 5 minutes ) and

Th ey
an aphor a ( John bought his grocer ies in sever al adjoining sm all shops
cost 2 0
A ny fully s atisf actory form aliz ation of the sem antics of n atur al l angu age
must address all of the following very ch al lenging problems plus others
(1) A deductive fr amework accommod ating a w ide v ariety of prob abilistic
and other inform al arguments going far beyond the kinds of rigorous
ded uction allowed in m athem atics must be provided A mong other
things one needs to all ow controlled rel ax ation of norm al sem antic

restrictions in order to accommod ate unusu al sentences like Th e long

ro ad an d the slender tree sat aroun d the w iz ard s t able t alking The ro ad
w as w earing a d ark brown hat in texts reco gnized as f airy stories even
though ro ads w e aring h ats are ordin arily dis al lowed sem an tical ly
(2 ) The fr amework chosen must accommod ate the w hole enormo us r ange of
f acts entering into n atural l an gu age disco urse including all the common

sense f acts of n aive physics concerning such catego ries as above and

below inside and outside

big and little etc Means for reasoning
about such elusive m atters as pl ans
kn owledge beliefs an d motives
must also be provided to say nothing of so ci al phenomen a such as
emb arr assment
(3) Inference within a sem antic fr amework mus t gener al ly be quite efficient
so th at f as t inf erences can be us ed to dis ambigu ate synt actic al ly
e g
ambiguous sentences and/ or to resolve an aphoric references in lengthy

19

text stre ams

A t present we h ave little ide a of how to tre at most of these issues which
collectively reach to the he art of the artifici al intelligence enterprise For

ex ample no prob abilistic or fuzzy form al ism beyond the well defined but
rigid sem antic are a m apped out by proposition al an d pr edicate logic h as as
yet demonstr ated adv ant ages suf ficient to win it gener al accept ance
Moreo ver the b asic problem of wh at primitives a sem an tic form alism should
One possibility is to
use is s urro unded by deep an d ill f athomed questions
ation concerning the very m any
somehow simplify the c apture of inform
concepts appe aring in n at ur al l an gu age disco urse by re expressing them in
terms of some much sm al ler f amily of simpler primitives whose properties
Can then be expr essed by a significan tly sm aller set of rules
(This
simplification would in effect require finding some w ay of extending the
an alytic reductionism ch aracteri stic of theo retic al science to the entire r an ge
of phenomen a which n at ur al disco urse addresses ) A ny expect ation th at this
can succeed e as ily is discour aged by co ns ider ation of the slow p ace w ith
which science h as previously adv an ced into entirely new fields and on the
enormous comput ations sometim es required to apply gener al scientific l aws
to p articul ar concrete c as es T he opposite app roach is to somehow build a
sem antic form alism which h andl es the very m any terms appe aring in n atural
l angu age as un an alyzed primitives which it rel ates to each other by
comprehensive sets of axiom like formul ae B elief th at this appro ach can
succeed e asily or r apidly is discour aged by the formid able difficulties of
steering proofs in predic ate cal culus systems th at try to deal with more th an a
dozen or so c arefully crafted axioms
Me asured ag ainst thes e deeply rooted problems existing techniques for
dealing w ith n at ur al l angu age sem antics appe ar sketchy indeed S emantic
n etw ork systems attempt to org anize the enormous v ariety of objects and
predicates appe aring in ordin ary discourse by representing them as nodes in
gr aphs whose edges represent v arious logical rel ationships which are felt to
be p articul arly fund ament al to co mmon element ary inferences For ex ample

such edges may co nnect noun s A an d B whenever A is a kind of B (e g

when A is man an d B is m amm al ) or w hen A is a p art of B (e g w hen

A is arm and B is
A second aim of schemes of this sort is to
acceler ate simple sem antic deductions by m aking the inf orm ation they require
directly av ail able through short ch ains of pointers an d by grouping rel at ed
inform ation needed for the commonest types of deduction under appropri ate
he adings The fe as ibility of attempts of this kind co uld onl y be demonstr ated
by exhibiting at leas t one re adily extensible system able to cover some
extensive dom ain of pr actical knowledge robustly something which no one
h as yet done successful ly

Roger Sh ank s 1977 conceptu al dependency scheme represents an

attempt to reduce the myri ad elements appe aring in ordin ary discourse to a
.

'

20

much sm al ler set of sem an tic subcategories It is not inconceiv able th at such
an attempt should yield some useful degree of system atiz ation even though a
pessimist mi ght might view it as a futile effort to enl arge the applicability of
scientific modeling by c asu al invention of a cl as s ification scheme The

categor ies proposed by Sh ank include acts (essenti ally verbs w hich it is
ropose
to
f
ur ther subdivide as v ari ants of p urpo rted p rimitive acts such as
d
p

propel
ingest
expel
spe ak
picture producers (essenti al ly

nouns) times
locations etc A rel ated aim here is to cl as sify all the
inferences which att ach to entiti es of these proposed sem an tic categories

M arvin Minsky s fr ames and the associ ated scripts propos ed by Sh ank
define a more gener al (but accor dingly more empty) fr amework for
org anizing common sense knowledge in a stereotyped form Minsky
proposes to cl assify all the logical entiti es (e g nouns) th at can appe ar in a
sem antic netw ork system into (a possibly l arge number of) fixed categori es

With e ach such category a Minsky fr am e associ ates a fixed form at record
l ayout listing al l the attributes w hich an item of the given category might
h ave together with al l the v alues or categories of v alu es which e ach
particul ar attribute can assume For ex ample the fr ame for entit ies of

category rest aur ant might h ave a type field w ith possible v alues c af eteria

full service f ull sew ice w ithh ostess etc a foo d style field w ith possible

v al ues including Fish and chips Mexican Chin ese Th ai Se afood an d

so fo rth
Catego ries can be defined to be specializ ations of more
encomp as sing categories whose attributes they inherit ; cert ain of the
attributes of a c ategory can be optional
Sh ank proposes to include records of another fund ament al kind called

scripts in sem antic systems T hese are to be used to d es cribe categories of

activity
B as ically they list
(r ather th an of objects as with
sequences of sub activ ities w hich can in principle be co ndition al on specified

conditions Fr ames and Scripts are tied together by the f act th at a script
can specify the kinds of objects expected to appe ar in the acti vities it
des cribes (by including pointers to the corresponding fr am es ) whil e the
fr ames des cribing an entity type can reference scrip ts describing the activities
typically associ ated with these entities
T aken p er se this mec h anism is little more th an a w ay of org anizing
some aspects of the d at a w ith w hich full edged sem antic inf erence systems
will have to deal and does not answer the ques tions of how such an inference
system is to be created any more th an the inclusion of v aguely simil ar record
types in progr amming l an gu ages such as P ascal and PIJ 1 answers the
ques tion of how to write complex co mpilers or symbolic m anipul ation
systems using these l an gu ages However it can al so be read as sugges ting a

sem antic interpret ation scheme h aving something of a higher level synt ax

avor Specifical ly Shank s scripts can be viewed as higher level gramm ars
defining a l anguage of sem antically pl ausible sentence sequences (whose
.

21

rudiment ary elements are cl auses or other sentence fr agments alre ady pre

p arsed in some more st an d ard synt actic sense) T his gr amm ar of scripts

would allow much n ulling of script elements but then by using such a

gr ammar to p arse a text and immedi ately unp arsing the result wi th
element nulling forbidden one can hope to m ak e explicit cert ain simple but
very useful cl as ses of n orm al ly implicit inf erred elements (Since gramm ars
which al low l arge amoun ts of nulling tend to interpret given texts in highly
ambiguous f as hion applic ation of a scheme of the sort des crib ed may depend

upon a rule which prefers the shortest or s implest sem an tic script p arse of
Such a rule woul d amount to requiring th at only those
a text to all others
impli cit elements necess ary to a text s sem antic interpret ation coul d rightfully
be inferred A ltern atively the scripts driving the sem antic interpret ation
process co ul d associ ate prob abilities with each element ary interp ret ation step

A
and some rule defining most prob able interpret ations co uld be us ed )

gr amm ar of scripts used in t his w ay w ill necess arily be co ntext dependent

since sem antic co nn ections would h ave to be m aint ained betw een elements
at one point of a text
(e g explicit or implicit nouns or pronouns ) recognized

and m atching occurrences elsewhere

Hence p arsing acco rding to such a
gr amm ar might come to resemble the very inefficient proces ses of
comput ation al logic much more th an the rel atively efficient processes of
ordin ary synt actic an alysis
It woul d however be e as ier to t ake such r ation alizing sugges tions
seriously if str aightforw ard form alisms had been proposed for use in this area
and if some initi al an al ysis of their comput ation al cost were av ail able
Unf o rtun ately however the liter ature co nt ains little but preli min ary and
often co nfusing heuristic sugg estions and comput ation al schemes set ou t
without much justification no one of which seems to h ave g ained an y gener al
degree of accept an ce
Th is brief review of the difficulties which co nfront attemp ts to autom ate
n atural l angu age underst an ding underscores the wisdom of T uring s 195 0
suggestion th at ability to conduct n atur al seeming convers ations should be
reg arded as a touchstone of progress in artifici al intelligence In spite of
much work even a computer able to re ad simple stories (e g ordin ary
children s stori es or newsp aper articles ) and to answer simple questions about
their content still lies far beyond us E xisting sem antic an al ysis systems are
fr agile l abor atory co nstructions which can de al only w ith n arrowly res tricted
subject dom ains The mech anisms thus far sugg ested as b as es for more
comprehensive sem antic systems are all quite pri mitive Since the problems
with which they mus t de al seem to encomp ass al most the whole subject
m atter of artifici al intelligence only slow progress can be predicted
,

'

22

Motor C ontr ol M od el ing of S p ati al E nviron men ts , Moti on Pl ann in g

Ou r review of these topics w ill illustr ate the point th at areas of artifici al
intelligence to which cl assical scientific and algorithmic techniques apply can
be expected to progress more r apidly th an areas which de al w ith deeper
problems for which only less focused appro aches are av ail able M an y of the
c ap abiliti es review ed in this section are being explored in co nnection w ith
indus tri al robotics Sin ce m any of the problems encountered are t echnical
r ather th an fund ament al it is re ason able to expect ste ady progress at a r ate
l ar gely determined by the resources brought to be ar How ev er it should be
noted th at work in t his are a cre ates very chal lenging problems of softw are
systems integr ation involves a complex mix of technologi es and is quite
expensive Studies in other areas of artifici al intelligence such as computer
vision may r aise simil ar pr actical problems as they adv an ce tow ard m aturity
Rese arch in motor control aims to devise robo ts c ap able of exerting
sophistic ated hybrid force and position al control over gr asped objects an d to
T ypic al problems of
construct robots which can w al k run le ap and climb
m anipul ati on are to tie a knot in rope to thre ad a nut of imprecisely known
sh ape an d pitch onto a b olt and to pick Up a jumbled sheet of cloth an d fold
it ne atly T echniqu es ad apted from concep ts pr esently belonging to nonlinear
control theory (which should be consider ably enriched by cont act with
robotics ) shoul d m ake S ophistic ated m an ipul ation of rigid objects possible
during the next few ye ars T o do this much work on such cl assic al topics as
t he friction al and el astic re actions of bo dies in cont act will be required
D yn amic robot control such as is involved in w al king or running should also
progress steadily over the next few years However this will require close
study of the co mplex physical situ ations cre ated as motor actu ated
mech anisms h aving v arious geometries and dyn amic beh aviors enter into
repetitive co nt act w ith s upporting surf aces
,

Th e

problems of de al ing with nonrigid objects e g cloth are much less

understood and w e l ack even a vocabul ary for describing some of the basic
oper ations involved How for ex ample is a robot to find the edges of a
h anging sheet of cloth prep ar atory to folding it ! Roboticists h ave not yet
begun to gr apple seriously with such problems an d it is not now understood
whether these w ill permit of uniform att acks or require development of
special an al yses and appro aches in a l arge number of different cases
With a few experiment al exceptions tod ay s robots do not m aint ain any
system atic intern al model of their enviro nment ; the environment is typically
known to them onl y as a source of t actile or visu al interrupts al l sense of
extern al object identity being lost as soon as a gr asped object is set down or
T o develop any deeper underst anding of the
p as s es ou t of sight
environment robots will require far more sophisticated environment
modeling softw are th an is now av ail able A lthough the b asic principles
require for t his are l argely av ail able from cl as sical physics and geometry it
,

23

rem ains a co nsider able ch allenge to devise algorithms c ap able of performing

the required comput ations with accept able efficiency For ex ample even
though the fields of comput ation al geometry and geometric modeling h ave
developed vigorously w e still l ack al gorithms able to perform such b asic
oper ations as detecting intersections between curved surf aces r apidly More
sophistic ated modeling oper ations are needed e g simul ation of the p aths
along which one m odel object w ill roll or slide along a given surf ace an d of
the frictional or other forces involved in such motions Th ese r aise yet
an other r an ge of problems directly significant for artifici al intelligence but
which are bound to tax the best efforts of numerical analysts geometers an d
students of mech anics D oubtless much can be done here but there is little
re as on why these problems will adv ance more r apidly when viewed as
problems of artifici al intelligence th an they would when viewed as problems
although
in geometry an d mech an ics
In p arti cul ar
some artifici al

intelligence rese archers h ave hoped to cons t ruct a semi symbolic n aive
physi cs which could calcul ate the qu alit ative out come of co mmon inter actions
between physic al bodies more che aply th an is possible by det ailed
ary a
modeling
this
ide
is
still
in
a
ltogether
too
rudiment
a
m
t
r
i
c
h
s
i
c
a
l/
e
o
e
g
p y
st ate for fas t success to be likely
Co nsider able attention h as focused recently on the problem of motion
p lann ing for robot controll ed bodies moving in obst acle filled environments
Th e problem here is tO determine whether one or more objects of known
sh ape moving in an environment cont aining obst acles of other known
sh apes can p as s from one specified position to another without co lli ding
either with the obst acles or with each other In v ari ants of this problem the
obst acles may be moving an d the controlled objects constr ained to move at
bounded r ates or with bounded acceler ations ; or the geometry of the
obst acles may be known only in part (but then sensors able to detect object
proximity must be av ail able) ; or it may be required to calcul ate shortest or
f astest or most energy efficient p aths Recent work al ong geometric lines
h as begun to elucid ate this circle of problems but doing so h as required
development of ste adily more subtle al gorithms dr awing heavily on the
comput ation al g eometer s b ag of tricks This is cle arly an are a of artifici al
intelligence rese arch which h as adv anced by moving closer to other more
tr adition al are as of science which suggests th at at least for th e present it may
al so be e asier for other br an ches of artifici al intelligence rese arch to progress
in this rel atively conservative f ashion th an by relying on the seemingly more
gener al but often more v acuous symbolic se arch methods tr adition al ly
associ ated with the artifici al intelligence field
.

Reas on ing , Pl annin g , Kn ow l edg e Rep res ent at ion , E xp er t

S yst ems
Workers in artifici al intelligence h ave explored m any form al schemes
which promised to produce us eful structures autom atical ly from less
structured input These h ave included gr aph se arch the predicate logic
.

24

m echanisms reviewed earlier rule b ased systems and the sequencing

schemes used as inference engines in expert systems The most co mmon

method s of this so rt will be rev iew eiew ed d in the following p ar agr aphs
A ttempts to apply an y of these schem es wholes ale h ave inv ari ably been
defeated by the s ame combin atori al explosion w hich m akes univers al
application of pr edic ate logic techniques infe asible

G r ap h

S ear ch
M an y problems can be reformul ated as th at of finding a p ath betw een
two known points within a gr aph Pl anning an d m anipul ation problems both
physical an d symbolic illustr ate this Such problems are described by
defining ( 1) an initi al co ndition with which m anipul ation must begin (2 )
some t arget st ate or st ates th at one aims to reach an d (3) a family of
tr ansform ations th at determines how one can step from st ate to st ate
Th e problem of chemical synthesis is an ex ample : the t arget is a
compo und to be synthes ized the initi al st ate is that in which e asily av ail able
st arti ng subst ances are at h an d an d the allowed m anipul ations are the
The problem of symbolic
el ement ary re actions known to th e chemist
integration is a seco nd ex ample : some initi ally given fo rmul a 1 co nt aining an
integr al sign defines the st arting st ate an y formul a m athem atically equiv alent
to F but not cont aining an integr al sign is an accept able t arget and the
tr ansform ations are thos eth at cal culus allows
In all such p roblems the collection of av ail able tr ansform ations is a he ap
of rel ativ ely independent items which can be exp an ded freely
Hence the
construction of a p ath through the gr aph defin ed by a collection of
tr ansform ations does repr esent a situation in w hich structured entities
n amely p aths arise v ia simple and uniform r ules from something
unstructured n amely collect ions of t r ansform ations E arly in the history of
artificial intelligence it w as hoped th at this co nstruction could serve as a
univ ers al principle of self org aniz ation However subsequent experience has
repe atedly sho w n th at the size of the gr aphs needed to represent signific ant
problems in this w ay can be as tronomical m aking brute force search

inf e asib le To do better some form of g uided or pruned se arch must be

used G uided se arch might i nvolve use of some auxili ary heur istic s coring
mech anism able to predict the dist an ce t o a desired t arget f airly accur ately
without the precise p ath to the t arget being known A nother possibility is to

gener ate some not fully accurate roughed out prelimin ary p ath or pl an and
then to try to produce a fully v alid gr aph p ath by using this rough pl an for
g uid ance
No metho d for m aking either of these techniques work at al l robustly h as
yet been developed A perfectly accur ate means of calcul ating the dist ance
between an arbitr ary gr aph node g and a desired t arget node t is
m athem atical ly equiv al ent to an algorithm for finding the short est p ath to t
,

25

from any such g Hence we can h ardly expect such functions to be av ail able
except for problems speci alized enough to be subject to complete
m athem atical an alysis a p riori Experience seems to show th at hum an att ack
on subst anti al problems especi al ly in problem dom ains th at are at al l
f amili ar involves re action to so extensive a r an ge of problem and context
features as to b ar c apture by an y str aightforw ard scoring heuristic Guid ance
by use of rough prelimin ary pl an s is frustr ated by the present in ability of
computers to use any adequ ate notion of simil arity in co mbin atori al dom ains
In addition the f act th at the number of tr ansform ations potenti al ly av ail able
and hence the prob ability of h aving to se arch an exploding nu mber of form al
possibilities tend to rise r apidly once p arti al solutions and means for
amending them are allowed into a problem context
Prun ed se arch involv es either the use of problem symmetries to prevent
w asteful ex plor ation of gr aph p aths which h ave alre ady been searched in
some equiv alent form oruse of auxili ary rules able to predict th at a given
gr aph edge need never be tr aversed becaus e no p ath involving t his edge can
reach the desired t arget node A lthough use of such ide as h as proved useful
intr act able combin atori al searches gener al ly rem ain even after such notions
except in p articul arly fortun ate cas es whose treatment amounts
are applied
more to the use of speci al high efficiency algorithms th an to applic ation of

an y very gener al artifici al intelligence appro ach

Moreover because of the
fe atur eless gener ality of gr aph theoretic notions the formul ation of such
problems in gr aph theoretic terms tends to conce al r ather th an to reveal
Opportunities for se arch pr uning
For all of these re as ons belief in the efficacy of entirely gener al gr aph
se arch appro aches has l argely dis appe ar ed among artifici al intelligence
rese archers even though gr aph b ased techniques continue to be v alued for
their gener ality
Co mputer m an aged p lanning in artifici al intelligence contexts is gener ally
accomplished by reduction to some type of explicit or implicit gr aph se arch
The computer m aint ains intern al models of the v arious situ ations

th at would arise as the result of its tent atively pl an ned actions Th ese st ates
are tre ated as the nodes of a gr aph whose edges are the actions th at co uld
lead from st ate to st ate Since a p ath through such a gr aph h as then an
obvious interpret ation as a pl anned sequence of actions pl ans can be
gener ated by specifying an initi al and a fin al st ate ( or by specifying attribut es
w hich defin e an accept able fin al st ate) and by finding a p ath connecting these
two st ates A s in al l gr aph theoretic situ ations this method works well if the
gr aph th at needs to be search ed is rel atively sm all (e g consists of no more

th an a few thous an d nodes ) For ex ample all sorts of simple monkey an d

b an an as puzzles can e as ily be solved by this method On the other h an d
application o f this method to more serious pl an ning problems is often
infe asible bec aus e the gr aphs involved (explicitly or implicitly) are enormous
.

'

26

ex ample of this consider the simple nines puzzle w hich consists of

8 squ are pieces in a 3 x 3 fr ame to be moved between specified
conf igurations Here the gr aph of st ates consists of 9 ! or
so even for
so simple a problem brute force gr aph search begins to become t ax ing For
12
!
the corr esponding 4 x 4 puzzle whose st ate sp ace involves 16 or over 10
n odes it is completely infeas ible )

(A s

an

Pred ic ate

Syst ems
A ttempts to gener ate proofs from collections of m athem atical axioms
and lemm as by systematic tr an sform ation of sets of form alized st atements
Th is is a dom ain in
can be reg arded as a speci alized form of gr aph se arch
wh ch heuristic guid ance t echniques (e g rules f avoring short formul ae over
long or formul ae differing little from a t arget formul a F over form ul ae very
different from F ) probl em symmetries an d search pruning methods h ave
b een very extensively explored A mong these are:
(a) the b as ic resolu tion technique which h andl es inst an ti ation of the
v ari ables in a set of predic ate cl aus es efficiently by m aking only those
substitutions which arise from some clas h betw een element ary cl auses
i nvolving two identical predicat es one neg ated the other not ;
a
a
a
a
e
a
b
other
still
more
h
ghly
p
u
ned
v
ri
nts
of
predic
te
r
solution
pplic
ble
i
r
)
(
to sets O f st atement s of p articul arly f avor able form (e g to collections of

Horn d isjunctions i e those in which at most one one predicate term

occurs w ith a positive sign in each disjunction of the collection al l other
disjoined predicat eterms occu rring neg ated) ;
(c) r esolution v ari ants (e g p aramodulation ) which treat cert ain import an t
Oper ations (e g the equ ality oper ator) in speci al p ar ticul arly efficient
w ays ;
(d) more special ized resolution rel ated schemes e g algebr aic identity
manipul ation systems like that introduced by Knuth an d Bendix which
exploit the speci al properti es of st atement sets co nsisting exclusively of
equ ations
Beyond these rel atively gener al techniqu es researchers h ave devised a
growin g assortment of decision algorithms for v arious br anches of
m athem atics e g the T arski decision procedures discussed in Section 4
decision algorithms for pur ely additive integer arithmetic (Presb urger)
decis ion procedures for the purely Boolean theo ry of sets (Behmann) for the
element ary unqu an tified theory of sets al lowing the membership rel ator and
the powerset oper ator for v arious element ary p arts of an al ysis topology and
g eometry
al theorems described in Section 4 limit th e utility of
However the gener
all these techniques by asserting th at their comput ation al cost must alw ays
n se prohibitively with modest enl argements in the gener al
cl as s es of
.

27

st atements with which they deal For ex ample rule of thumb estimates
concerning typical applications of the popul ar an d very gener al resolution
t echnique often indic ate th at even after pruning an d even if one st arts with
just ten or so initi al st atements s omething like a 3 w ay bran ching in the
possible p attern of oper ations can be expected to occur at e ach element ary
inference step It follows th at discovery of a proof involving 14 successive
14
element ary steps may involve search of as m any as 3 nodes of a tree of
possibilities a comput ation lying at the outer bounds of feasibility
Moreover the br anching r atio 3 appearing in this illustr ation can be expected
to rise either if the proof to be developed st arts with a somewh at l arger set of

initi al st atements (i e of axioms or

or if structural ly spe aking
this set of st atements is exception al ly powerful (in the sense of allowing
highly v aried inf erence p atterns as for ex ample in the case of the axioms of
set theo ry ) It therefore seems very likely th at fund ament al ly new ideas will
h ave to be discovered before even the best know n methods of this type
beco me cap able of producing proofs of as m an y as 2 0 element ary steps All
t his is to say th at even the best form al logic m an ipul ation techniques
presently known still l ack the hum an m athematici an s uncanny ability to
produce long and complex proofs by exp anding a simple heuristic notion into
a rel atively undet ailed
an d prob ably not entirely accur ate proof sketch
which is then further exp anded and amended into a full an d accurate fin al
proof
Without such an ability it w ill rem ain impossible to integrate the
growin g co ll ection of known logic m an ipul ation techniques into a gener al tool
c ap able of routine application to a bro ad v ariety of symbolic an alysis or
synthesis problems M oreover this b asic limit ation must also be read as a
li mit ation on the pow er of all other known symbolic m an ipul ation techniques
th at are general enough to be relev an t to the v ery fund ament al problem of
constructing form al m athem atical proofs
-

S ystems
M any of the most active current attempts to comm erci al ize ideas dr awn

from artifici al intelligence rese arch h ave focused on so c alled expert

systems Since systems of this kind are very much les s gener al th an deeper
symbolic m anipul ation systems such as predicate logic or gr aph search
systems which ai
m at more significant levels of self org aniz ation there is a
much bett er ch an ce of bringing them to accept able efficiency levels
E x pert systems typic al ly concern themselv es with sm all fixed sets of
assertions relev ant to a limited subject dom ain within which they aim to m ake
simple but useful deductions For ex ample the goal of a medical expert
system might be to arrive at one of a finite number of possible concl usions

dr awn from a list such as Penicillin should be prescribed Streptomycin

shoul d be prescribed
possibly supplemented by on e or more expl an atory
E xp er t

,
.

28

di agnostic conclusions dr awn from a l ist of possibilities such as the b acteri al

the b acteri al agent of the dise ase is

agent of the dise ase is pseudomon as
s al monell a
Th e intern al core of such a system its so called inference
engin e ordin arily de al s only w ith element ary st atements of f ixed form dr awn
from a finite list of possibilities In our medical ex ample these might include

in amm ation is pr esent

fever is present
the symptom site is lower

the w hite cell count is elev ated and so forth T ypically expert
abdomen
systems reg ard such assertions as un an alyzed logical atoms subject only to
element ary propositio nal m anipul ation or perh aps some element ary form of
prob abilistic m anipul ation rather th an to any more p enetr ating predicate

reas oning Hence the expertise w hich the system embodies is actu ally
ex pressible b y a collection of str aightforw ard propo sition al or prob abilistic
rules in which the element ary assertions recogniz ed by the system appe ar as

indivisible units e g If i n amm ation is present and the white cell count is
elev ated an d the b acteri al agent of t he dis ease is s almonell a then streptomycin
should be prescribed
In more sophisticated expert systems which
supplement inference r ules of this b al d proposition al form by allowing

prob abilistic rules the inf erence engine w ill associ ate some prob ability or
o ther numerical score r ather th an a s imple Boolean trutlp v alue w ith e ach of
the element ary st atements w hich it recognizes and with each of its inferences
The assertions m anipul ated by such systems typic al ly divide themselves
into three subcl as ses :
a
l
a
fin
conclusions of interest to the end user of the system w hich are to
( )
be co nfirmed or rejected ;
(b) element ary items of evidence co ncerning which the system queries the
user in ter actively ; an d
(c) intermedi ate assertions w hich pl ay an intern al role in the inference
engine s logical m anipul ations but w hich can be extern alized w hen the
system is called upon to expl ain its rem arks or deductions
Th e sy stem queries its users progressively co ncerning al l rel ev ant element ary
evidence items (b) and employs the answers supplied to draw element ary
Bo ole an (or somewh at more sophisticated prob abilistic) conclusions
concerning interm edi ate propositions (c) and fin al propositions (a) T ype (a)
propositions are wh at the user w ants as system output and are presented to
him in appropri ate form and sequ ence
The most rudiment ary systems of this kind need not differ much from
those questionn aires f amili ar from popul ar m ag az ines w hich ask their

readers to answ er yes or no to a l ist of f airly obvious questions e ach of

w hich contribut e a score of so an d so m any points plus or minus to the

outcome of some such query as Rate ! ourself as a P arent However a

subst anti al level of function can be hung on these rudiment ary fr ameworks :

29

Expert systems can include attr active n atur al l angu age and/or gr aphic
interf aces
st
uctions
for
c
arrying out an y di agnostic proced ures or t ests required
I
n
r
2
( )
to answer queries of type (b) can be stored in such systems and made
av ail able when the system user is asked the co rr esponding questions
Speci al ized editors d at ab as es visu al aids and modeling systems relev ant
to a system s application dom ain can al so be prov ided
uestions
be
cleverly
sequenc
d
r
ather th an simply being asked in
e
ca
n
3
!
( )
fix ed order If evidence already supplied al lows such a question to be
or if it m akes a
answered either definitively or with high prob ability
uestion
irrelev
ant to the type (a) fin al co nclusions at which an expert
q
system aims the question can be suppr essed
al or
k
articul ar
system
s
user
a
n
be
a
l
lowed
to
a
s
how
p
fin
c
4
A
( )
intermedi ate conclusions were arrived at in respons e to w hich the
system can display its intern al B oolean or prob abilistic deduction steps
along with the built in rules justifying th ese steps in forms c al cul ated to
aid user comprehension
(5 ) In some application areas speci al ded uction rules or other symbolic
m an ipul ations going beyond the merely proposition al will be possible
For ex ample an expert system oriented tow ard chemical synthes es or
an alyses may be able to m anipul ate struct ur al descriptions of molecules ;
an expert system de aling with electrocardiogr ams may be able to ingest
raw cardiogr aphic d at a and apply S ophisticated spectr al an alysis or other
p attern m atching procedures to it The power of expert systems which
include s peci al techniques of this sort may rise subst anti ally above the
level attain able by primitive Boolean inference
Ov er al l we can say th at expert systems enh ance their pr agm atic
applicability by n arrowing the tr adition al
go al s of artifici al in telligence
rese arch subst anti al ly an d by blurring the distinction between clever
speci alized progr amming and use of unifying principl es of self org aniz ation
applicable across a wide v ariety of dom ains
T his m akes their signific ance
for future development of deeper artifici al intelligence techn ologies entirely
deb at able in spite of their hoped for pr agm atic utility

1
( )

Kn ow l edg e R epr es ent at ion

The

phrase knowl edge b ased system h as become popul ar among

scientists seeking to apply artifici al intelligence research and the associ ated

dictum th at finding appropri ate represent ations of knowledge is one of the

most b asic problems of the artifici al intelligence field h as often been
propounded Unf ortun ately it is hard to identify any d at a structures cre ated
by the artifici al intelligence research community th at are other than
superfici al A side from clever in tern al implement ations of such l angu ages as

LISP (which no one woul d consider knowledge represent ation in any

30

specific sens e) no structures more adv anced th an simple pointer netw orks
seem to h ave been propo sed Of co urse such networks are quite f amili ar

from m any other applic ations as graphs or si mply m appings T hey involve

nodes th at are little different from th e records of st an d ard dat a processing

Th is contr asts strongly w ith other br anches of computer science in w hich
m an y quite ingenious d at a structures h ave been developed In thes e fields

numerous successful ex amples h ave given the phr as e d at a structure design a

m ature technological meaning : any w ay of storin g one or more abstr act d at a
entities in a m anner which significan tly acceler ates the speed with whi ch some
well defin ed b attery of oper ations can be appl ied to these entities defines a
significant d at a structure E x ampl es include B trees A VL trees Fibon acci
he aps compr essed b al anced trees an d m any others Th e underlying aim of

artifici al intelligence rese archers in reg ard to knowledge repr esent ation is of
course the s ame as th at of other computer scientists n amely to find d at a
represent ations th at can be used to accelerate the symbolic cal cul ations th at
they would like to perform However progress tow ard thi s go al h as st alled
since no accept able formul ation of the abstr act structures to be implemented
or of the O per ations to be perform ed upon them h as yet become av ail able

Th e one possible ex ception is us e of sem antic nets f or f as t retriev al of items

as soci at ed with other d at a items used as keys
a st and ard pro gr amming
t echnique th at artifi ci al intelligence rese arch actu ally h as us ed in a m ann er no
more sophisticated th an is now common in d at abas e pr actice
,

,
,

Lear n in g
As

stressed previously one of the profound est go als of artifici al

intelligence is to m ake computers c ap able of learning i e cap able of us ing
disorganized inform atio n fr agments to construct org anized structures on
which they can t ake action Bro ad success w ith this one point would be
al most
equiv al ent to full realiz ation of the subject s aspir ations
Unfortunately al most nothin g has yet been accomplished tow ard this bold
go al T he dis appointments encountered are typified by the v ariety of
schemes th at h ave been tried for allowin g a computer to acquire the gr amm ar
of simple form al l an gu ages by exposure to sets of gr amm atical strings
belonging to such l an gu ages A lthough v arious f aintly encour aging theorems
h ave been pr oved concerni ng the asymptotic convergence of v arious le arning
al gorithms to a desired gr ammar given sufficiently l arge numbers of positive
an d neg ative
sentence ex ampl es the enormous number of candid ate
gramm ars th at present themselves h ave frustr ated al l pr actical use of this
scheme Rel ated experiments include attempts to discover the simplest
possible Boole an expres sion for a subset S of the set of al l computer w ords of
fix ed length (whose bits can be thought of as representin g true/fal se
attributes of some cl as s of objects or scenes)
Th e input to such experiments

are sets of positive an d neg ative ex amples or inform ation co ncer ning ne ar
misses which can be given by st ating the dist ance (me asured in bits wrong )
,

31

of e ach s ample word from the ne arest member of S However beyond

v arious fr agment ary heuristics neither a pr acti cal appro ach to this problem
nor any underst an ding of its inh erent comput ation al cost is av ail able
Other more trivi a! d at a acquisition cap abilities h ave been demonstr ated
For ex ample it is possible for a
an d can be reg arded as le arning of a sort
computer equipped with an im age digitizer to acquire pictures of objects
successively presented to it then to cal cul ate an d store sh ape p arameters for
the boun d aries of these objects and subsequently to recognize the s ame
objects when seen in other positions ( at le ast t his is possible for f avor able
cl asses of objects) Perh aps this can be reg arded as a rudiment ary form of
le arning
Other techni ies sometimes described as autom atic learning
involve u se of d at a derived st atistics to adjust numeric al p ar ameters intern al
to a progr am A n even simpler possibility is to supply intern al progr am
const ants progressively and inter act ively r ather th an al l at progr am definition

time A n ex ample of this limited an d artifici al type of learning would be a

string an alysis progr am designed to be aw are of the distinction of single
ch ar acters (which it extr acts intern ally from char acter d at a fed to it) into
vowels and nonv ow els but not told initi ally which ch aracters are which
Such a progr am can trivi al ly emit an enquiry about e ach newly encountered
ch aracter following which the ch ar acter can be ins erted into one of two
intern ally m aint ained sets m aking subsequent enquiry unn ecess ary The

reader may or may not wish to reg ard this as true le arning since in much
the s ame sens e one co uld view an y menu driven progr am which elicits an d
stores info rm ation concerning its user s preferen ces as a progr am which
learns
.

C omm ent on Meth od ol ogy

A s might be expected of a young s cientific discipline con cerned with
new profound and enormously attr active problems the methodological level
of rese arch in art ificial intelligence is often lo w
T his contr asts with the
situ ation in those other br anches of computer science in w hich it has proved
possible to define reas on ably specific and feasible comput ation al go al s in a
m anner independent of the the techniques known at any given moment for
trying to reach thes e go al s Where this h as been possible clear ch allenges
h ave come before al gorithm designers (who then often h ave found
sophisticated an d sometimes quite unexpect ed w ays of computing import an t
qu antities ) an d comput ational complexity theorists (who seek to cl arify the
options open to the al gorithm designer by proving theorems concerning the
minimum co mput ation al cost of p articul ar oper ations ) Th e system atic work
owing from this cl arification of go als h as subst anti ally incre as ed the
m aturity of other br anches of co mputer science D is appointingly more
pri mitive appro aches h ave persisted in artifici al intelligence rese arch T oo
m an y publications in this field simply describe the st ructure of some progr am
believed by its authors to embody some function mimicking some aspect of
A

32

intelligence but aside from this h aving no definition other th an the p articul ar
procedures of which it co nsists It is often impossible to determine just wh at
such a progr am real ly comput es or whether it does so w ith accept able or
cat astrophic efficiency , or whet her some other much more effi cient technique
might not h ave computed essenti ally the s ame thing Still more primitive but
nevertheless co mmon publications consist of lightly or heavily edited tr aces of
some program s intern al act ivity accomp anied by author comments on felt
similarities between this activity an d the author s person al theory of ment al
function ; a form of report which often le aves its reader without much
underst anding of wh at the progr am d escribed is really doin g or how or with
wh at li mit ations
Th e u ns atisf act ory n ature of all t his is frequently
compounded by the rudiment ary syn t ax of the LISP not ations in w hich such
progr ams are co mmonly expressed which readily confounds trivi alities with
profundities Until these signs of imm aturity dis appe ar it will be h ard to
reg ard the field as embodying much m ature technology
,

A rt ifici al

I n t ell i gen ce

an d

th e

D evel opm en t

of

Pr o g ramm ing

Lang u ages

emph asized above the mos t fund ament al go al of artifici al intelligence

research is discovery of principles f acilit ating the integr ation of initi al ly
fr agmented m ateri al into useful org aniz ed structur es Th is is al so a
fund ament al aim of th e progr ammi ng l an gu age designer w ho seeks
l angu ages th at m ake it e asy to use sm al l independent code fr agments to
define compl ex processes Such l an gu ages elimin ate troubles ome sources of
progr amming error an d can increase pro gr amming speed very consider ably
For this re ason and because artifici al in telligence r ese archers h ave regul arly
gr appled w ith u nusu ally complex programming problems their w ork h as
been a p art icul arly fruitful source of adv anced progr amming concepts
A few of the most significan t ide as of this kind are worth noting The
LIS P l angu age developed early in the history of artifici al intelligence rese arch
introdu ced powerful mean s for defin ing entirely gener al an d exible d at a
structures and since these also could be us ed to represent the p articul arly
simple extern als of the l angu age provided an environment in which other
still more adv anced progr amming l an gu ages could e as ily be implemented for
experiment al use
Rule b ased progr amming aims to elimin ate progr ammer concern with
oper ation sequencing by allowin g oper ations to be ex ecuted whenever
corresponding en abling co nditions are met for which p urpose st atements
h aving approxim ately the form
As

WH EN E VER

con ditio n

DO

op era tion

EN D

provided Ba cktracking simplifies the execution of complex explor ations

by allowing explor ation to be routed al ong multiple p arallel br anches Th e
simplest w ay of providing this sem antic f acility is through a choice op era tion
are

33

h aving some such synt actic form

as

x:

0 NE 0 F
!

where is a set When executed by a process p this oper ation can cre ate as
m any independent copies of p as the set has elements and in each of these
new processes a different element of set s should be assigned as the v alue of
the element
Fin ally if the set is empty when the 0 N E 0 F oper ation is
executed the process p shoul d be termin ated leaving sibling processes
created by prior 0 N E 0 F oper ations to continue execution
V arious artifici al intellig ence l an gu ages more adv an ced th an LISP h ave
emph asized us e of these three sem an tic Oper ations plus others in v arious
combin ations For ex ample in a l an gu age which provides both recursion and

b acktr acking iter ations ( D O st atements ) and explicit co n ditional st atements

atures
R
u
c
a
n
st
tements
both
superuous
fe
ec
rsions
be
used
to
a
a
r
e
IF
)
(
iter ations and condition als can be expressed in terms of
re express
b acktr acking by cre ating a s ep ar ate process to execute e ach br anch of the
con dition al an d then i mmedi ately termin ating those processes w hich
correspond to f ailed conditions A fter elimin ation of all iter ations and
condition als every progr am reduces to a sequence of definitions of recursive
proced ures and e ach such pro cedure reduces to a line ar sequence of simple
assignments
It then becomes possible to reg ard any element ary as signment
y z as an O per ation which tests some corresponding element ary
(e g
rel ationship (i e
y z ) an d if necess ary assigns a v al ue s atisfying this
rel ations hip to any v ari able or v ari ables appe aring in the rel ations hip an d not
possessing any previously specified v alue T his h as the adv ant age th at a
can t rigger either the assignment
rel ationship like x y
y 2 (if x h as
no prior v alue) or y
x
(if x has a prior v al ue but y do es not) If the call
on a procedure P (or more properly successful return from a cal l on P ) is

viewed as a kind of logical co nclusion and the linear sequence of st atements

Al
A co nstituting the body of P is reg arded as the set of hypotheses of
this co nclusion the definition of the procedure P can be written in a not ation
such as
s

'

'

1:

A , & A2 &

(1)

R,

which gives progr ams consisting of such procedures the avor (though not
the ful l re ality ) of sets of st atements in predicate logic The f act th at m ultiple
red efinition of a proced ure or procedures is h armless in a l an gu age providing
b acktr acki ng (invoc ati on of such a pr oced ure can simply create multiple
p aral lel pro cesses in e ach of which just one of the potenti ally relev ant
procedure definitions is invoked) reinforces the resulting resembl ance to

predicate logic since it al lows implications of the form ( 1) to be inserted

into a progr am freely an d in arbitr ary number Th ese sem antic reections
underly the definition of the PROLOG l angu age which some artifici al
intelligen x r ese archers h ave recently come to view as a significant addition to
.

34

the older and better est ablished LISP l an gu age

T hough progr amming in one of the adv anced progr amming l an gu ages

reviewed in the preceding p ar agr aphs is sometimes described as application

of artifici al intelligence t echnology it should be realized th at these l ang uages
o nly f acilit ate m an u al expres si on of complex procedur al an d decl arative
st ru ctures but do not embody any real principle of self org aniz ation in and
Moreover they al l p ay a price in efficiency for their
of thems elves
gener ality : if used carelessly al l the most adv an ced of th ese l an gu ages
including the rule b as ed and PROLOG like systems m ak e it very e asy to
describe cat as trophical ly inefficient comput ation al processes For this reas on
the cle an logical b as is of thes e l anguages is often disrupted by inclusion of
irregul ar efficiency enlmncing mech an isms of v ery different avor often
m aking their effective use as full of pitfalls as ordin ary progr amming
l angu ag es of lower aspir ation
Since the fund ament al go als of artificial intellig ence rese arch are far
deeper th an thos e of programming l angu age design extensive elucid ation of
its problems simply by design of some appropri ate progr amming l angu age is
not to be expected
.

A u t om a tic P r ogr am min g

term autom atic progr amming refers both to fully computerized

gener ation of progr ams from initi al problem specifications expressed in
entirely abstr act logic like terms and to autom ated improvement of progr am
efficiency
E fficiency
improvement can be realized by autom atic
tr ansform ation of less efficient into more efficient al gorithms or by
autom atic gener ation of d et ailed progr am versions in efficiency oriented
progr amming l angu ages (such as P as cal or A da) st arting from consider ably

more concise specific ations written in a progr amming l angu age such as
(PROLOG or SE TL) h aving much higher sem antic level
Proofs in some
logical form alisms can be compiled
Ordin arily however the
autom atic al ly into (highly inefficient) progr ams
problem of gener ating progr ams from problem st atements written in a
form al ism close to th at of logic is very simil ar to the problem of gener ating
proofs in logic autom atically and hence is subject to the pessimistic
assessment offered at the end of the preceding subsection
A utom atic improvement of progr am efficiency is a rel ated problem
which h as attr acted consider able attention much of which has concentr ated
on the possibility of exploiting libr aries of optimiz ation tricks of the kinds
most co mmonl y used by h um an progr ammers One typical device of this
kind is use of forma l dieren tiation In this technique one keeps up to d ate
v alues of expressions used within progr am iter ations that would otherwise
h ave to be recal cu l ated repe at edl y at subst anti al comput ation al cost ; the
expression v alues required are then kept current by upd ating them hopefully
Th e

35

subst anti al ly lower expense whenever an y of their arguments ch anges

Th is is one of the most promising techniqu es for autom atic progr am
optimiz ation at a very abstr act level an d can re adily be seen to account for
import an t aspects of the appro ach to m an u al development of efficient
progr ams actu ally employed by progr ammers in m any c ases However
system atic work on this method (by P aige an d others) during the l ast years
h as shown th at effective applic ation even of this p articul arly f avor able
appro ach r aises too m any deep problems for its autom atic application by any
known method to be fe asible Th e difficulty is th at even for progr ams which

visibly fit the form al differenti ation stereo type efficiency improvement
gener al ly depends on knowledge of seco nd ary logical constr aints concerning
possibl e program st ates at specified progr am points T hese co nstr aints are
typically deep enough to defy autom atic verific ation and also complex
enough for their full st atement to disco ur age progr ammer involvement Here
ag ain we h ave a situ ation in which the computer s in ability to de al efficiently
even with intuitively simple sets of logical st atements r ais es a significant
obst acle to progress Simil ar objections apply to other proposed techniques
for autom atic progr am improvement m an y of which r aise much the s ame
problems of exploding combin atori al se arch of symbolic structures as are
involved in autom atic disco very of m athem atical proofs often in p articul arly
virulent form bec ause both the progr am texts which must be processed an d
the vocabul ary of tr an s form ations applicable to such texts are co nsider ably
l arger th an the sm all ex amples ordin arily consider ed in the research liter ature
on autom atic disco very of proofs
A co nsequ ence of al l t his is th at only rel atively rudiment ary
transform ations h ave found profit ab le application to autom atic improvement
of progr am efficiency Norm al ly such autom atic optimiz ation only p ays for
itself when a sm all number of rel atively superfici al techniques can be applied
inexpensively to extensive computer texts so as to eli min ate w hol es al e
inefficienci es introduced by prior steps of autom atic processing e g by
str aightforw ard compil ation or m acro exp an sion of source text Progr am
optimiz ation of t his pr actical form h as more the avor of l arge scal e symbolic
d at a processing th an with artifici al intelligence research (though p arti al
af finity with some of the deeper go al s of artifici al intelligence res e arch can be
discerned) Even the intermedi ate level problem of autom atically introducing
d at a structures into progr am texts written in very high level l angu ag es so as
to r aise progr am efficiency to levels th at hum an progr ammers can routinely
reach lies somewh at beyond our pr esent gr asp
at

Moral

L imits

Successful co nstruction of artifici al intelligences would affect the human

environment profoundly If artifici al intelligences can be cre ated at all th ere
is little re ason to believe th at i niti al success es co uld not le ad swiftly to the
.

36

construction of artifici al superintelligences able to explore signific ant

m athem atical scientific O r engineering altern atives at a r ate far exceeding
hum an ability or to gener ate pl ans and t ake action on them with equ ally
overwhelming speed Since m an s ne ar monopoly of al l higher forms of
intelligence h as been one of the most b asic f acts of hum an existence
throughout the pas t history of this pl an et such developments would cle arly
create a new eco nomics new sociology and a new history
Part of the opposition which cert ain hum anist thinkers h ave m ade to the
entire notion of artifici al intelligence stems from this f act T hey expr ess the
amorphous une as e of a much bro ader public Th e fe ar is th at the whole f abric
which at times seems terrifyingly fr agile may be torn
o f hum an society
ap art by enormously r apid techn ological ch anges set in tr ain by artifici al
intelligence research as it b egins to yield its m ajor fruits It is for ex ample
possible to im agine th at wo uld b e dict ators sm all centr ally pl aced olig archies
o r pred atory n ations co uld exploit this techn ology to est ablish a power over
society resting on robot armies an d police forces independent of extensive
hum an p articip ation an d entirely indifferent to all tr adition al hum an or
hum ane consider ations Even setting this nightm are aside one can fe ar
v arious more subtle deleterious imp acts for ex ample r apid coll apse of hum an
s ociety into a self destructive pure hedonism once all pressures and perh aps
even re as ons or opportunities for w ork and striving are undermined by the
pr esence of u nch al lengeably omnicompetent mechanisms Cert ainly m an s
sense of his own uniqueness is bo und to be impaired an d he may come to
seem in his own eyes little more th an a primitive anim al at best cap able of
some eeting enjoyments
Successful response to such developments when an d if they begin to
acceler ate will req uire hum anity to re af firm its spiritu al solid arity an d to
cl ose r anks across cl ass ethni c and n ation al bound aries Conserv ative
prudence needs to be combined with gr aceful and constructive ad apt ation to
deep an d r apid ch an ge Once man is gener ally seen as an intelligent
mech an ism and mech anism s as intelligent as man regul arly flow forth from
factories w h at limits mus t be set to the m anipul ation either of man or his
cre ated mech anisms ! Wh at regul ations an d soci al assumptions will prove
appropri ate to a world inwhich work except as hobby h as come to an end !
T hese questions which even science fiction h as as yet explored onl y
occ asion al ly are likely to rush upon st at esmen philosophers and theologi ans
within just a few centuries
,

'

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D B al l ard
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i
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ddison
Wesley Publishers , 198 4
Arti
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P Winston and R Brown (editors )

(2 volumes ) MIT Press 197 9
.

to

Arti
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39

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MIT P ersp ectiv e

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