"...A Large Part of Human Thought...": On the 50th Anniversary of Artificial Intelligence and the Critical Role of Knowledge Representation
Kurzfassung
By many accounts, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was born a half-century ago at a summer symposium at Dartmouth College. Over the course of the last 50 years, contributions from AI have influenced Computer Science and have had significant impact on the world. Interestingly, as far back as 1956, the original Dartmouth proposal hinted at important things to come: it spoke of “manipulating words according to rules of reasoning and rules of conjecture,” something the authors felt represented “a large part of human thought.” While it started somewhat fancifully by invoking human language and words, the era ushered in by the Dartmouth meeting was characterized by what turns out to be a truly radical new idea in the history of thought – that intelligence can be understood in terms of a store of represented beliefs and reasoning procedures that operate over those representations to produce new beliefs about what to do. This is the core idea of knowledge representation and reasoning, which paves the way for the mechanization of thinking in computers. In this presentation, we give a high-level overview of the knowledge representation concept that since the Dartmouth symposium has come to be the very core of Artificial Intelligence, and which has had important implications for all of Computer Science.
By many accounts, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was born a half-century ago at a summer symposium at Dartmouth College. Over the course of the last 50 years, contributions from AI have influenced Computer Science and have had significant impact on the world. Interestingly, as far back as 1956, the original Dartmouth proposal hinted at important things to come: it spoke of “manipulating words according to rules of reasoning and rules of conjecture,” something the authors felt represented “a large part of human thought.” While it started somewhat fancifully by invoking human language and words, the era ushered in by the Dartmouth meeting was characterized by what turns out to be a truly radical new idea in the history of thought – that intelligence can be understood in terms of a store of represented beliefs and reasoning procedures that operate over those representations to produce new beliefs about what to do. This is the core idea of knowledge representation and reasoning, which paves the way for the mechanization of thinking in computers. In this presentation, we give a high-level overview of the knowledge representation concept that since the Dartmouth symposium has come to be the very core of Artificial Intelligence, and which has had important implications for all of Computer Science.
Kurzbiographie Dr. Brachman
Ron Brachman is Vice President of Worldwide Research Operations at Yahoo! Research, the advanced research arm of the worldwide leader in Internet services. Yahoo! Research’s main lab is in Santa Clara, CA, and Dr. Brachman has recently founded a lab in New York City. Between 2002 and 2005, Dr. Brachman served as the Director of DARPA’s Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), and there developed IPTO’s Cognitive Systems initiative, which brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the U.S. national research community and broke substantial new ground in the development of technology and systems for automated intelligent assistance, machine learning, speech and language processing, high-productivity computing systems, coordinated operation, and other key capabilities. For his service at DARPA, Dr. Brachman was awarded The Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.
Dr. Brachman earned his B.S.E.E. degree from Princeton University (1971), and his S.M. (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) degrees from Harvard University. He has made numerous important contributions to Artificial Intelligence (AI), including developing the cornerstone ideas behind the subfield of Description Logics, which has had substantial influence in the recent development of the Semantic Web. He has been awarded best paper and “Classic Paper” awards, and has published an important textbook with Hector Levesque, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Brachman started his career at Bolt Beranek & Newman in Cambridge, MA; spent several years at Fairchild/Schlumberger’s Lab for AI Research in Palo Alto, CA; and, having developed a world-class AI group at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, moved into senior research management jobs at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs. Brachman was President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) from 2003-2005. He is a Founding Fellow of AAAI and is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). At the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in January of 2007 he will be awarded the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Brachman earned his B.S.E.E. degree from Princeton University (1971), and his S.M. (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) degrees from Harvard University. He has made numerous important contributions to Artificial Intelligence (AI), including developing the cornerstone ideas behind the subfield of Description Logics, which has had substantial influence in the recent development of the Semantic Web. He has been awarded best paper and “Classic Paper” awards, and has published an important textbook with Hector Levesque, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Brachman started his career at Bolt Beranek & Newman in Cambridge, MA; spent several years at Fairchild/Schlumberger’s Lab for AI Research in Palo Alto, CA; and, having developed a world-class AI group at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, moved into senior research management jobs at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs. Brachman was President of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) from 2003-2005. He is a Founding Fellow of AAAI and is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). At the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in January of 2007 he will be awarded the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award.
