From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,24ac4e1c8cbfe3c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: b-collins@home.com (Bob Collins) Subject: Re: histrionics Date: 1999/09/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 523821479 References: <37D670CE.855F96BD@interact.net.au> <37D678E4.9867000B@interact.net.au> <37d74de9@eeyore.callnetuk.com> <7r8c60$b2q$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7r9rkj$g75$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7rb5lm$dhu$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news.rdc1.va.home.com 937069804 24.2.56.132 (Sat, 11 Sep 1999 10:10:04 PDT) Organization: @Home Network NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 10:10:04 PDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-09-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <7rb5lm$dhu$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Ted Dennison wrote: > In article <7r9rkj$g75$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, > Robert Dewar wrote: > > US experts in expert systems were unconvinced, and considered > > LISP a better choice. That opinion has not significantly > > changed, although you probably find more expert systems written > > in "conventional" languages like C or Ada these days than > > before. > > While taking my AI class last summer, it occurred to me that inference > engines share a number of similarities with compilers. There are > differences too of course. But it might be possible to use an > OpenToken-style approach to create a general Ada inference engine and > rule-based-system whose rules could be programmed entirely in Ada. Now getting far afield, but no further than our hero (RD) in discussions about Prolog, both if-then expert system rules and parser rewrite rules are variants of Post Production Systems. One of my doctoral students wrote a thesis that used LR parsing as the inference engine for an expert system. He combined an earlier idea about using Finite State Automata to provide procedural control for expert systems, and his resulting grammars served as both procedural control and as the if-then rules. Of course, the grammars were ambiguous, so as to allow conflict resolution heuristics. He showed that his method outdid the Rete algorithm (in the lab). The AI journal he submitted the work to did not publish his results (I think) because they did not understand LR parsing and the PL journal he submitted was not interested in the AI implications. To bring the subject back to Ada, he did get a conference invitation to one of the Ada and AI conferences at George Mason University. The parser, the AI hooks, the parser generators, the semantics were all written in Ada, just as suitable as LISP or Prolog for big AI work. (Big = thousands of productions). -- Bob Collins