Contains research objectives.National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-03)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496

Minsky, M. L.

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XXI. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE*Prof. M. L. Minsky Dr. S. Papert M. I. LevinProf. H. Putnam D. G. Bobrow D. C. LuckhamProf. A. L. Samuel D. J. Edwards J. MosesProf. C. E. Shannon T. P. Hart L. NortonRESEARCH OBJECTIVESThe purpose of our work is to investigate ways of making machines solve problemsthat are usually considered to require intelligence. Our procedure is to attack the prob-lems by programming a computer to deal directly with the necessary abstractions, ratherthan by simulating hypothetical physiological structures. When a method for solving aproblem is not known, searches over spaces of potential solutions of the problem, or ofparts of the problem, are necessary. The space of potential solutions of interestingproblems is ordinarily so enormous that it is necessary to devise heuristic methods 1-3to replace the searching of this space by a hierarchy of searches over simpler spaces.The major difficulty, at present, is the excessive length of time required for buildingmachinery or even for writing programs to test heuristic procedures. For this reason,a major part of our effort is going into the development of ways of communicating witha computer more effectively than we can now communicate. This work has two aspects:development of a system for instructing the computer in declarative, as well as impera-tive, sentences, called the advice-taker, 4 and development of a programming languagecalled LISP 5 - 8 for manipulating symbolic expressions that will be used for programmingthe advice-taker system and will also be of more general use. 9 We are embarking on amajor effort to integrate this work into the new M. I. T. time-shared real-time computersystem.Maintenance and further development of LISP will be continued by ProfessorJ. McCarthy, who is now at Stanford University. We plan to continue close associationwith his group.It is our belief that the field of artificial intelligence is limited only by the amountof qualified effort that can be put into it, and by the machine limitations that still prohibitmore ambitious experiments.M. L. MinskyReferences1. M. L. Minsky, Some Methods of Artificial Intelligence and Heuristic Pro-gramming, Proc. Symposium on the Mechanisation of Thought Processes, NationalPhysical Laboratory, Teddington, England, November 24-27, 1958 (H. M. StationeryOffice, London, 1959).2. M. L. Minsky, Steps toward artificial intelligence, Proc. IRE 49, 8-30 (1961).3. M. L. Minsky, A selected, descriptor-indexed bibliography to the literature onartificial intelligence, Trans. IRE, Vol. HFE-2, No. 1, pp. 39-55, March 1961.*This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant G-16526);in part by the National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-03); and in part by theNational Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496).tSeveral members of this group, working at the Computation Center, are not membersof the Research Laboratory of Electronics: Prof. J. Weizenbaum (Visiting AssociateProfessor of Electrical Engineering, M. I. T.), Dr. O. G. Selfridge (Lincoln Laboratory,M. I. T.), and the following graduate students: W. A. Martin and B. Raphael.QPR No. 72 209(XXI. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)4. J. McCarthy, Programs with Common Sense, Proc. Symposium on theMechanisation of Thought Processes, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington,England, November 24-27, 1958 (H. M. Stationery Office, London, 1959).5. J. McCarthy, Recursive functions of symbolic expressions in computation bymachine, Part I, Commun. Assoc. Computing Machinery 3, 184-195 (April 1960).6. J. McCarthy, A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Communication, Proc.Western Joint Computer Conference, Los Angeles, California, May 1961.7. J. McCarthy, Computer Programs for Checking Mathematical Proofs, a paperpresented at the Symposium on Recursive Function Theory, New York, April 1961.8. The Computation Center and Research Laboratory of Electronics, LISP 1. 5Programmer's Manual, August 17, 1962 (reprinted by The M. I. T. Press, Cambridge,Mass.).9. J. McCarthy, Time-Sharing Computer Systems (lecture, M. I. T., May 1961);Management and the Computer of the Future (The M. I. T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.,and John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1962).QPR No. 72 210

Artificial Intelligence

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Artificial Intelligence

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