Artificial Intelligence Vol. 4 : Proceedings of the International Conference on Methodology, Systems Applications, 4th, Albena, Bulgaria, 19-22 Sept. 1990

Presenting recent results and ongoing research in Artificial Intelligence, this book has a strong emphasis on fundamental questions in several key areas: programming languages, automated reasoning, natural language processing and computer vision. AI is at the source of major programming language design efforts. Different approaches are described, with some of their most significant results: languages combining logic and functional styles, logic and parallel, functional and parallel, logic with constraints. A central problem in AI is automated reasoning, and formal logic is, historically, at the root of research in this domain. This book presents results in automatic deduction, non-monotonic reasoning, non-standard logic, machine learning, and common-sense reasoning. Proposals for knowledge representation and knowledge engineering are described and the neural net challenger to classical symbolic AI is also defended. Finally, AI systems must be able to interact with their environment in a natural and autonomous way. Natural language processing is an important part of this. Various results are presented in discourse planning, natural language parsing, understanding and generation. The autonomy of a machine for perception of its physical environment is also an AI problem and some research in image processing and computer vision is described.