Tools for Creating Tools: Programming in Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

After a brief look at how the notion of the stored program is applied by programmers in the area of Artificial Intelligence (Al), we shall look at a specific Al tool: a production svstem. The discussion is at a non-rigorous level, intended to allow the concepts involved to be related to other fields more familiar to those in the mainstream of Computer Science, most notably, the field of Compiler Construction. Production systems are of particular interest because they are the basis on which rule-based expert systems are constructed. To complete the picture, future developments in tools for buiiding expert systems are considered.