---
title: "A Universal Modular ACTOR Formalism for Artificial Intelligence"
authors:
  - "Carl Hewitt"
  - "Peter Boehler Bishop"
  - "Richard Steiger"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1973/31"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1973/0031.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1973
pages: "235-244"
track: "Formalisms for A.I."
keywords:
---

# A Universal Modular ACTOR Formalism for Artificial Intelligence

Carl Hewitt, Peter Boehler Bishop, Richard Steiger

*Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 235-244.

## Abstract

This paper proposes a modular ACTOR architecture and definitional method for artificial intelligence that is cohceptually based on a single kind of object: actors [or, if you will, virtual processors, activation frames, or streams]. The formalism makes no presuppositions about the representation of primitive data structures and control structures. Such structures can be programmed, micro-coded, or hard wired in a uniform modular fashion. In fact it is impossible to determine whether a given object is "really" represented as a list, a vector, a hash table, a function, or a process. The architecture will efficiently run the coming generation of PLANNER-like artificial intelligence languages including those requiring a high degree of parallelism. The efficiency is gained without lo5s of programming generality because it only makes certain actors more efficient; it does not change their behavioral characteristics. The architecture is general with respect to control structure and does not have or need goto, interrupt, or semaphore primitives. The formalism achieves the goals that the disallowed constructs are intended to achieve by other more structured m~thods.