Logic Programing in Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Logic programming originated in the field of artificial intelligence. It was artificial intelligence that provided both the theoremproving research for its backward-reasoning execution strategy [42,47,68] and its first intended applications in natural language question-answering [14]. It also provided the controversy (see e.g. [32, 81]). between the relative merits of procedural versus declarative repre~entations of knowledge, which helped to motivate the procedural interpretation of Horn clauses, which is the basis of logic programming, even today. In this short paper I will sketch some of the subsequent developments in logic programming, concentrating especially on extensions which have been developed to make logic programming more suitable for knowledge representation in artificial intelligence. I will focus particularly on developments in non-monotonic reasoning, abduction, and metareasoning . I will also argue that the unrestricted use of full first-order logic might not be necessary or useful for most applications.