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From: doug@ctc.contel.com (Doug Whitehead x4149)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re:  Amiga and AI
Message-ID: <13174@baldrick.udel.EDU>
Date: 7 Mar 90 16:47:18 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 45

I work for Contel, a telecommunications co. and am a PHD student at VPI. I am using
my Amiga for development of a new language for hypothetical reasoning. (related to
truth-maintenance)

I have previously implemented a version in Prolog on a Vax, but the overhead
associated with an interpreted prolog was rediculuous.  The new version is in
C.

The sort of reasoning this new language will capture is along the lines of the
following example: A robot is in room1, a box is in room1, the robot is holding
the box.  If I were to introduce a hypothesis (something believed above all else)
that the robot is actually in room2, then under "normal" circumstances, the
computer should suggest two possible worlds with this hypothesis:
        A) The box is also in room2, or
        b) The robot is no longer holding the box
Of course, if you wish to relax constraints and allow the computer to be very
skeptical, other explanations are possible, such as:
        Room1 = Room2
        Robots can be in two places at one time
        Robots can hold things in other rooms
        The normal definition of "=" is incorrect
        etc.
Obviously I neglected to show you the rules that connect the facts of any world.
rules like: If X holds Y and X is in W, then Y is in W

As you can see, this language is suited for intelligent databases (or knowledge
bases; intelligent in the sense that the infobase is consistent with itself)
and qualitative physics (If I lift a sauser, the teacup, and the tea should
normally move with it, etc.).`

Anyway, as for your original question, there is an excellent prolog ported
to the amiga, SBProlog (Stoney Brook Prolog) is on one of the fish disks around
143 or so..., (Be careful TinyProlog on one of the surrounding disks sucks...)
SBProlog is a full interpreter/compiler, a rare treat even for commercial
products.

Personally, Prolog has most of what one wants in a shell (unless you need to
dazzle a client/boss, in which case graphics are important, not expert system
content).  Don't be bamboozled by "certainty factor" or probability
rhetoric, they are generally considered unuseful in expert systems, (at least
by those who have built an expert system before)

If you have any specific questions, I'll try an field'em

    'Haid