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Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

by ausjke 11y ago

ausjke 11y ago
This is a sincere question, I guess you read it and feel negative about it and down voted me? My classmate used it for his master-degree paper, and I just want to know its status when AI is starting to really catch up these days.
pflanze 11y ago
I'm not an AI specialist, but to my limited understanding: AI today is mostly machine learning, which means letting an algorithm build classifications from data, and deducting (more like just matching) things from the data that was gained from the learning (basically statistically). Prolog is about writing rules/matches/classifications manually, and then deducting logically from these (not statistically, but precisely). Prolog and other logic languages aren't playing in the same area, and their approach will remain relevant in the future in the areas where they already fit (e.g. expert systems with rules written by humans, writing machine checked mathematical proofs). Now I should probably recommend you to play a bit with both approaches and do the same myself.
- ausjke 11y ago
  Very helpful. Prolog is more of an expert system(my classmate used that for smart navigation for big city traffic when GPS was not available then, not sure how that can be done though). AI is more of neural network nowadays that is learning from some sample data set and then make decisions out of that.
a-saleh 11y ago
I would say that AI eventually went entirely different direction, instead of trying to specify some set of symbolic rules encoding knowledge, we currently throw lots of data at layered neural networks. So, if prolog has future, it probably is outside of AI research. I would say, that verifying is one of the places where logic programming never went away. I.e if you ever wanted to write type checker of protocol verification, you might write an embedded prolog first.

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

by ausjke 11y ago

Prolog was the AI language two decades ago, that might be too early then, but does it have a future these days? just curious.

ausjke 11y ago

This is a sincere question, I guess you read it and feel negative about it and down voted me? My classmate used it for his master-degree paper, and I just want to know its status when AI is starting to really catch up these days.

pflanze 11y ago

I'm not an AI specialist, but to my limited understanding: AI today is mostly machine learning, which means letting an algorithm build classifications from data, and deducting (more like just matching) things from the data that was gained from the learning (basically statistically). Prolog is about writing rules/matches/classifications manually, and then deducting logically from these (not statistically, but precisely). Prolog and other logic languages aren't playing in the same area, and their approach will remain relevant in the future in the areas where they already fit (e.g. expert systems with rules written by humans, writing machine checked mathematical proofs). Now I should probably recommend you to play a bit with both approaches and do the same myself.

ausjke 11y ago
Very helpful. Prolog is more of an expert system(my classmate used that for smart navigation for big city traffic when GPS was not available then, not sure how that can be done though). AI is more of neural network nowadays that is learning from some sample data set and then make decisions out of that.

a-saleh 11y ago

I would say that AI eventually went entirely different direction, instead of trying to specify some set of symbolic rules encoding knowledge, we currently throw lots of data at layered neural networks. So, if prolog has future, it probably is outside of AI research. I would say, that verifying is one of the places where logic programming never went away. I.e if you ever wanted to write type checker of protocol verification, you might write an embedded prolog first.