3 ms·

Compilers are AI?

• sacado2 7y ago
  "Plain" compilers are just translating from one notation to another, so they aren't. But optimizing compilers that analyze your code and find that portion of your code can be rewritten to make the produced executable more efficient? I'd say it sound a lot like AI, yeah. I woulnd't be shocked if someone told me "gcc's -O3 option uses AI techniques".
• TuringTest 7y ago
  If you have a compiler that can write a correct program from examples of the desired output, definitely yes.
  • chaosite 7y ago
    That's usually called program synthesis, and a lot of it uses formal methods. It isn't usually considered AI (but recently the field started incorporating a lot of ML, like pretty much anything in CS these days.)
    • TuringTest 7y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think program synthesis works more from writing very general formal specifications, rather than learning from a sample of desired outputs. The latter is called Programming By Example, and the pattern-finding process needed to infer generalities from specific samples does benefit from machine learning techniques.
      • chaosite 7y ago
        "programming by example" is a form of program synthesis, where the spec is provided by the examples. It is a formal specification, albeit incomplete. Program synthesis, as a concept, does not require the specification to be complete.