Artificial intelligence as an experimental science

Bruce G. Buchanan

pp. 209-250

in: James H. Fetzer (ed), Aspects of artificial intelligence, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

For many centuries the physical sciences have improved our understanding of the natural world through observation and experimentation. Although artificial intelligence (AI) does not focus on the same phenomena, there is no compelling reason to believe that the same methods will not work here as well. Although this study is largely a description, from one perspective, of how AI research is presently carried out, it is also a prescription (again from one perspective) of how AI can be more productive.