Summary

 

Conclusion: Between us and human-level intelligence lie many problems. They can be summarized as that of succeeding in the common sense informatic situation.

The problems include:

common sense knowledge of the world

Many important aspects of what this knowledge is in and how it can be represented are still unsolved questions. This is particularly true of knowledge of the effects of actions and other events.

epistemologically adequate languages

These are languages for expressing what a person or robot can actually learn about the world [McCarthy and Hayes, 1969].

elaboration tolerance

What a person knows can be elaborated without starting all over.

nonmonotonic reasoning

Perhaps new systems are needed.

contexts as objects

This subject is just beginning. See the references of section 7.

introspection

AI systems will need to examine their own internal states.

action

The present puzzles of formalizing action should admit a uniform solution.

I doubt that a human-level intelligent program will have structures corresponding to all these entities and to the others that might have been listed. A generally intelligent logical program probably needs only its monotonic and nonmonotonic reasoning mechanisms plus mechanisms for entering and leaving contexts. The rest are handled by particular functions and predicates.