Eurisko
Encyclopedia
Eurisko is a program written by Douglas Lenat
in RLL-1, a representation language itself written in the Lisp programming language
. A sequel to Automated Mathematician
, it consists of heuristics, i.e. rules of thumb, including heuristics describing how to use and change its own heuristics. Lenat was frustrated by Automated Mathematician's constraint to a single domain and so developed Eurisko; his frustration with the effort of encoding domain knowledge for Eurisko led to Lenat's subsequent (and, , continuing) development of Cyc
. Lenat envisions ultimately coupling the Cyc knowledgebase with the Eurisko discovery engine.
in 1978 when Lenat returned to teach. "For the first five years, nothing good came out of it," Lenat said. But when the implementation was changed to a frame language
based representation he called RLL (Representation Language Language), heuristic creation and modification became much simpler. Eurisko was then applied to a number of domains with surprising success, including VLSI chip design.
Lenat and Eurisko gained notoriety by submitting the winning fleet (a large number of stationary, highly weaponed, defenseless ships) to the United States Traveller TCS national championship in 1981, forcing extensive changes to the game's rules. However, Eurisko won again in 1982 when the program discovered that the rules permitted the program to destroy its own ships, permitting it to continue to use much the same strategy. Tournament officials announced that if Eurisko won another championship the competition would be abolished; Lenat retired Eurisko from the game. The Traveller TCS wins brought Lenat to the attention of DARPA, which has funded much of his subsequent work.
Douglas Lenat
Douglas B. Lenat is the CEO of Cycorp, Inc. of Austin, Texas, and has been a prominent researcher in artificial intelligence, especially machine learning , knowledge representation, blackboard systems, and "ontological engineering"...
in RLL-1, a representation language itself written in the Lisp programming language
Lisp programming language
Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized syntax. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older...
. A sequel to Automated Mathematician
Automated Mathematician
The Automated Mathematician is one of the earliest successful discovery systems. It was created by Doug Lenat in Lisp, and in 1977 led to Lenat being awarded the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award....
, it consists of heuristics, i.e. rules of thumb, including heuristics describing how to use and change its own heuristics. Lenat was frustrated by Automated Mathematician's constraint to a single domain and so developed Eurisko; his frustration with the effort of encoding domain knowledge for Eurisko led to Lenat's subsequent (and, , continuing) development of Cyc
Cyc
Cyc is an artificial intelligence project that attempts to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base of everyday common sense knowledge, with the goal of enabling AI applications to perform human-like reasoning....
. Lenat envisions ultimately coupling the Cyc knowledgebase with the Eurisko discovery engine.
History
Development commenced at Carnegie Mellon in 1976 and continued at Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1978 when Lenat returned to teach. "For the first five years, nothing good came out of it," Lenat said. But when the implementation was changed to a frame language
Frame language
A frame language is a metalanguage. It applies the frame concept to the structuring of language properties. Frame languages are usually software languages.-Description:...
based representation he called RLL (Representation Language Language), heuristic creation and modification became much simpler. Eurisko was then applied to a number of domains with surprising success, including VLSI chip design.
Lenat and Eurisko gained notoriety by submitting the winning fleet (a large number of stationary, highly weaponed, defenseless ships) to the United States Traveller TCS national championship in 1981, forcing extensive changes to the game's rules. However, Eurisko won again in 1982 when the program discovered that the rules permitted the program to destroy its own ships, permitting it to continue to use much the same strategy. Tournament officials announced that if Eurisko won another championship the competition would be abolished; Lenat retired Eurisko from the game. The Traveller TCS wins brought Lenat to the attention of DARPA, which has funded much of his subsequent work.