The Knowledge You Need

Part I is about representing knowledge and about reasoning methods that make use of knowledge. The material covered includes the semantic-net family of representations, describe and match, generate and test, means-ends analysis, problem reduction, basic search, optimal search, adversarial search, rule chaining, the rete algorithm, frame inheritance, topological sorting, constraint propagation, logic, truth maintenance, planning, and cognitive modeling.

Part II is about learning, the sine qua non of intelligence. Some methods involve much reasoning; others just extract regularity from data. The material covered includes near-miss analysis, explanation-based learning, knowledge repair, case recording, version-space convergence, identification-tree construction, neural-net training, perceptron convergence, approximation-net construction, and simulated evolution.

Part III is about visual perception and language understanding. You learn not only about perception and language, but also about ideas that have been a major source of inspiration for people working in other subfields of artificial intelligence. The material covered includes object identification, stereo vision, shape from shading, a glimpse of modern linguistic theory, and transition-tree methods for building practical natural-language interfaces.

Special Features of this Edition

• Based on extensive teaching experience
• Semiformal representation and procedure specifications bring the ideas to within a step or two of implementation and highlight unifying themes.
• Application examples provide a glimpse of the ideas at work in real-world systems.
• Powerful ideas and principles are identified and emphasized.

About the Author

Professor Winston is well known throughout the world both for his contributions to artificial intelligence and for his clear and insightful writing about the field.

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