This guide offers an accessible overview of SHRDLU, a landmark AI program from the late 1960s and early 1970s developed by Terry Winograd. It explains how the system processes English conversations about colored blocks by integrating parsing, semantic interpretation, and logical reasoning into a single coherent architecture.
Key points include:
- The historical significance of SHRDLU in AI research at MIT
- A breakdown of its modular subsystems from raw input to natural language response
- How the PROGRAMMAR metalanguage allows grammar rules to act as executable programs
- The function of the Micro-Planner engine for theorem proving within Lisp
- The integration of syntactic, semantic, and geometric world knowledge into a unified system
Key points include:
- The historical significance of SHRDLU in AI research at MIT
- A breakdown of its modular subsystems from raw input to natural language response
- How the PROGRAMMAR metalanguage allows grammar rules to act as executable programs
- The function of the Micro-Planner engine for theorem proving within Lisp
- The integration of syntactic, semantic, and geometric world knowledge into a unified system
This repository provides an implementation and recreation of the first published version of the Logic Theory Machine, also known as the Logic Theorist. Originally developed by Allen Newell, J. C. Shaw, and Herbert A. Simon in 1956, this program was designed to prove theorems in propositional logic using principles from Principia Mathematica. The project includes a Python-based interpreter for the IPL-I abstract machine language, tools to run the program against historical axioms and theorems, and utilities to analyze generated proofs.
Main components:
Implementation of the 1956 Logic Theory Machine
Propositional logic based on Principia Mathematica
Python interpreter for the IPL-I language
Tools for running simulations and verifying results
Main components:
Implementation of the 1956 Logic Theory Machine
Propositional logic based on Principia Mathematica
Python interpreter for the IPL-I language
Tools for running simulations and verifying results
This paper details the reconstruction and execution of the Logic Theorist (LT), considered the first artificial intelligence program, originally created in 1955-1956. The authors built a new IPL-V interpreter in Common Lisp and faithfully reanimated LT from code transcribed from a 1963 RAND technical report. The reanimated LT successfully proved 16 of 23 theorems from Principia Mathematica, consistent with the original system's behavior. This work demonstrates "executable archaeology" as a method for understanding early AI systems, highlighting the challenges and insights gained from reconstructing and running historical code.
- Raph Levien, who is an expert in Rust and rendering on GPUs, who founded Advogato, and who designed Inconsolata, a great monospace font. His talk's title is *I Want a Good Parallel Language*.
- Jeff Shrager will give a talk on reviving early AI programs like ELIZA and IPL-V. His talk's title is *RetroAI: Reanimating the Earliest AIs in the Lost Languages that Predated Lisp*.
- Jeff Shrager will give a talk on reviving early AI programs like ELIZA and IPL-V. His talk's title is *RetroAI: Reanimating the Earliest AIs in the Lost Languages that Predated Lisp*.
PDF of the second edition of Information Processing Language V Manual (1964).
This GitHub repository contains a re-implementation of the IPL-V programming language and the Logic Theorist (LT) program. It includes the original code transcribed into a TSV format and converted to Lisp, along with documentation and debugging tools.
The Wikipedia article details the Logic Theorist, created in 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Cliff Shaw. Widely considered the first AI program, it successfully proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in Principia Mathematica, even discovering more elegant proofs than those originally crafted by Russell and Whitehead.
Jeff Shrager has reanimated LT in IPL-V with a new implementation.
There are references to the IBM 7090/7094 version under IBSYS online.
In this 7094 emulator package on Github: https://github.com/Bertoid1311/B7094 (in the zipped distribution files unfortunately) I think there is a copy that is runnable? see: Docs/Bamberger-MAMOS_docs/BAMBSYSLB1_patch_for_IPLV.txt
It describes patching the available binary to make it work, with the caveat that it's unclear if the interpreter is correct/intact (but it does run the demo programs).
On the provenance of the tape:https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/umes-resurrected-sort-of/3739
In this 7094 emulator package on Github: https://github.com/Bertoid1311/B7094 (in the zipped distribution files unfortunately) I think there is a copy that is runnable? see: Docs/Bamberger-MAMOS_docs/BAMBSYSLB1_patch_for_IPLV.txt
It describes patching the available binary to make it work, with the caveat that it's unclear if the interpreter is correct/intact (but it does run the demo programs).
On the provenance of the tape:https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/umes-resurrected-sort-of/3739
