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Extending C with Prolog (1994)

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Re: Extending C with Prolog (1994)

#2

Post by vintagedave »

> We recently installed Gateway multi-media kits on our PCs, but found the installation less than trivial because of conflicts in our interrupt (IRQ) channels. A simple expert system could have helped to resolve those IRQ conflicts. ... The sample program is set up to allow installation of two different devices, a 'Sound Blaster' and a 'Mitsumi CD- ROM'.

This was a real blast from the past. I wonder why more systems today don't have this kind of logic solving built in. Possibly, too many complex behaviours that are not cleanly quantified.

Re: Extending C with Prolog (1994)

#5

Post by HexDecOctBin »

I often wonder what a Prolog implemented as an Objective-C like extension to C would look like. Since WAM has proper stack and heap IIRC, it might be possible to plug that in through some region-based memory management on C side. Is there some prior art like this?

Re: Extending C with Prolog (1994)

#6

Post by linguae »

Davidbrcz wrote: post #4
krzyk wrote: post #3

Is this the time of year when we try to force redditors to stay away by posting about Prolog? I see three stories already.

Refreshing stories between all the AI ones (and crypto/web3 before that)

Ironically, once upon a time Prolog and logic programming in general were part of the cutting-edge of AI. There's quite a fascinating history of Japan's fifth-generation computing efforts in the 1980s when Japan focused on logic programming and massively parallel computing. My former manager, who is from Japan, earned his PhD in the 1990s in a topic related to constraint logic programming.

Re: Extending C with Prolog (1994)

#8

Post by fc417fc802 »

linguae wrote: post #6
Davidbrcz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refreshing stories between all the AI ones (and crypto/web3 before that)

Ironically, once upon a time Prolog and logic programming in general were part of the cutting-edge of AI. There's quite a fascinating history of Japan's fifth-generation computing efforts in the 1980s when Japan focused on logic programming and massively parallel computing. My former manager, who is from Japan, earned his PhD in the 1990s in a topic related to constraint logic programming.

Even now NEC makes some cool massively parallel chips and accelerators that I wish were more mainstream because they look like they'd be fun to play with.

Re: Extending C with Prolog (1994)

#9

Post by thesz »

Davidbrcz wrote: post #4
krzyk wrote: post #3

Is this the time of year when we try to force redditors to stay away by posting about Prolog? I see three stories already.

Refreshing stories between all the AI ones (and crypto/web3 before that)

You said AI: https://github.com/stassa/louise

  Louise (Patsantzis & Muggleton 2021) is a machine learning system that learns Prolog programs.

  Louise is a Meta-Interpretive Learning (MIL) system. MIL (Muggleton et al. 2014), (Muggleton et al. 2015), is a new setting for Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) (Muggleton, 1991). ILP is a form of weakly-supervised machine learning of logic programs from examples of program behaviour (meaning examples of the inputs and outputs of the programs to be learned). Unlike conventional, statistical machine learning algorithms, ILP approaches do not need to see examples of programs to learn new programs and instead rely on background knowledge, a library of pre-existing logic programs that they reuse to compose new programs.
This is what was done by Douglas Lenat from late 1970-s on [1]. He did his work using Lisp, this thing does something close using Prolog.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurisko

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