Reanimation of the original Logic Theorist, the first AI, in IPL-V [video]

Reanimation of the original Logic Theorist, the first AI, in IPL-V [video](youtube.com)

34 points by abrax3141 1 year ago | 6 comments

pvg 1 year ago |

The linked github repo for an easier-to-skim start https://github.com/jeffshrager/IPL-V

kjander79 1 year ago |

This is the Logic Theorist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist

I love Simon's anecdote of using his wife and children as the stack as he developed IPS.

This eventually was replaced by GPS, which has a good description in Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial Programming, here: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp

jmount 1 year ago |

Really exciting to see so many of the early systems revived. Eliza, Logic Theorist, SHRDLU ( https://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/ , I had thought this one was lost). Any other favorites?

abrax3141 1 year ago | |

SHRDLU was written in Lisp, albeit a pre-CL list. So it was quite easy to bring up by writing macros that make CL work like older Lisps. We did the same thing with Bernie Cosell's ELIZA:

  https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/eliza-clones

Although IPL is a direct Lisp predecessor, it can't be easily mapped to Lisp. Indeed, Lisp and IPL-V were contemporaneous for about 5 years, but Lisp was so much simpler and more elegant that it rapidly supplanted IPL. As a result, Ed Feigenbaum and I are probably the only living person who know IPL (and I only barely know it as I just learned it in the past few months!), whereas Lisp has been essentially endemic for 60 years! (I'm hoping I'm wrong that Ed and I are the only folks who know IPL. If you know of a native IPL speaker who I could talk to, I'd love you to DM me!)

jasonhemann 1 year ago |

This video is charming

kjander79 1 year ago | |

I really enjoyed having the kids introduce it