Principles of Efficient Inference

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Principles of Efficient Inference This is the first year funding of a three year continuing award. This project seeks to uncover fundamental principles for the construction of real-time AI systems that employ declarative knowledge representations and general reasoning engines. To achieve this goal, the PI will (a) study the "fine grained" structure of problem hardness based on notions coming out of work on phase transitions in random problem distributions; (b) develop faster complete and incomplete reasoning engines, including systems that employ decision-theoretic control of reasoning; and (c) apply and test the new algorithms to planning problems in a robotics testbed. This research will lead to the creation of useful new algorithms for solving hard combinatorial problems in areas such as knowledge-based expert systems, autonomous systems, and operations research. The results will also promote interdisciplinary work on logic and reasoning in the AI, theory, OR, robotics, and verification communities.