McCarthy's Idea

In 1958, John McCarthy invented the concept of the “advicetaker”, a machine that could be programmed by description. This idea lies at the heart of AI. It is the basis for such technologies as logic programming and knowledge engineering, though neither of these technologies is true to the ideal. In this paper, we re-examine the ideal itself, from today's perspective. We review the current state of the art; we discuss the merits of advice-taking systems; and we describe some applications.