Locally Effective Objects and Artificial Intelligence

The concept of locally effective objects was introduced by Sergeraert in the field of Effective Algebraic Topology, where this tool was used to represent potentially infinite data structures. This notion, borrowed from symbolic computation, was later used to produce, in an innovative way, code implementing the well-known search algorithms in Artificial Intelligence. In this paper, we show how these implementations can be appropriately reinterpreted and specified, by using some recent advances in the algebraic specification setting. As a by-product, the concept of locally effective graphs provides a framework in which the Production Systems and the State Space programming metaphors can be formally integrated.