Time and Change for AI

Abstract

Abstract Outside physics and philosophy one seldom reasons much about time and change in the abstract, but on the other hand reasoning about particular times and changes—dates, processes, events, and so on—is all-pervasive both in the specialist sciences and in everyday life. No account of reasoning can properly be called complete if it does not say something about how we reason about change; and if, as in Al, the aim is to simulate or duplicate human reasoning computationally, then the account of change required must be both extensive and detailed. In this section we survey six areas pertaining to Al in which a need for temporal reasoning has been felt, introducing some of the key issues arising in these areas; in later sections we examine these issues in greater detail.