Hey, I''m very interested in the topic of AI. But any serious articles always say LISP is better for AI than C++. Could anyone recommend books relating to LISP, AI theory, and AI practice? Thank you very much. All beginner books, of course. -dan

LISP is definitely not better for AI programming than C or C++. All it will do for you is allow you to write code that''s possibly more like English in its construction--which really isn''t what you ulimately need.

Pick up a book on C/C++ instead.




Ferretman

ferretman@gameai.com
www.gameai.com

From the High Mountains of Colorado

No, it will allow you to write code with lots of parentheses, not code that resembles English.

LISP will give you the advantage of abstract datatypes and a functional programming language, as well as the ability to create code on the fly. It is definitely more suited for AI programming than C or C++. On the other hand, if you''re talking about game "AI", then there''s really no choice. How many games with built-in LISP interpreters do you see out there?

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
How many games with built-in LISP interpreters do you see out there?

1, at last count.

Oh, it was rhetorical? Never mind, then!

ld

If you still want to learn LISP, I recommend "LISPCraft". I don''t remember the author''s name.

LISP is good for "academic" AI but if you want to learn game AI go with C or C+ as the others suggested.

Using LISP to create better AI is just like using reading as a tool to write better stories. Using LISP will enable you to think differently, which in turn enables you to realize how seriously deficient a language like C or C++ is to create AI.

For serious AI, C or C++ is excellent to develop a system that in turn processes knowledge that is defined by another method, i.e. axioms, frames, semantic nets, symbolic processes, situation calculus, etc. But to develop those theories, a language like LISP enables you to focus on the task of symbolic processing, as opposed to processing data structures which in turn enable symbolic processing.

Remember, an if then statement in C or C++ is pretty useless for real good AI. This is because the statement is encoded without regard to the context, except for the hardcoded context in which the statement was compiled. This results in inflexibility and brittleness.

"Using LISP to create better AI is just like using reading as a tool to write better stories. Using LISP will enable you to think differently, which in turn enables you to realize how seriously deficient a language like C or C++ is to create AI."

Exactly what i was looking for. thanks for everyone''s help.

-dan`