Advice taker

The advice taker was a hypothetical computer program

Computer program

Computer programs are instructions for a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions...

, proposed by John McCarthy

John McCarthy (computer scientist)

John McCarthy , is an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence...

 in his 1958 paper "Programs with Common Sense" . It was probably the first proposal to use logic

Mathematical logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

 to represent information in a computer and not just as the subject matter of another program. It may also have been the first paper to propose common sense

Common sense

Common sense , based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding...

 reasoning ability as the key to artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...

. In his paper, McCarthy advocated:

"…programs to manipulate in a suitable formal language (most likely a part of the predicate calculus) common instrumental statements.

The advice taker was a hypothetical computer program

Computer program

Computer programs are instructions for a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions...

, proposed by John McCarthy

John McCarthy (computer scientist)

John McCarthy , is an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence...

 in his 1958 paper "Programs with Common Sense" . It was probably the first proposal to use logic

Mathematical logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

 to represent information in a computer and not just as the subject matter of another program. It may also have been the first paper to propose common sense

Common sense

Common sense , based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding...

 reasoning ability as the key to artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...

. In his paper, McCarthy advocated:

"…programs to manipulate in a suitable formal language (most likely a part of the predicate calculus) common instrumental statements. The basic program will draw immediate conclusions from a list of premises. These conclusions will be either declarative or imperative sentences. When an imperative sentence is deduced the program takes a corresponding action."

McCarthy justified his proposal as follows:

"The main advantages we expect the advice taker to have is that its behaviour will be improvable merely by making statements to it, telling it about its symbolic environment and what is wanted from it. To make these statements will require little if any knowledge of the program or the previous knowledge of the advice taker. One will be able to assume that the advice taker will have available to it a fairly wide class of immediate logical consequences of anything it is told and its previous knowledge. This property is expected to have much in common with what makes us describe certain humans as having common sense. We shall therefore say that a program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficiently wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows."