Frank van Harmelen
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The history of AI has been a continuous swing of the pendulum between the extremes of logical reasoning and statistical learning; or, as Judea Pearl has it: between Greek philosophers and Babylonian curve fitters. In recent years, the pendulum has swung strongly towards the statistical methods. We'll take a close look at the history of AI, and we'll identify the strong and weak points of both schools of thought. This will lead to a set of challenges to be taken up by logicians if they are interested in contributing to one of the most exciting intellectual endeavours of our time.