Summary

Symbolic AI is one of the earliest forms based on modeling the world around us through explicit symbolic representations. This chapter discussed how and why humans brought about the innovation behind Symbolic AI. The primary motivating principle behind Symbolic AI is enabling machine intelligence. Properly formalizing the concept of intelligence is critical since it sets the tone for what one can and should expect from a machine. As such, this chapter also examined the idea of intelligence and how one might represent knowledge through explicit symbols to enable intelligent systems.

Knowledge representation and formalization are firmly based on the categorization of various types of symbols. Using a simple statement as an example, we discussed the fundamental steps required to develop a symbolic program. An essential step in designing Symbolic AI systems is to capture and translate world knowledge into symbols. We discussed the process and intuition behind formalizing these symbols into logical propositions by declaring relations and logical connectives.

Finally, this chapter also covered how one might exploit a set of defined logical propositions to evaluate other expressions and generate conclusions. This chapter also briefly introduced the topic of Boolean logic and how it relates to Symbolic AI.

We also looked back at the other successes of Symbolic AI, its critical applications, and its prominent use cases. However, Symbolic AI has several limitations, leading to its inevitable pitfall. These limitations and their contributions to the downfall of Symbolic AI were documented and discussed in this chapter. Following that, we briefly introduced the sub-symbolic paradigm and drew some comparisons between the two paradigms. These comparisons serve as a foundation for the rest of the book.

The following chapters will focus on and discuss the sub-symbolic paradigm in greater detail. In the next chapter, we will start by shedding some light on the NN revolution and examine the current situation regarding AI technologies.