Special report—artificial intelligence in France: Current developments

Artificial Intelligence is gaining more and more importance as a research field within computer science in France. The main centers of activity in this area are Grenoble, Nancy, Paris, Marseille, Rennes, and Toulouse. Research is done in the universities as well as in other laboratories, whether public (I.N.R.I.A., in Rocquencourt, close to Paris, C.E.R.T. in Toulouse), or private [C.G.E. Mar’coussis, and smaller companies such as I.T.M.I. (Meylan), Cognitech (Paris), Framentec (Monaco), etc. . . .I. Basic research in the field is currently supported by a national research program called P.R.C.-I.A. (Programme de Recherche Concert6 en Intelligence Artificielle), sponsored by the C.N.R.S. (the French counterpart of N.S.F.) and the Ministry of Research and Education. This program deals with what can be called the “heart of A.I.” since it involves four main streams which are: (1) Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Processes, (2) Learning and Analogy, (3) Control Aspects in Automated Reasoning, and (4) Expert Systems Methodology for applications. Stream 1 is basically concerned with knowledge modeling aspects in various problems such as diagnosis, prediction, planning, and design. Covered topics include reasoning under uncertainty, temporal reasoning, meta-knowledge, geometrical reasoning, and their combination. Stream 2 deals with nondeductive reasoning techniques, very often related to the problem of knowledge .enhancement through generalization, similarity analysis, partial matching. Stream 3 gathers topics related to logic programming, and ranging from improved theorem-provers in classical logic to the implementation of nonstandard logic provers (nonmonotonic and modal logics, deduction under uncertainty), and automated program syntheses. Stream 4 is more focused on expert system design, taking advantage of results in the three other streams. It is also concerned with methods for debugging, testing, and maintenance of expert systems software. Current research topics include the definition of a typology of problems and the corresponding methods, automated consistency checking in knowledge bases, and the analysis of case studies. Financial support amounts to 6,000,000 French Francs in 1985, dispatched among 17 research teams in universities or public laboratories. These teams represent about 200 researchers, faculty members, or Ph.D. students, 90 of which are directly supported by the program. The money devoted to the program does not include salaries of researchers or