Textbook of AI

1949–2022, AI researcher

Also known as: Drew V. McDermott

Drew V. McDermott was an American AI researcher at Yale whose 1976 essay Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity offered a famously sharp methodological critique of AI: programs were named to suggest capabilities (UNDERSTAND, GENERATE, REASON) far beyond what they actually did, and the field had developed a vocabulary that systematically over-claimed. The essay coined the wishful mnemonic, the use of suggestive variable and predicate names to import meaning that the program does not in fact possess.

McDermott also contributed to non-monotonic reasoning (with Jon Doyle, the 1980 paper on non-monotonic logic) and to the early planning literature with the development of PDDL (Planning Domain Definition Language, 1998), the standard input format for academic planners.