Michael Genesereth (born 1948) is an American

logician Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arg ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, who is most known for his work on

computational logic Computational logic is the use of logic to perform or reason about computation. It bears a similar relationship to computer science and engineering as mathematical logic bears to mathematics and as philosophical logic bears to philosophy. It is a ...

and applications of that work in

enterprise management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administra ...

computational law Computational Law is the branch of legal informatics concerned with the automation of legal reasoning. What distinguishes Computational Law systems from other instances of legal technology is their autonomy, i.e. the ability to answer legal ques ...

, and

general game playing General game playing (GGP) is the design of artificial intelligence programs to be able to play more than one game successfully. For many games like chess, computers are programmed to play these games using a specially designed algorithm, which c ...

. Genesereth is professor in the Computer Science Department at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and a professor by courtesy in the

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (SLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% i ...

. His 1987 textbook on Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence remains one of the key references on

symbolic artificial intelligence Symbolic may refer to: * Symbol, something that represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity Mathematics, logic, and computing * Symbolic computation, a scientific area concerned with computing with mathematical formulas * Symbolic dynamic ...

. He is the author of the influential

Game Description Language Game Description Language (GDL) is a specialized logic programming language designed by Michael Genesereth. The goal of GDL is to allow the development of AI agents capable of general game playing. It is part of the General Game Playing Project a ...

(GDL) and

Knowledge Interchange Format Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) is a computer language designed to enable systems to share and re-use information from knowledge-based systems. KIF is similar to frame languages such as KL-ONE, KL-One and LOOM (ontology), LOOM but unlike such lan ...

(KIF), the latter of which led to the ISO

Common Logic Common Logic (CL) is a framework for a family of logic languages, based on first-order logic, intended to facilitate the exchange and transmission of knowledge in computer-based systems. The CL definition permits and encourages the development ...

standard.

Education

Genesereth received a B.S. in Physics (1972) from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, and both an M.S. (1974) and Ph.D. (1978) in Applied Mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. As a graduate student, he worked on the

Macsyma Macsyma (; "Project MAC's SYmbolic MAnipulator") is one of the oldest general-purpose computer algebra systems still in wide use. It was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at MIT's Project MAC. In 1982, Macsyma was licensed to Symbolics and ...

computer algebra system A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. The de ...

and wrote his dissertation on an automated advisor for Macsyma users.

Career

Genesereth has been a faculty member in the computer science department at

since 1979. He is the director of the Logic Group at Stanford and a founder and the research director of the

Stanford CodeX Center Stanford Law School (SLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% i ...

for Legal Informatics. He is one of the founders of the companies Teknowledge,

CommerceNet CommerceNet is a 501(c)6 organization established in 1994 to promote electronic commerce on the Internet.The company was initially founded by Murray Sherwood and Martin Blackburn who sold it to A.T and T in 1996. The organisation initially focused ...

, Mergent Systems, SIPX and Symbium. Symbium is the most recent spinoff from the computational law research undertaken by

CodeX The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

and is a winner of the Ivory Innovation Prize for Policy and Regulatory Reform.

Research

Genesereth's research is broadly based on the use of

for such applications as integrating knowledge from heterogeneous sources, as a common format for exchanging knowledge, as a foundation for agent-based knowledge representation and software engineering, as an enhancement to spreadsheets known as a

Logical spreadsheet {{Short description, Logic-based spreadsheet A logical spreadsheet is a spreadsheet in which formulas take the form of logical constraints rather than function definitions. In traditional spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for ...

, and for optimizing queries in a

deductive database A deductive database is a database system that can make deductions (i.e. conclude additional facts) based on rules and facts stored in its database. Datalog is the language typically used to specify facts, rules and queries in deductive database ...

system. He invented the notion of Model-based Diagnosis as a contrast with the symptom-based approach then current in systems like Mycin, and this was recognized by its inclusion in a retrospective on fifty volumes of

Artificial Intelligence (journal) ''Artificial Intelligence'' is a scientific journal on artificial intelligence research. It was established in 1970 and is published by Elsevier. The journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus and Science Citation Index. The 2021 Impact Factor f ...

. His work on data integration won the best paper prize at the 1997

Symposium on Principles of Database Systems The ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) is an international research conference on database theory, and has been held yearly since 1982. It is sponsored by three Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Com ...

. His work on deals among

rational agent A rational agent or rational being is a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information. A rational agent can be anything that makes decisions, typically a person, firm, machine, or software. ...

s won the influential paper award by the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems in 2007.

Logic education

In 2016, Genesereth launched an effort to bring logic education to high schools across America citing

Herbrand Herbrand is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Freddy Herbrand (born 1944), Belgian decathlete * Jacques Herbrand (1908–1931), French mathematician * Markus Herbrand Markus Herbrand (born 24 February 1971) is a German poli ...

semantics as the foundation of the pedagogical approach. The program includes summer camps for high school students offered on the Stanford campus, and teacher professional development offered across different studies in the USA. The high school offerings utilize the same course material as a

MOOC A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the World Wide Web, Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and p ...

on the same topic. Genesereth is also the Academic Director of The International Logic Olympiad. The Olympiad, which started in 2024, is a worldwide competition in logical reasoning and problem-solving for secondary school students. In its first year, more than 3500 students from 2100 schools in 92 countries participated in the contest.

Society

Genesereth served as the program chair of the Third National Conference of Artificial Intelligence, councilor of American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for the term expiring in 1985, and was elected its fellow in 1990. He has also been an organizer of the International General Game Playing Competition, a program chair in 1993 of

The Web Conference The ACM Web Conference (formerly known as International World Wide Web Conference, abbreviated as WWW) is a yearly international academic conference on the topic of the future direction of the World Wide Web. The first conference of many was he ...

, a co-organizer of 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium on Intelligent Privacy Management, and a chair of the Ninth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Genesereth, Michael 1948 births Living people Harvard University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Formal methods people Logic programming researchers American people of Welsh descent American people of Polish descent Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence