Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ada: Integrating AI with Mainstream Software Engineering

In this report we discuss in detail pragmatic problems posed by the integration of Al with conventional software engineering, and within the framework of current Ada technology. A major objective of this work has been to begin to bridge the gap between the Ada and Al software cultures. The report summarizes survey results from the Association for Computing Machinery ACM special Interest Group for Ada SlGAda Al Working Group AIWG, highlighting lessons learned and sample applications. An interesting observation is that a large percentage of Al code is procedural by nature and that better productivity rates are achieved by using Ada also, efficiency is much better when compared to traditional Al languages. Although we show favorable results on the use of Ada technology for the implementation of Al software, a total integration remains difficult at the conceptual level. There are some impediments to a completely satisfactory solution, but only a few restrictions are more intrinsically related to the current Ada standard Ada83 these, however, are being dealt with in the next revision known as Ada9X.