The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for over 60 years now. Soon after its inception, the founding fathers predicted that within a few years an intelligent machine would be built. That prediction failed miserably. Not only hasn’t an intelligent machine been built, but we are not much closer to building one than we were some 50 years ago. Many reasons have been given for this failure, but one theme has been dominant since its advent in 1969: The Frame Problem. What looked initially like an innocuous problem in logic, turned out to be a much broader and harder problem of holism and relevance in commonsense reasoning. Despite an enormous literature on the topic, there is still disagreement not only on whether the problem has been solved, but even what exactly the problem is. In this paper, we provide a formal description of the initial problem, the early attempts at a solution, and its ramifications both in AI as well as philosophy.