Patrick John Hayes FAAAI (born 21 August 1944) is a British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

who lives and works in the United States. , he is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in

Pensacola Pensacola () is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal ci ...

, Florida.

Education

Hayes was educated at Bentley Grammar School. He studied the

Cambridge Mathematical Tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was ...

and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics from the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and a PhD in

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

on the topic of 'Semantic trees: New foundations for automatic theorem-proving' from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

Career and research

Hayes has been an active, prolific, and influential figure in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

for over five decades. He has a reputation for being provocative but also quite humorous. One of his earliest publications, with John McCarthy, was the first thorough statement of the basis for the AI field of logical knowledge representation, introducing the notion of

situation calculus The situation calculus is a logic formalism designed for representing and reasoning about dynamical domains. It was first introduced by John McCarthy in 1963. The main version of the situational calculus that is presented in this article is based ...

, representation and reasoning about time, fluents, and the use of logic for representing knowledge in a computer. Hayes next major contribution was the seminal work on the ''Naive Physics Manifesto'', which anticipated the

expert system In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if� ...

s movement in many ways and called for researchers in AI to actually ''try to represent knowledge in computers''. Although not the first to mention the word "

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophy, philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, Becoming (philosophy), becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into Category ...

" in computer science (that distinction belongs to John McCarthy ), Hayes was one of the first to actually do it, and inspired an entire generation of researchers in

knowledge engineering Knowledge engineering (KE) refers to all technical, scientific and social aspects involved in building, maintaining and using knowledge-based systems. Background Expert systems One of the first examples of an expert system was MYCIN, an appli ...

, logical formalisations of

commonsense reasoning In artificial intelligence (AI), commonsense reasoning is a human-like ability to make presumptions about the type and essence of ordinary situations humans encounter every day. These assumptions include judgments about the nature of physical objec ...

, and ontology. In the middle of the 1990s, while serving as president of the

AAAI The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

, Hayes began a series of attacks on critics of AI, mostly phrased in an ironic light, and (together with his colleague Kenneth Ford) invented an award named after

Simon Newcomb Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian–American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath. He served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins University. Born in N ...

to be given for the most ridiculous argument "disproving" the possibility of AI. The Newcomb Awards are announced in the ''

AI Magazine The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

'' published by

. At the turn of the century he became active in the Semantic Web community, contributing substantially (perhaps solely) to the revised semantics of RDF known as RDF-Core, one of the three designers (along with Peter Patel-Schneider and

Ian Horrocks Ian Robert Horrocks One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford in the UK and a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His research ...

) of the

Web Ontology Language The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for vario ...

semantics, and most recently contributed to

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced " sparkle" , a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description ...

. He is also, along with philosopher Christopher Menzel the primary designer of 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 o ...

standard. Hayes has served as secretary of AISB, chairman and trustee of

IJCAI The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is the leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The conference series has been organized by the nonprofit IJCAI Organization since 1969, making it the oldest pr ...

, associate editor of ''Artificial Intelligence'', a governor of the Cognitive Science Society and president of American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Hayes is a charter Fellow of

and of the

Cognitive Science Society The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society p ...

According to his website, his current research interests include "

knowledge representation Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, KR²) is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can use to solve complex tasks such as diagnosing a medic ...

and automatic

reasoning Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, langu ...

, especially the representation of

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consi ...

and time; the semantic web;

design; and the philosophical foundations of AI and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hayes, Pat British computer scientists Living people 1944 births Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition people Alumni of the University of Edinburgh British expatriates in the United States Semantic Web people Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence