[Techtalk] Prolog compilers, neural nets (was: Running Matlab & Nural Networking (Re: Remote X applications )

[David Cohen]

>Finally there is one off the planet suggestion.
>Prolog would be great to write neural nets in but being an interpreted
>language it would take "400 years to run" (to quote my lecturer).  I don't
>suppose there is any such strange best as a prolog compiler?

There have been Prolog compilers for at least 1.5 to 2 decades. As with 
Lisp, I'd assume that most Prologs have been doing incremental compilation 
or the like for a long time, so you get the feel of working with an 
interpreted language while actually getting things compiled.

As far as getting a Prolog system to work with, right now, the freebie that 
people are using appears to be SWI-Prolog, for which binaries are available 
for Windows, Mac and Linux:

http://www.swi-prolog.org

There's an IDE available too, called XPCE--look on the site and you'll see it.

Now, as far as doing neural nets with Prolog, I have to say the idea sounds 
a bit dodgy for the simple reason that the two approaches, logic and neural 
net, were typically viewed back in the heyday of commercial AI as being at 
odds with each other--the rule-based approach that attempts to mimic 
reasoning vs. the mindless numerical/statistical approach. Unlike some 
applications, I don't see any advantage that Prolog would give you here. 
And if you go Googling around, I don't think you'll see much, if anything, 
involving implementing neural nets in Prolog. Of course, SWI-Prolog has a 
foreign-function interface, so you could call out to a neural net written 
in C/C++ interface but in that case, it'd make more sense to just stick 
with C/C++.

Mind you, if you want to work with this type of high-level language, Common 
Lisp has excellent numerical facilities, as this discussion between Richard 
O'Keefe (a Prolog legend) and Daniel Lakeland 
mentions: 
http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/projects/SWI-Prolog/mailinglist/archive/old/2389.html

The money quote (from Lakeland, I believe):

> >       Sadly as much as I enjoyed working on computer algebra and
> >       solving numerical computations I have to admit that I haven't
> >       done it for far too long, nor in anything more advanced than C++
> >       (shockingly, as I can't abide C style languages, my first choice
> >       these days if I were to start working on that stuff again would
> >       be Common Lisp)

Hope this helps.
___
DC