A Summary Of The PSI Program Synthesis System

Abstract: This paper describes the current status of the PSI program synthesis system. It alloius program specification dialogues using natural language, traces and examples from which a high-level program model is acquired. This model is then refined into an efficient implementation of the program. PSI consists of several modules including a parser-interpreter, trace and examples inference expert, dialogue moderator, program model builder, coder and efficiency expert. Keywords; artificial intelligence, automatic programming. The PSI program synthesis system is a computer program that acquires high-level descriptions of programs and produces efficient implementations of these programs. Simple symbolic computation programs are specified through dialogues that include natural language, input-output pairs, and partial traces. The programs produced are in LISP or in SAIL. PSI is organized as a collection of interacting modules or programmed experts. The overall design is a group effort with one individual having responsibility for each module as follows: parser-interpreter Jerrold Ginsparg [Ginsparg-77]; trace and example inference module Jorge V. Philips [Phillips-77]