2026 edition · Top 40
Classic AI: search, logic & planning
Symbolic AI from 1943 on: search, logic, knowledge representation, planning and reasoning under uncertainty.
Classic AI: 40 · N = 40, scaled from 95 candidates.
0 of 40 of this page's 40 read · saved in this browser only
- 1
A Formal Basis for the Heuristic Determination of Minimum Cost Paths
Peter E. Hart · 14,103 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 2
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Alan M. Turing · 12,323 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 3
Strips: A new approach to the application of theorem proving to problem solving
Richard E. Fikes · 6,437 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 4
A Machine-Oriented Logic Based on the Resolution Principle
J. Alan Robinson · 4,753 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 5
- 6
Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers
Arthur L. Samuel · 5,325 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's noteClassic quota - 7
A machine program for theorem-proving
Martin Davis · 3,740 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's noteClassic quota - 8
Consistency in networks of relations
Alan K. Mackworth · 2,960 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 9
The complexity of theorem-proving procedures
Stephen A. Cook · 7,698 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 10
- 11
Computer science as empirical inquiry: symbols and search
Allen Newell · 2,807 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 12
SOAR: An architecture for general intelligence
John E. Laird · 2,535 citations · OpenAlex
Editor's note - 13
Circumscription—A form of non-monotonic reasoning
John McCarthy · 2,017 citations · OpenAlex
Editor's note - 14
A robust layered control system for a mobile robot
Rodney A. Brooks · 7,798 citations · OpenAlex
Editor's note - 15
A Computing Procedure for Quantification Theory
Martin Davis · 3,095 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 16
- 17
Planning and acting in partially observable stochastic domains
Leslie Pack Kaelbling · 4,147 citations · OpenAlex
- 18
- 19
XXII. Programming a computer for playing chess
Claude E. Shannon · 618 citations · OpenAlex
Editor's note - 20
Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals
James F. Allen · 7,593 citations · OpenAlex
- 21
The FF Planning System: Fast Plan Generation Through Heuristic Search
Jörg Hoffmann · 1,840 citations · OpenAlex
Award - 22
Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I
John McCarthy · 1,632 citations · Semantic Scholar
Editor's note - 23
The Stable Model Semantics for Logic Programming
Michael Gelfond · 3,452 citations · OpenAlex
- 24
Fuzzy sets
Lotfi A. Zadeh · 67,842 citations · OpenAlex
- 25
The Semantic Web
9,352 citations · OpenAlex
- 26
The Semantics of Predicate Logic as a Programming Language
Maarten H. van Emden · 1,450 citations · OpenAlex
- 27
Report on a general problem-solving program
Allen Newell · 749 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 28
Intelligence without representation
Rodney A. Brooks · 4,852 citations · OpenAlex
- 29
An Integrated Theory of the Mind
3,348 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 30
Networks of constraints: Fundamental properties and applications to picture processing
Ugo Montanari · 1,536 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 31
Temporal Constraint Networks
Dechter · 2,252 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 32
Fast planning through planning graph analysis
Avrim L. Blum · 1,566 citations · OpenAlex
- 33
Heuristics: Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem Solving
Pearl · 2,494 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 34
Rete: A fast algorithm for the many pattern/many object pattern match problem
Charles L. Forgy · 2,638 citations · OpenAlex
- 35
- 36
Chaff: Engineering an Efficient SAT Solver
Matthew W. Moskewicz · 2,944 citations · OpenAlex
- 37
Planning as Satisfiability
Henry A. Kautz · 1,204 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 38
The knowledge level
Allen Newell · 2,589 citations · OpenAlex
- 39
Qualitative Process Theory
2,481 citations · Semantic Scholar
- 40
A Structure for Plans and Behavior
Sacerdoti · 1,385 citations · Semantic Scholar
Data sources
Catalogue data from OpenAlex (CC0), Crossref (CC0 metadata; no abstracts are shown), arXiv, and Papers With Code (CC BY-SA 4.0), and 
Semantic Scholar (used under its non-commercial API licence). Each count names its source. See the method.