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    Classic AI: search, logic & planning· 1959

    Programs with Common Sense

    John McCarthy (first author) · 1959

    Read the original

    OpenAlex W2119409989

    On the reading lists

    Why it matters

    Proposed the Advice Taker and declarative logical knowledge for intelligent programs.

    Condensed from the expert lists' notes.

    Reading it

    Difficulty: Introductory

    Read this first: propositional logic.

    The record

    First released
    1959 (from oracle lists)
    Citations
    1,357 citations, as counted by Semantic Scholar logoSemantic Scholar (non-commercial licence)
    Named by
    both expert lists
    Score
    0.422 · computed rank 333 · consensus 0.49, must-read 1, citations percentile 0.5 (pre-1970 · classic-ai), awards 0, existing lists 0. Method

    Editor's notes

    • Readability check: pass: McCarthy's advice taker: the founding paper of logic-based AI; short. (AI draft (Claude), not yet reviewed, 2026-10-29)

    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 logoSemantic Scholar (used under its non-commercial API licence). Each count names its source. See the method.