Ginsberg Replies of Chapman and Schoppers - Universal Planning Research: A Good or Bad Idea?

Rather than begin by discussing the points where I seem to be in disagreement with Chapman and Schoppers, let me start with something about which we seem to concur: The work on reactive plans can be broken into two parts. First is the work on pure reactive plans, which specify actions for an agent to take in all situations. Second is the work on caching reactive plans, which specify actions in only some instances and are primarily used to store the results of previous planning activity. Although Chapman would object to the use of the word plan, the basic distinction is one that his reply appears to sanction. Strongly put, the argument in my initial article boiled down to two claims. First, research on pure reactive plans is unlikely to have significant impact on AI because pure reactive plans cannot be used as an architecture on which to build a cognitive agent. Second, current research on caching reactive plans is unlikely to have significant impact on AI because the researchers are not addressing interesting problems. Chapman disagrees with the first of these claims, and Schoppers disputes the second (and also the first, although only halfheartedly). Let me discuss their arguments individually.