Automatic Problem Solving' Early Work in Automatic Problem-solving Focused on What Is Needed to Generate Plans

Early work in automatic problem-solving focused on what Newell has called “weak methods ” While these problemsolving strategies are quite general and are formally tractable, they are insufficient in practice for solving problems of any significant complexity. During the last decade, a number of techniques have been developed for improving the efficiency of these strategies. Since these techniques operate within the context of the general strategies, they are termed here problem-solving tactics. The bulk of this paper consists of a description of the problem-solving strategies and a catalogue of tactics for improving their efficiency.This is followed by an attempt to