For example, A.I. researchers hope to build a machine that can read an article written in Chinese and produce a summary of it in English. Researchers generally believe that making progress on this task of getting a computer to use English intelligently will require a massive introduction into the computer of knowledge about the world outside the computer. Many A.I. researchers believe the key to success is to translate this knowledge into symbolic logic rather than into ordinary computer languages. In that case, mass-produced, fully educated robot scientists working diligently, cheaply, rapidly and increasingly effectively will ensure that most of what science knows in 2050 will have been discovered by our artificial progeny. The electrical engineer who designs digital computers creates the machines' gates and networks on its chips according to the principles of Sentential Logic, that is, Boolean Algebra.
Symbolic logic is useful for simplifying complicated electrical circuits.
The techniques of symbolic logic are used to create simpler circuit that works the same as a more complicated and more expensive circuit. The techniques can be used to establish limitations of speed for certain kinds of calculations, and to establish whether a computer program will in principle correctly do what its programmer intends to have designed it to do. Automated reasoning programs can create the proofs of some statements, not simply check a proposed proof. Thus the proofs and theorems of any field of mathematics can be translated into proofs and theorems of logic. The details of the ideas mentioned above about computers, philosophy, and mathematics are explored in detail in other courses, and you aren't expected in this course to know much about computers, philosophy, or mathematics.