More narrowly, we consider the problems it would present to a human scale robot faced with the problems humans might be inclined to relegate to sufficiently intelligent robots. The physical world of a robot contains middle sized objects about which its sensory apparatus can obtain only partial information quite inadequate to fully determne the effects of its future actions. Its mental world includes its interactions with people and also meta-information about the information it has or can obtain. Our approach is based on what we call the common sense informatic situation . A formal theory in the physical sciences deals with a bounded informatic situation .
Scientists decide informally in advance what phenomena to take into account.
For example, much celestial mechanics is done within the Newtonian gravitational theory and does not take into account possible additional effects such as outgassing from a comet or electromagnetic forces exerted by the solar wind. If more phenomena are to be considered, a person must make a new theory. Most AI formalisms also work only in a bounded informatic situation. What phenomena to take into account is decided by a person before the formal theory is constructed. With such restrictions, much of the reasoning can be monotonic, but such systems cannot reach human level ability.