Which term names the traditional approach to AI based on explicit symbolic manipulation and rule-based reasoning?

• A. Lack of Understanding
• B. Binary Search
• C. GOFAI
• D. Adversarial Search

Answer: (C)

GOFAI, short for Good Old-Fashioned AI, names the traditional approach to AI built on explicit symbolic manipulation and rule-based reasoning. It treats knowledge as symbols and uses formal rules, logic, and inference to manipulate those symbols to draw conclusions, plan actions, or solve problems. This approach underpins expert systems and other systems that encode domain knowledge and apply rules to derive new facts. It stands in contrast to methods that learn from data or patterns, as well as to specific algorithmic search techniques that aren’t tied to symbolic knowledge representation, such as general-purpose binary search or adversarial search used in games.