Smith received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Past publications have addressed questions in computational reflection, meta-level architecture, programming languages, and knowledge representation.
Over the last decade, his work has focused on fundamental issues in the foundations of epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics.
Smith served as principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in the 1980s.
Smith formerly held a Canada Research Chair in the Foundations of Information, and is cross-appointed as Professor in the departments of Philosophy and Computer Science and in the Program in Communication, Culture and Technology at University of Toronto at Mississauga.