From in%@vtcs1 Sun Jan 4 01:26:34 1987 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 87 00:30:33 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #1 Status: RO AIList Digest Friday, 2 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 1 Today's Topics: Queries - AAAI-87 Workshop Program & Efficient Property Implementation & Uncertainty Talk & IBM Expert System & Large-Scale Test Suite Tools & Expert System Shells on Unix and PCDOS & Symbolics/VAX Database & Proof of Correctness, Hardware Grammar & Everyday Life Survey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Dec 86 10:55:21 EST From: katz@mitre-bedford.ARPA Subject: AAAI-87 Workshop Program The AAAI-87 Program Committee invites members to submit proposals for the Workshop Program--expected to be an important feature of this year's conference. Gathering in an informal setting, workshop participants will have the opportunity to meet and discuss issues with a selected focus. This format will provide for active exchange among researchers and practioners on topics of mutual interest. Members from all segments of the AI community are encouraged to submit proposals for review by the committee. To encourage interaction and a broad exchange of ideas, the workshops will be kept small. Attendance will be limited to active participants only. Workshop sessions will consist of individual presentations, and ample time will be allotted for general discussion. Please submit your workshop proposals to: Joseph Katz MITRE MS-D070 Burlington Road Bedford, Massachusetts 01730 or to, Katz@mitre-bedford.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 86 11:38:29 ist From: Ephraim Silverberg Reply-to: ephraim%techunix.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: Efficient Property Implementation I am looking for papers/projects concerning the implementation (on non-lisp machines, in particular) of dynamic properties (those properties that can be added/deleted/altered in objects as the functions: defprop, putprop, remprop and (get obj prop), do in Franz Lisp) in lisp and other languages. Please reply by e-mail. Ephraim Silverberg, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. BITNET : ephraim@techunix ARPANET : ephraim%techunix.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa CSNET : ephraim%techunix.bitnet@csnet-relay UUCP : {almost anywhere}!ucbvax!ephraim@techunix.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: 22 Dec 86 17:38 EST From: SHAFFER%SCOVCB.decnet@ge-crd.arpa Subject: Uncertainty Talk Greetings: We at GE get the AILIST very late. Every announced seminar or paper presentation has already taken place by the time we hear of it. One such seminar was a talk on UNCERTAINTY by CMU professor Peter Szolouits (sic). Does anyone know if I can get a transcript of his presentation, or at least a copy of the abstract and paper? I am working with rule-based systems and uncertainty comes up a great deal in system design. Thank you for your help. E. Shaffer, PO Box 8555, Phila, Pa 19101 ------------------------------ Date: 22 Dec 86 15:33:24 GMT From: j1o%psuvm.bitnet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject: IBM Expert System Has anyone out there got the IBM Expert System offering? If so, I'd like to know how the FCB's work, and how you can eliminate parts of the search tree. IBM's docs aren't perfectly clear. ------- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | -- Jim Owens (814)-898-6250 | | {akgua,allegra,ihnp4,cbosgd}!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!j1o | | j1o@psuvm (bitnet) | | j1o@psuerie(bitnet) | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | This space is blank when you are not looking at it. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: 23 Dec 86 23:12:50 GMT From: felix!jim@hplabs.hp.com (Jim Gilbert) Subject: Large Scale Test Suite Tools Wanted I would appreciate references to any public domain or commercial packages designed to facilitate the construction, operation, and maintenance of script-driven regression testing suites for large-scale software subsystems. We desire to systematically exercise complex collections of transaction processing, data base management, and records management software. We would like tools to enable us to construct suites of tests which were capable of running in unattended batch mode, and which produced reports of the differences observed between expected results and the results noted. Reports may be produced on the fly or by journaling responses and comparing them to expected responses later. The languages used to define test actions and expected responses should be appropriate and much more productive to use than typical high-level procedural languages, such as Pascal, FORTRAN, or C. In our particular application we will be exercising complexes of hardware and software configured in a LAN configuration. Out first specific application area is building regression tests for our ISO level 7 Application Services protocols. I would also appreciate any pointers to published research on this general topic. Thank you kindly. Jim Gilbert Senior Consulting Engineer FileNet Corporation 3530 Hyland Ave. Costa Mesa, CA 92626 (714) 966-2344 ...hplabs!felix!jim ------------------------------ Date: 24 Dec 86 01:29:27 GMT From: hplabs!felix!fritz!kumar@seismo.CSS.GOV (John Kumar) Subject: Expert System Shells on Unix and PCDOS I am looking for an expert system shell that will run both under Unix and PC-DOS. I need to be able to run it on the VAX with BSD 4.2 or DEC 8700 with Ultrix and IBM-AT with PC-DOS. I am currently working with INSIGHT2+ from Level Five Research. This "shell" runs on the IBM-AT and a VAX version running under VMS is forthcoming from them. Thanks for your input. In reply to my last request, except perhaps in the Defence Dept., no work has been done on expert systems for software diagnosis. Please reply to: John Kumar hplabs!felix!kumar Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 86 17:17:48 GMT From: sundc!hqda-ai!merlin@seismo.css.gov (David S. Hayes) Subject: Symbolics <--> Database The Army AI Center is working on distribution of new equipment to the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard. As you can imagine, we have enormous amounts of data to play with. (Know how many different places need rifles?) We have 12 Symbolics lisp machines, and a VAX-11/780. The Oracle database is running on the VAX. We would like to be able to access the database automatically, from inside an expert-system program, without user intervention. Does anyone have any software to do this? Has anyone ever tried it? What did you learn? We will be doing this ourselves, unless someone out in net.land has already got a solution they would be willing to share. If you know someone not on the net who could point us in the right direction, please pass on their name and phone number. Thanks, -- David S. Hayes, The Merlin of Avalon PhoneNet: (202) 694-6900 ARPA: merlin%hqda-ai@brl-smoke UUCP: ...!seismo!sundc!hqda-ai!merlin ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 86 16:57:00 EDT From: wallacerm@afwal-aaa Reply-to: Subject: Information on Proof of Correctness, Hardware Grammar I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M Date: 29-Dec-1986 04:31pm EST From: Richard M. Wallace WALLACERM Dept: AADE Tel No: 513-255-8654 (58654) TO: Remote Addressee ( _MAILER! ) Subject: Material and Information on Proof of Correctness Contacts Hello, [...] I am currently trying to find any work that has been done or is going on in the areas of Formal Verification, Proof of Correctness, and Functional Correcness for descriptive grammars in a LALR(1) form. My interest is focused on analysis of only the descriptive LALR(1) grammar -- which includes assertions and bounds -- without any annotation to the descriptive grammar. The particular LALR(1) descriptive grammar that I am using is the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) version 7.2. This grammar is descriptive, it must be translated to another language that can be compiled to executable form. VHDL is a structural/behavioral simulation language for digital circuits. This is an overly brief description of the language. I have run across a lot of material on uses of prologs and frame-based shells for structural circuit analysis, but have not seen any on text analysis for grammars like the VHDL. Any help would be appreciated. Richard Wallace AFWAL/AADE WPAFB, OH 45433 513-255-8654 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Dec 86 16:12 EST From: Philip E. Agre Reply-to: Survey@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Subject: Everyday life survey I need volunteers for an experiment. I've spent the last few years studying small details of everyday routine activity, hoping to use my observations to constrain theories of cognitive architecture. In doing so, I've found it useful to write down anecdotes of small episodes from ordinary activities like making breakfast and driving to work. This method has some amazing properties. Suppose you've been worrying over, say, deciding to perform two steps of an activity in a different order than you have in the past. Then over the next few days, on several occasions when such a thing occurs you will notice it. No need to deliberately look out for them (and presumably much better if you don't). Whenever this happens to me I write it down. Habitually writing these things down then makes you notice them a LOT more. This has to be experienced to be believed. I want to get a lot of people to do this and see what happens. To this end, I am going to describe two topics I've been interested in and present some example stories about them. Read these descriptions. Then when you spontaneously notice an example of them in your own activity, write a paragraph or two about it. Collect these stories and send them to Survey@MIT-AI (that's AI.AI.MIT.EDU in fancy notation). First topic: Small mistakes. Several psychologists have collected lists of what are often called "action slips", mistakes one makes in the course of ordinary activity. In reading these lists, I am always concerned at how remarkable they are: how interesting or funny or odd. So I'd like to collect examples of absolutely trivial mistakes of all types, ones that you quickly recovered from without swearing or pondering or breaking stride. (Doing so tends to make you think about whether there's a clear difference between a mistake and something you tried that simply didn't work out.) Example: I'd tipped my chair backward to lean against a shoulder-high shelf. I was drinking a cup of tea and reading a book. It was kind of a pain keeping the cup steady, so I went to put it down. Glancing about, I found noplace convenient to put it except the shelf. Since my shoulder was against the shelf, I saw the only way to put the cup on it was to extend my arm fully. So I did this. I didn't bother watching where the cup was going, instead I looked back at the book. I extended, raised, moved back, and lowered my arm, expecting to feel the cup landing on the shelf. After lowering my arm quite a lot this didn't happen, so I looked and saw the cup wasn't over the shelf. Watching this time, I did it again right. Example: I often take the subway to work. Normally, given a choice, I get on the train around the middle because the nearest exit from my station is near the middle of the platform. Except now they're rebuilding the station and they've closed that exit, as I discovered yesterday morning. Nonetheless, this morning I got on near the middle as usual. In fact, I got on more toward the front because there were free seats in the next car along. I left the station through the main exit. Second topic: Anticipatory actions in a cyclic activity. This happens an awful lot but for some reason there's no word for it. When you start an activity, you do it in the obvious straightforward order, but then you start rearranging and parallelizing the steps, seemingly automatically. Example: I had a stack of records propped up against a box and I was alphabetizing it according to the artist's name, forming another, sorted, stack propped up next to it. I would take a record from the top of the first stack with my left hand, find and hold open the right place for it in the second stack with my right hand, place the record in its space, let the stack close over it, and repeat the cycle. After a while I found I was doing something different: whereas before my eyes stayed on the new record until I had picked it up, now I would read the artist's name as soon as I was done with the last record. Then as I picked it up with my left hand, my eyes were already helping my right hand find the right place in the second stack. Example: I was trying to get a long C program to compile. I was working on a Sun and had divided the screen between two Unix shell windows so I wouldn't have to exit and reenter the editor to run the compiler. I'd run the compiler and it'd get errors, e.g., "syntax error near { on line 173", so I'd go back to the editor window. The only way I knew to get to line 173 was to go to the top of the buffer and go down 172 lines. This got to be a cycle, fixing errors and recompiling. After a while, I found that I would move the editor to the top line before the compiler had even starting generating error messages. (Finally one time the compiler completed without errors and half of me had to skid to a confused halt, but this detail is too amusing to be legal.) [Try vi command 173G to skip to line 173. And for examples of trivial little errors, you can't beat switching between vi and emacs. Don Norman and others have done extensive studies of such little errors, including the little errors that kill pilots. -- KIL] Rules. 1. The episodes you write about must happen to you, in the course of some solitary activity. They must happen after you read this note. You cannot be aware of having this note or any other AI-ish topic on your mind when they happen. You must have no memory of having remarked on that same thing before. 2. They must be utterly mundane. They cannot be markedly stereotypical, funny, disastrous, or otherwise interesting. They cannot have occasioned any confusion, amazement, or careful reasoning-through. 3. You must write them down on the same day they happen. Write them down accurately, being careful not to make them more clear-cut or to-the-point than they actually were, in plain unscientific English, the way you'd retell them as a story. 4. Though your descriptions naturally have to include any information necessary to understand what happened, they cannot include any speculations about "what was going on in your head" that weren't definitely part of your experience of the episode at the time. If you're unsure about some detail, say so. If this experiment works out well, we can keep doing it periodically. I suppose I'll write a paper about the experiments someday. Send any notes requesting a copy to Survey-Request@MIT-AI. Phil Agre ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Sun Jan 4 01:26:00 1987 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 87 00:30:39 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #2 Status: RO AIList Digest Friday, 2 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 2 Today's Topics: Review - Spang Robinson Report, December 1986, Philosophy - Connectionism & Consciousness, Seminar - The Qualitative Process Engine (BBN) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: WED, 10 oct 86 17:02:23 CDT From: leff%smu@csnet-relay Subject: Spang Robinson Report, December 1986 Volume 2 Number 12, December 1986 Summary of Spang Robinson Report AI at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporaiton (MCC) Summary of organization and some of the projects of MCC. In Douglas Lenat's attempt to encode "common sense" he will develop 20 megabytes of data, searchable by conventional technology, in 200 man-years. MCC is working on Proteus, a shell with specific truth-maintenance capabilities. __________________________________________________________________________ Maxell, a manufacturer of microcomputer disk products, is providing two software products free of charge in their boxes of disks. The first is a rule-based expert system that handles 400 rules, but which lacks math in the rules and confidence factors. The other is a free-form text searcher from Thunderstone called Logic-Line 1 with an integrated thesaurus. [Thunderstone advertised several products including this one in the March 1986 Byte among others. Logic-line1 was advertised as "a major breakthrough in sub-cognitive mathematics" which "distills the DNA/RNA like analog to any writer's thought processes." q. v. LEFF] __________________________________________________________________________ New products: Fuji Xerox - CSRL, a Battelle Memory Lab program running on the Xerox 1100 Fuji Xerox - a sytem for Smalltalk 80 Japan IBM - a Stock Portfolio Selection system for PC's Mitsubishi - intelligent Dialog System Mitsubishi - Meltran J/E English-Japanese translation system Toshiba - English-Japanese system Okidata - PENSEE, an English-Japanese system Toshiba - Image Processor System Sharp - Prolog interpreter/compiler for IX-5 and IX-7 __________________________________________________________________________ Other short notes Intelligent Technology Incorporated has been selling Carnegie's Knowledge Craft and Language Craft in Japan and the far east as well as training other companies people to be knowledge engineers. Nisshou Iwai, Marubeni and Nomura computers are investing in this company. ... AIR has been selling GCLISP for the PC 9801 and will be selling it for the 286 based computers. ECC sells it for FM16B. MuLISP is also popular in Japan. Japan Univac is selling CAI systems for nuclear power operators and for teaching people LISP. Nihon LAD is working on an application system called LPS (logic program synthesis) Computer Applications Corp is working on a software maintenance expert system and oen for estimating system size. There are one hundred fielded systems based on Teknowledge's products alone. Teknowlege had at least 300 more in advanced statges of development. MONY and Harvard Tax and Investment Planners are using Plan Power, a financial planning expert sytem to save 50 per cent time. Inference and American Cimflex will be developing AI based computer-integrated manufacturing products. Votan is developing voice recognition systems that can handle 100 decibel backgorund noises as found in manufacturing environments. CL publications has purchased AI Expert. Boole and Babbage are selling an expert system to work with their DASD RESPONSE Manager. __________________________________________________________________________ Review of Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence which is for the nonspecialist. It has historical information and info on the people who pioneered the field. ------------------------------ Date: 22 Dec 86 23:55:48 GMT From: ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Jamie Andrews) Subject: Re: Challenge to Connectionists In article <425@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes: >... meeting one or the other of the >following criteria will be necessary: > (i) Prove formally that not only is C not subject to perceptron-like > constraints, but that it does have the power to generate > mental capacity. > (ii) Demonstrate C's power to generate mental capacity empirically... Minsky and Papert's analysis of perceptrons was based on a very exact and restricted type of machine. It seems to me that the emphasis in the discussion about connectionism should be on proving that the connectionist approach cannot work (possibly *using* _Perceptrons_-like arguments), rather than that _Perceptrons_-like proofs *cannot* be applied to connectionism. I think both connectionists and anti-connectionists should be involved in this proof process, however. I wouldn't want the discussion to turn into yet another classic AI political battle. >To summarize, my challenge to connectionists is that they either >provide (1) formal proof or (ii) empirical evidence for their claims >about the present or future capacity of C to model human performance >or its underlying function. If you mean by this that we should not study connectionism until connectionists have done one of these things, then (as you point out) we might as well write off the rest of AI too. The main thing should be to try to learn as much from the connectionist model as possible, and to accept any proofs of uselessness if someone should come up with them. We can't expect to turn all connectionist researchers into Minskys in order to prove theorems about it that must needs be very complex. --Jamie. ...!seismo!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you're beautiful" This probably does not represent the views of the UBC Computer Science Department, or anyone else, for that matter. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 86 02:06:56 EST From: "Keith F. Lynch" Subject: Consciousness From: mcvax!ukc!rjf@seismo.CSS.GOV If someone had lived for several years with a supposed-person who turned out to be a robot, they would be severely shocked, when they discovered that fact, and would *not* say 'Well, you certainly had me fooled. I guess you robots must be conscious after all.' That is what *I* would say. What WOULD be sufficient evidence for consciousness? If only self experience is sufficient, does that mean you don't think the rest of us are conscious? What if YOU turned out to be a robot, much to your own surprise? Would you then doubt your own consciousness? Or would you then say "well, maybe robots ARE conscious, and humans AREN'T"? The problem is not just about what would deserve the attribution of consciousness, but about what we feel about making that attribution. Huh? Does reality depend on feelings? And such feelings go much deeper than mere prejudice. I think they go as deep as love and sex, and are equally valid and valuable. I often turn machines on, but they don't do the same for me - they're not good enough, because they're not folks. And never will be. What about aliens from another planet? They might give ample evidence that they are intelligent (books, starships, computers, robots, network discussion groups, etc) but might appear quite physically repulsive to a human being. Would you believe them to be conscious? Why or why not? ...Keith ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Dec 86 18:45:46 n From: DAVIS%EMBL.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: unlikely submission to the ai-list... *********rambling around conciousness******************************************* There appear to me to be utterly different, though related, meanings of the phrase `conciousness', especially when used in the ai-domain. The first refers to an individual's sense of its own `conciousness', whilst the second refers to that which we ascribe to other apparently sentient objects, mostly other humans. There tends to be an automatic assumption that the two are necessarily related, and in some guises, of course, this is connected with the problem of `other minds'. However, the distinction runs to the core of ai, particularly in connection with the infamous Turing test. I would like to illustrate that this is so, and point to at least one possible consequence for ai as a `nuts-and-bolts' discipline. Let us ignore (perhaps forever!) the origin of the internal sensation of conciousness, and concentrate upon our ascription of this capacity to other objects. This ascription is dependent upon our observation of some object's behaviour, and it could be argued, arises from our need to rationalize and order the world as percieved. The ascription rests conditonally upon an object exhibiting behaviour which is seen to either demand, or at least be commensurate with, our own feeling of `conciousness'. This in turn requires a whole subset of properties such as intentionality and intelligence. As we note from everyday life, most humans fulfill these demands - their behaviour appears purposeful, intelligent, self-concious etc.. However, turn now to an example which few would defend as being a case of a sentient being: the ubiquitous and often excellent chess machine. Despite our intellectual position being one of knowing that "this thing ain't nuthin' but a blob of silicon", the reactions to, and more importantly, strategies of play against such machines rarely fits what one might (naievly) expect in the case of a complicated circuit. Instead, the machine is (publicly, or privately) acknowledged to be `trying to win'. It is `smart'. It doesn't like to lose. It `fouls up' or comes up with a `brilliant move'. Of course, all this chat from computer chess players is meaningless - nobody *really* believes in the will of the machine. Yet, it is very instructive in the following sense: in order to formulate sensible strategies with a well designed machine, we ascribe it intentionality. (I owe this argument to Daniel Dennet) That is to say, we use the fact that the machine behaves *AS IF* it had intent, despite the fact that we know it has no such capacity. A similar, though more risky argument may be put forward for the reactions of owners to their pets. I say more risky since it is arguable as to the true status of sentience in dogs, cats etc.. This ascription of intentionality is not, I believe, a mistake, simply on the grounds that intentionality simply does not exist. It is an explanatory construct which creates an arbitrary class (`intentional objects'), but has no real existence in the world (either as an emergent or concrete property). What the ascription does is to provide a powerful way of dealing with the world - it lets us make successful predictions about well designed objects (such as human beings). We ccannot pretend that we really know anything about why the somewhat loosely defined object called John invited a similarly fluid Mary over for a meal, but we can make a lot of correct prior judgements if we ascribe John with an intent...... So, back to nuts-and-bolts ai. As technicians sit in their nuts-and-bolts laboratories, seeking the Josephson concurrent 5th generation hypercube that will stroll though the Turing test, and into your lounge, workplace and maybe even elsewhere, perhaps they should reflect upon their design strategy. The accolade of appearing as `almost human' is a function of the describer (aka: beauty is in the ......). Humans get special points because they are exceedingly well designed, and hence our ascriptions of intelligence, intentionality and conciousness do a very good job of helping us to understand and interact with other people (They also seem to work quite well with dogs.....).But this is ONLY because we do what do exceedingly well, and what we do covers a very wide range of activities. No computer that just tells the weather, just builds other computers, or even just chats through a Turing interface will ever be regarded as we regard other humans.Instead, they will get little more than the low level ascription of intentionality that chess machines demand in order to beat them. The assignment of conciousness, intelligence, and intentionality are all just higher points in this scale, however. To sum up - you can't build a 'concious' or an intelligent computer because `conciousness' and `intelligence' are conceptual categories of description, and not genuine properties. Current computers are not said to be `concious' because we are able to understand and predict their behaviour without invoking such a category. Build us a computer as bewildering as a certain leading US politician, and the maybe, just maybe, we may have to turn round and say "hell, this thing really has a mind of its own...". But then again... paul davis bitnet/earn/netnorth: davis@embl on the relay interchat: 'redcoat' (central european daytime) by mail: european molecular biology laboratory postfach 10.2209 meyerhofstrasse 1 6900 heidelberg west germany/bundesrepublic deutschland ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 86 05:20:44 EST From: "Steven A. Swernofsky" Subject: Seminar - The Qualitative Process Engine (BBN) Date: 25 Nov 1986 09:59-EST From: Brad Goodman BBN Laboratories Science Development Program AI/Education Seminar Speaker: Professor Kenneth D. Forbus Qualitative Reasoning Group University of Illinois (forbus@a.cs.uiuc.edu) Title: The Qualitative Process Engine Date: 10:30a.m., Monday, December 1st Location: 2nd floor large conference room, BBN Laboratories Inc., 10 Moulton St., Cambridge This talk describes how to use an assumption-based truth maintenance system (ATMS) to build efficient qualitative physics systems. In particular, I will describe the Qualitative Process Engine (QPE), a new implementation of Qualitative Process theory that is signficantly simpler and faster (by a factor of roughly 95) than the previous implementation. After a short review of Qualitative Process theory, several organizing abstractions for using an ATMS in problem solving will be identified. How these abstractions can be applied to algorithms for qualitative physics will then be described in detail. The performance of QPE is then compared with a previous implementation, and the advantages and drawbacks of ATMS technology will be discussed. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From LAWS@KL.SRI.COM Tue Dec 15 07:04:08 1987 Mail-From: LAWS created at 7-Jan-87 22:23:02 Date: Wed 7 Jan 1987 22:19-PST From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Us-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V5 #3 To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Resent-Date: Mon 14 Dec 87 22:44:04-PST Resent-From: Ken Laws Resent-To: isr@vtopus.CS.VT.EDU Resent-Message-Id: <12358590294.16.LAWS@KL.SRI.COM> Status: R AIList Digest Thursday, 8 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 3 Today's Topics: Queries - Prediction of Actions & Reasoning Under Uncertainty & AI in Space Applications & Educational Material on AI & Reviewers for New Review Journal in AI & Reviewers for Methodologies for Studying Human Knowledge ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 Jan 87 16:17 PST From: zilberg.pasa@Xerox.COM Subject: Query: goals based prediction I am looking for pointers to a. publications on intelligent prediction of a human object's actions basing on his goals b. an introdution literature on reasoning under uncertainty Anna Zilberg Zilberg.pasa@Xerox Xerox Artificial Intelligence Systems 250 North Halstead Street, MS 432, Pasadena, CA 91109 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 87 10:24:29 GMT From: Ann Macintosh Subject: AI in Space Applications Request for Information AI in Space Applications The AI Applications Institute at University of Edinburgh has recently been awarded a grant by the UK Science and Engineering Research Council to look at AI systems for a Technology Proving Satellite Study (T-SAT). The proposed work is to consider two areas of application of AI for a spacecraft: mission operation systems (MOS) and an on-board AI technology demonstrator (O-BAIT). One part of the study is a survey of previous and on-going research and development of AI techniques related to spacecraft (ground-based and on-board). We are now looking to complete our survey and in this context I would appreciate any information on current work in this area or surveys carried out. Those that contribute significantly to our study will receive a copy of the final report. Replies to: Ann Macintosh AIAI University of Edinburgh 80 South Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1HN UK uk mail:alm@uk.ac.edinburgh.aiva arpanet mail: alm%uk.ac.edinburgh.aiva@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Tue 6 Jan 87 13:26:35-EST From: John C. Akbari Subject: educational material on ai ever try explaining ai concepts to people who are good programmers and even know something about ai, but who are not real experienced in implementing ai? they've read the intro ai books & are ready for intermediate and advanced levels of ai wizardry. (have encountered this several times recently, & must confess that it's difficult, especially when you try to explain something you've haven't hacked a lot yourself.) so, the question is, how do you do it? in looking around, it seems that there is not a lot of material out there between the intro ai books that explain at high levels (& the intro lisp books that give tons of syntax) and the papers in _artificial intelligence_. on behalf of others who may have run into this also, i'm willing to collect suggestions. the best sort of thing is tutorial stuff like the second half of winston & horn's lisp book (incremental description of some of the ideas that go into developing a simplified version of something [rule-based expert system, atn, object-oriented system]) with enough code to play with that actually *works*. _inside computer understanding_ is also excellent. experimenting with the simple version seems to be very helpful in *incrementally* understanding how to design & debug a system. does anyone in net land have, or know of, other sources? has anyone done this sort of thing for a course, perhaps? pointers to tech reports, course notes, tutorials, books in progress, mini versions of master's or dissertation work, or especially well-documented sources for simple versions of systems that can be studied independently (in apprenticeship mode) are all great. public domain stuff is probably best, but licenses are ok, too. any dialect of lisp is ok, even prolog. topics of interest (all the usual ai stuff): expert systems (rule-based, object-oriented, etc.) atn's frame systems truth maintenance systems machine learning intelligent computer-assisted instruction ... so far: winston & horn. _lisp_ (2nd ed.). [part ii.] charniak, riesbeck, mcdermott. _artificial intelligence programming_. charniak & mcdermott. _intro to ai_. [sprinkled throughout] cullingford. _natural language processing: a knowledge engineering approach_. [lots of sources sprinkled throughout] keravnou & johnson. _competent expert systems: a case study in fault diagnosis_. [lots of sources at the end] touretzky. _advanced common lisp programming_. ijcai 86 tutorial. [higher stages of hacking karma] schank & riesbeck. _inside computer understanding_. [mini versions of several dissertations.] dekleer & forbus. _truth maintenance systems_. ijcai 86 tutorial. [tough going, no sources] will summarize to bboard. ad...THANKS...vance! john c akbari ARPANET & Internet akbari@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU BITnet akbari%CS.COLUMBIA.EDU@WISCVM.WISC.EDU uucp & usenet ...!seismo!columbia!cs!akbari DECnet akbari@cs PaperNet 380 riverside drive, no. 7d new york, new york 10025 SoundNet 212.662.2476 [The new AI Expert magazine seems to be what you want. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 6 JAN 87 16:21-CST From: SZTIPAJ%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: New Review Journal in AI To: The AI Community From: J. R. Bourne and J. Sztipanovits, Editors, CRC Critical Reviews in Artificial Intelligence Subject: Knowledge Acquisition for CRC-CRAI The CRC Press has recently announced the creation of a new journal entitled "CRC Critical Reviews in Artificial Intelligence" to be edited by J. Bourne and J. Sztipanovits of Vanderbilt University. The CRC-CRAI will seek to provide in-depth reviews of tightly constrained areas in the broad field of Artificial Intelligence. We plan to cover the breadth of the field and publish in the following format. Each volume will consist of 4 issues of roughly 100 pages in each issue. Each issue will contain either 2 or 3 articles. The number of volumes published each year will depend on the interest of the AI community. The topic areas in AI that we have initially selected for review include: Knowledge Acquisition Knowledge Representation Automated reasoning Learning Education/Cognitive Modelling Natural Language Intelligent Robotics Machine Vision AI Languages Applications The purpose of this memorandum is to solicit opinions and recommendations from the AI community concerning prospective authors who would be capable of writing and potentially willing to contribute excellent review articles in the above areas. We are seeking authors who can review, in depth, tightly constrained areas of research. At this time we are not accepting papers for review or inviting reviews; we are collecting a knowledge base about authors and topics. Once this phase of the work is complete we will begin to structure the initial volumes of the journal. If any of the above is of interest to anyone, and you have suggestions for us, please reply to: AIREVIEW@VUENGVAX.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 87 10:50:24 EST From: princeton!mind!harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV Subject: Methodologies for Studying Human Knowledge Subject: Anderson on algorithm/implementation: BBS Call for Commentators Keywords: cognitive science, instructional science, AI, connectionism Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University The following is the abstract of a forthcoming article on which BBS [Behavioral and Brain Sciences -- An international, interdisciplinary Journal of Open Peer Commentary, published by Cambridge University Press] invites self-nominations by potential commentators. (Please note that the editorial office must exercise selectivity among the nominations received so as to ensure a strong and balanced cross-specialty spectrum of eligible commentators. The procedure is explained after the abstract.) ----- METHODOLOGIES FOR STUDYING HUMAN KNOWLEDGE John R. Anderson Psychology Department Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh PA 15213 ABSTRACT The appropriate methodology for psychological research depends on whether one is studying algorithms or their implementation. Mental algorithms are abstract specifications of the steps taken by procedures that run in the mind. Implementational issues concern factors that determine the speed and reliability with which these procedures run. Issues at the algorithmic level can only be explored by studying across-task variation. This contrasts with psychology's dominant methodology of looking for within-task generalities, which is only appropriate for studying implementational issues. The implementation/algorithm distinction is related to a number of other "levels" proposed in cognitive science. Its realization in the ACT (Anderson 1973) theory of cognition is discussed. Research at the algorithmic level is more promising because it is hard to make further fundamental scientific progress at the implementational level with the methodologies available at this level. Protocol data, which are only appropriate for algorithm-level theories, provide a richer data source than data available at the implementational level. Research at the algorithmic level will also yield more insight into fundamental properties of human knowledge because the significant learning transitions are defined at this level. The best way to study the algorithmic level is by pedagogical experiments that manipulate instructional experience and look for differential learning outcomes. This is because they provide control and prediction in realistically complex learning situations. The intelligent tutoring paradigm provides a particularly fruitful way to implement such experiments. In addition to these major points, the implications of this analysis are developed for the issue of modularity of mind, the status of language, research on human-computer interaction, and connectionist models. ----- This is an experiment in using the Net to find eligible commentators for articles in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal of "open peer commentary," published by Cambridge University Press, with its editorial office in Princeton NJ. The journal publishes important and controversial interdisciplinary articles in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy. Articles are rigorously refereed and, if accepted, are circulated to a large number of potential commentators around the world in the various specialties on which the article impinges. Their 1000-word commentaries are then co-published with the target article as well as the author's response to each. The commentaries consist of analyses, elaborations, complementary and supplementary data and theory, criticisms and cross-specialty syntheses. Commentators are selected by the following means: (1) BBS maintains a computerized file of over 3000 BBS Associates; the size of this group is increased annually as authors, referees, commentators and nominees of current Associates become eligible to become Associates. Many commentators are selected from this list. (2) The BBS editorial office does informal as well as formal computerized literature searches on the topic of the target articles to find additional potential commentators from across specialties and around the world who are not yet BBS Associates. (3) The referees recommend potential commentators. (4) The author recommends potential commentators. We now propose to add the following source for selecting potential commentators: The abstract of the target article will be posted in the relevant newsgroups on the net. Eligible individuals who judge that they would have a relevant commentary to contribute should contact the editor at the e-mail address indicated at the bottom of this message, or should write by normal mail to: Stevan Harnad Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 Nassau Street, Room 240 Princeton NJ 08542 (phone: 609-921-7771) "Eligibility" usually means being an academically trained professional contributor to one of the disciplines mentioned earlier, or to related academic disciplines. The letter should indicate the candidate's general qualifications as well as their basis for wishing to serve as commentator for the particular target article in question. It is preferable also to enclose a Curriculum Vitae. (This self-nomination format may also be used by those who wish to become BBS Associates, but they must also specify a current Associate who knows their work and is prepared to nominate them; where no current Associate is known by the candidate, the editorial office will send the Vita to approporiate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate the candidate.) BBS has rapidly become a widely read read and highly influential forum in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. A recent recalculation of BBS's "impact factor" (ratio of citations to number of articles) in the American Psychologist [41(3) 1986] reports that already in its fifth year of publication (1982) BBS's impact factor had risen to become the highest of all psychology journals indexed as well as 3rd highest of all 1300 journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index and 50th of all 3900 journals indexed in the Science Citation index, which indexes all the scientific disciplines. Potential commentators should send their names, addresses, a description of their general qualifications and their basis for seeking to comment on this target article in particular to the address indicated earlier or to the following e-mail address: {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Thu Jan 8 09:27:19 1987 Date: Thu, 8 Jan 87 09:27:11 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #4 Status: R AIList Digest Thursday, 8 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 4 Today's Topics: Philosophy - Intentions & Mind Modeling & Response to Minsky on Mind(s) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Jan 87 19:51:22 EST From: "Keith F. Lynch" Subject: Intentions From: DAVIS%EMBL.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: unlikely submission to the ai-list... Of course, all this chat from computer chess players is meaningless - nobody *really* believes in the will of the machine. True. This ascription of intentionality [to people] is not, I believe, a mistake, simply on the grounds that intentionality simply does not exist. It is an explanatory construct which creates an arbitrary class (`intentional objects'), but has no real existence in the world ... One minor flaw. I know that *I* have intentions. So there is at least one thing in the world with intentions. Given that I intend things, I find it plausible that other humans do so as well. And given that human beings have intentions, I don't find it totally impossible that machines might ever have intentions. ...Keith ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 87 03:28:09 GMT From: sdcc6!calmasd!dbm@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (Brian Millar) Subject: mind modeling I believe Stevan Harnad when he says he has a mind. The alternative theory is that a mindless automaton is telling me. How well does that fit with the preponderance of data? Very poorly, considering that no AI program can yet generate the kind of complex & original testimony he exhibits (despite his being restricted to text displays). Therefore the rational, scientific model for me to hold is that he has a mind with subjective awareness just as I do. Point: Testimony about subjective experience is a valid type of data upon which reasonable scientific models of mind can be based. The highly regular data which has accumulated in the area of perception is almost entirely this type. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jan 87 11:53:03 EST From: princeton!mind!harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV Subject: Response to Minsky on Mind(s) On mod.ai, MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) wrote: > the phenomena we call consciousness are involved with our > short term memories. This explains why... it makes little sense to > attribute consciousness to rocks. I agree that rocks probably don't have short-term memories. But I don't see how having a short-term memory explains why we're conscious and rocks aren't. In particular, why are any of our short-term memories conscious, rather than all being unconscious? The extracts from Marvin Minsky's new book look as if they will be very insightful correlative accounts of the phenomenology of (i) subjective experience and (ii) the objective processes going on in machines that can be interpreted as analogous to (i) in various ways. What none of the extracts he has presented even hints at is (a) why interpreting any of these processes (and the performance they subserve) as conscious is warranted, and (b) why even our own processes and performance should be conscious, rather than completely unconscious. That (as I've regrettably had to keep recalling whenever it seems to be overlooked or side-stepped) is called the mind/body problem. Two constraints are useful in this sort of enterprise (just to keep the real problem in focus and to prevent one from going off into metaphor and hermeneutics): (1) Before tackling the 2nd-order (and in many respects much easier) problem of self-consciousness, it would be well to test whether one's proposal has made any inroads on the problem of consciousness simpliciter. To put it another way: Before claiming that one's account captures the phenomenology of being aware that you're experiencing (or have just felt), say, pain, one should show that one's account has captured experiencing pain in the first place. (That's the little detail that keeps slipping in the back door for free, as it does in attempts to build perpetual motion machines or trisect the angle...) (2) Before claiming with conviction that one has shown "why" a certain performance is accomplished by a process that is validly interpreted as a conscious one, one should indicate why the very same performance could not be accomplished by the very same process, perfectly UNconsciously (thereby rendering the conscious interpretation supererogatory). > although people usually assume that consciousness is knowing > what is happening in the minds, right at the > present time, consciousness never is really concerned with the > present, but with how we think about the records of our recent > thoughts... how thinking about our short term memories changes them! What does this have to do with, say, having a toothache now? Is there anything in the short-term memory scenario that says (1) how my immediate experience of the pain is a memory-function? (Note, I'm not saying that subjective experience doesn't always involve some pasting together of instants that, amongst others, probably requires memory. My question concerns how the memory hypothesis -- or any other -- accounts for the fact that what is going on there in real time is conscious rather than unconscious; how does it account for my EXPERIENCE of pain?) And once that's answered, the second question is (2) why couldn't all that have been accomplished completely unconsciously? (E.g., if the "function" of toothache is to warn me of tissue damage, to help me avoid it in future by learning from the past, etc., why can't all that be accomplished without bothering to have anything EXPERIENCE anything in the process?) [In my view, by the way, this old conundrum about thinking-perturbing-thinking is just another of the red herrings one inherits when one focuses first on the 2nd-order awareness problem, instead of the primary and much more profound 1st-order awareness problem. This may make for the entertaining reflections about self-reference and recursion in Doug Hofstadter's books or about the paradoxes of free will in Donald MacKay's perorations, but it just circles around the mind/body problem instead of confronting it head-on.] [Let me also add that there are good reasons why it is called the "mind/body" problem and not the "mindS/body" problem, as Marvin Minsky's tacit pluralizations would seem to imply. The phenomenological fact is that, at any instant, I (singular) have a toothache experience (singular). Having this (singular) conscious experience is what one calls having a (singular) mind. Now it may well be that one can INFER multiple processes underlying the capacity to have such singular experiences. But the processes are unconscious ones, not directly EXPERIENCED ones, hence they are not plural minds, properly speaking. The fact that these processes may be INTERPRETABLE as having local consciousnesses and intentions of their own is in fact yet another argument against thus overinterpreting them, rather than an argument for claiming we have more than one mind. Claims about minds must rest exclusively on the phenomenological facts, which are, without exception, singular. (This includes the putative problem cases of multiple personality and altered states. Our contents of our experiences can be varied, plural and bizarre in many ways, but it seems inescapable that at any instant a person can only be the conscious subject of one experience, not the subjects of many.)] > Our brains have various agencies that learn to > recognize - and even name - various patterns of external sensations. > Similarly, there must be other agencies that learn to recognize > events *inside* the brain - for example, the activities of the > agencies that manage memories. And those, I claim, are the bases > of the awarenesses we recognize as consciousness... I claim that to > understand what we call consciousness, we must understand the > activities of the agents that are engaged in using and changing our > most recent memories. You need an argument for (1) why any process you propose is correctly interpreted as the basis of 1st-order awareness of anything -- external or internal -- rather than just a mindless process, and (2) why the functions you describe it as accomplishing in the way it does need to be accomplished consciously at all, rather than mindlessly. > What do we mean by words like "sentience," "consciousness," or > "self-awareness? They all seem to refer to the sense of feeling one's > mind at work. When you say something like "I am conscious of what I'm > saying," your speaking agencies must use some records about the recent > activity of other agencies. But, what about all the other agents and > activities involved in causing everything you say and do? If you were > truly self-aware, why wouldn't you know those other things as well? What about just a tooth-ache now? I'm not feeling my mind at work, I'm feeling a pain. (I agree, of course, that there are many processes going on in my brain that are not conscious; the real burden is to show why ANY of them are conscious.) > When people ask, "Could a machine ever be conscious?" I'm often > tempted to ask back, "Could a person ever be conscious?" > ...we can design our new machines as we wish, and > provide them with better ways to keep and examine records of their > own activities - and this means that machines are potentially capable > of far more consciousness than we are. "More" conscious than we are? What does that mean? I understand what conscious "of" more means (more inputs, more sense modalities, more memory, more "internal-process" monitoring) -- but "more conscious"? [In its variant form, called the "other-minds" problem, by the way, the question about (other) machines' consciousnesses and (other) persons' consciousnesses are seen to be the same question. But that's no answer.] > To "notice" change requires the ability to resist it, in order > to sense what persists through time, but one can do this only > by being able to examine and compare descriptions from the recent past. Why should a process that allows a device to notice (respond to, encode, store) change, resist it, examine, compare, describe, remember, etc. be interpreted as (1) a conscious process, and (2) why couldn't it accomplish the exact same things unconsciously? I am not, by the way, a spokesman for the point of view advocated by Dreyfus or by Searle. In asking these pointed question I am trying to show that the mind/body problem is a red herring for cognitive science. I recommend methodological epiphenomenalism and performance modeling as (what I believe is) the correct research strategy. Instead of spending our time trying to build metaphorical perpetual motion machines, I believe we should try to build real machines that capture our total performance capacity (the Total Turing Test). ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Thu Jan 8 09:27:37 1987 Date: Thu, 8 Jan 87 09:27:29 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #5 Status: R AIList Digest Thursday, 8 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 5 Today's Topics: Humor - Proposed Workshops for AAAI-87, Seminars - Building Expert Systems in Loops (Denver IEEE) & Time Modeling with Intervals (SU), Conferences - Genetic Algorithms & Workshop on Blackboard Systems & Machine Learning Workshop ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 2 Jan 87 11:12 PST From: Shrager.pa@Xerox.COM Subject: Proposed workshops for AAAI-87 Pursuent (-suant? -suint?) to Joseph Katz' call for workshop proposals for AAAI-87, here are some suggestions: *A. Hype: Hype and fleecing technology is growing in importance, even as the field stagnates. This workshop will focus on virtual expert systems for trivial domains; simulated robotics; and machine learning. Attendance is limited to those who have contriubuted heavily to the popular press (e.g., AI Magazine), or previous AAAI meetings. Invited speakers: >>censored<<. *B. AI and Softwar Engineering: This workshop will explore applications of AI to wiping all living things off the face of the earth, and destroying most beautiful natural and man-made objects. Since there are so many relevant projects currently in progress, attendance will be strictly limited to those who are not and have never been members of the democratic party (no voter reg. cards required, we know who you are). A special talk will be given by John DOE of The Agency, entitled: "Automated Paranoia in the Pentagon's ''NutShell'' Programming Environment". *C. The Philosopher's Stone: Philosophy faculty will gather at this workshop to discuss investigations in the morals and methods of utilizing AI toward tenure and potential relevance. A special section will be given on introductory programming (probably Lisp or Basic) for those interested in gaining more understanding of the field. (This workshop will not overlap with the workshop on Softwar Engineering). *D. Problem Finding: The problem-solving community is running short of problems that are isomorphic to either the Tower of Hanoi, or the N-Queens puzzle. In this workshop proposals will be considered for problem domains that are probably intractible, but still irrelevant. The participants will also explore methods of going beyond renaming one's symbol set in moving to a new domain. (Proposed technical sessions urgently called for!) #E. Machine Vision: -- Cancelled due to difficulties in finding a room -- #6. Quantitative Physics: The successes and failures of qualitative physics in AI has led researchers to propose a "quantitative physics" as a finer approximation to reality. This meeting will focus on several special topics in this newly emerging field including discovery of some fascinating *quantitative* representations of the behavior of an object moving in a straight line in a perfect vacuum with no external forces, and a way of *quantitatively* figuring out how fast a car will come to a stop from a certain ideal (quantitative) velocity given certain ideal braking forces. Some recent results in quantitaive limit cases will also be given, as an extension to recently developed quantitative algebras. Invited speaker: Ceteris Paribus of the U. of Milan. #n. Humor: It is widely recognized that AI takes itself too $%~#ing seriously. The purpose of this workshop will be to formulate a policy toward a more laid-back field with enough maturity to laugh at itself a little. Attendees must submit a title and abstract in some pseudo-field. Previous examples have included: "A Black Magic Advisor", "Why the Editor has no Close", and a series of proposed AAAI-87 workshops. Invited speaker: Drew McDermott. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jan 87 23:20:05 GMT From: ihnp4!drutx!druxv!sandy@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (BishSL) Subject: Seminar - Building Expert Systems in Loops (Denver IEEE) The Denver Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society proudly presents: "Building Expert Systems in LOOPS" Andrew MacRae, of XEROX Corp., will speak on the Lisp Object Oriented Programming System, a software tool built at XEROX PARC for knowledge programming. This is a powerful tool that extends the power of the Interlisp-D programming environment & brings several programming methodologies to bear on any problem. Procedure, object, data & rule-oriented methods will be explored in this demonstration of LOOPS on the XEROX 1186 AI Workstation. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AN IEEE MEMBER TO ATTEND! Come one, come all. For more information, call 538-8157 or 934-3635. When: Tuesday, Jan 13, 6:30pm Where: AT&T Information Systems I-25 & 120th, Denver How to get there: North on I-25; exit west on 120th Avenue Take second left (south) on Pecos Street Take second drive (east) into large parking lot Enter through revolving doors Meet in the lobby before 6:30pm ------------------------------ Date: 07 Jan 87 1642 PST From: Vladimir Lifschitz Subject: Seminar - Time Modeling with Intervals (SU) Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar NEW RESULTS ON TIME MODELLING WITH INTERVALS Peter Ladkin Kestrel Institute (ladkin@kestrel.arpa) Thursday, January 15, 4pm Bldg. 160, Room 161K (NEW PLACE!) James Allen introduced a calculus for reasoning about time using intervals, instead of points. In this talk, we shall indicate two new results for time modelling using intervals, and indicate why they help overcome some of the objections to using an interval system for reasoning about time. Much of this work is joint with Roger Maddux. Briefly, we have shown that there is only one countable representation of the calculus, up to isomorphism, and that the system of time units introduced in [Ladkin AAAI-86] is isomorphic to this countable representation. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jan 87 13:00:07 est From: John Grefenstette Subject: Conference - Genetic Algorithms Call for Papers 2nd International Conference on Genetic Algorithms and Their Applications The 2nd International Conference on Genetic Algorithms and Their Applications, sponsored by AAAI and the U.S. Navy Center for Applied Research in AI (NCARAI), will be held on July 28-31, 1987 at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Authors are invited to submit papers on all aspects of Genetic Algo- rithms, including: foundations of genetic algorithms, machine learning using genetic algorithms, classifier sys- tems, apportionment of credit algorithms, relationships to other search and learning paradigms. Papers discussing specific applications (e.g., OR, engineering, science, etc.) are encouraged. Authors are requested to send three copies (hard copy only) of a full paper by April 1, 1987 to the program chair: Dr. John J. Grefenstette Navy Center for Applied Research in AI Code 5510 Naval Research Laboratory Washington, DC 20375-5000 gref@NRL-AIC.ARPA (202) 767-2685 For registration forms and information concerning local arrangements, contact: Mrs. Gayle M. Fitzgerald Conference Services Office Room 7-111 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 253-1703 Conference Committee: John H. Holland University of Michigan (Conference Chair) Lashon B. Booker Navy Center for Applied Research in AI Dave Davis Bolt Beranek and Newman Incorporated Kenneth A. De Jong George Mason University David E. Goldberg University of Alabama John J. Grefenstette Navy Center for Applied Research in AI Stephen F. Smith Carnegie-Mellon Robotics Institute Stewart W. Wilson Rowland Institute for Science ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Jan 87 17:11:33 pst From: Vasudevan Jagannathan Subject: Conference - Workshop on Blackboard Systems Call for Participation Workshop on Blackboard Systems: Implementation Issues In the past couple of years a wide variety of black- board systems have been built to address a wide variety of problems. The goal of this workshop is to study the design and implementation issues in blackboard systems and to understand the diversity which exists in such systems. Specific issues that will be focused on are: 1. Control Issues: What is the approach taken to control the problem solving and rationale for choice? 2. Organization Issues: What are the mechanisms available for organizing knowledge in such systems? If the system is distributed what are the communication issues that play a critical role in the development of the system. 3. Parallelism and Concurrency Issues: What scope is present in the system to exploit parallelism at the applica- tion level, at the system level? 4. Performance issues: What benchmarks are available for evaluating the performance, and what are the bottlenecks affecting performance? 5. Development Environment: Does the system provide any help in developing the actual application? To encourage vigorous interaction and exchange of ideas between those attending, the workshop will be limited to approximately 30 participants. The workshop is scheduled on July 13th, 1987, Monday, as a parallel activity during AAAI 1987, and will last for a day. All submitted papers will be refereed with respect to how well they identify and discuss the factors affecting the design and implementation of blackboard systems. Authors should discuss their design decisions (why a particular approach was selected); what worked, what did not and why; the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of their approach; and what they would recommend to others developing such systems. Preference will be given to those papers that discuss approaches that have been demonstrated in real applications. Submission Details: Five copies of an extended abstract, double spaced draft up to 4000 words, should be submitted to the workshop chairman before April 1, 1987. Acceptances will be mailed by May 1, 1987. Final copies of the extended abstract will be required by June 1, 1987 so that they may be informally bound together for distribution before the workshop. Workshop Chairman: V. Jagannathan, M/S 7L-64, The Boeing Advanced Technology Center, Boeing Computer Services, P.O. Box 24346, Seattle, WA 98124-0346. Telephone: (206)865-3240. E-mail:juggy@boeing.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Jan 87 10:58:29 -0800 From: Pat Langley Subject: Conference - Machine Learning Workshop Fourth International Workshop on Machine Learning Recently, machine learning has emerged as a central area of research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. In order to increase communication between researchers in this growing field, the Fourth International Workshop on Machine Learning will be held at the University of California, Irvine during June 22-25, 1987. In an attempt to maximize interaction at the workshop, attendance will be limited and participation will be through invitation only. If you are active in machine learning and if you are interested in receiving an invitation, we encourage you to submit a one-page summary of your recent work in the area. If you would like to present a paper at the meeting, include a title and extended abstract. You may supplement this information with recent papers on machine learning. Invitations will be based on an informal review of the research summaries by the organizing committee. Based on their abstracts, some attendees will be invited to speak at the workshop and to contribute a paper to the workshop proceedings. Each participant will receive a copy of the proceedings. The organizing committee consists of: J. G. Carbonell (C-MU), R. H. Granger (UCI), D. F. Kibler (UCI), P. Langley (UCI), T. M. Mitchell (C-MU), and R. S. Michalski (Illinois). The deadline for submission of research summaries is February 1, 1987. Please send summaries, along with abstracts and optional papers, to: Pat Langley, Program in Computation and Learning, Department of Information & Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92717 USA. Applicants will be informed of their status two weeks after submission. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Mon Jan 12 16:36:50 1987 Date: Mon, 12 Jan 87 16:36:44 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #6 Status: R AIList Digest Monday, 12 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 6 Today's Topics: Queries - AI and Software Engineering & Go, Newsletter - Expert Systems, Philosophy - Consciousness, Conferences - Coupling Symbolic and Numeric Computing & Unigroup AI Meeting & AI and Law ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rolf Pfeifer Subject: references on AI and software engineering I am looking for literature on AI and software engineering. Please reply to: pfeifer%ifi.unizh.chunet@csnet-relay.csnet Thank you. --Rolf Pfeifer ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jan 87 23:05 EST From: Troy Shinbrot <900380%UMDD.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU> Subject: Go Rumor has it that programs which play Go on personal computers have recently become available. Because Go is more complex than Chess, for example, and because of a long standing interest in Go, I would be greatly appreciative to anyone who can refer me to either the programs, their sources or literature concerning Go and the programming of a computer to play same. Thanks in advance. - Troy Shinbrot (aka. 900380@umdd.bitnet) ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jan 87 14:53:44 GMT From: Allan Black Subject: Newsletter on Expert Systems A newsletter on the application of expert systems to information science and information management has been launched by the Department of Information Science University of Strathclyde 26 Richmond Street Glasgow G1 1XH UK ALANET 1158 BT GOLD 79:GOW006 Further information from Forbes Gibb, #6.00 for 3 issues, #10.00 overseas ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Jan 87 18:30:09 n From: DAVIS%EMBL.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: Minksy's Mind(s) from: princeton!mind!harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV subject: response to Minsky on Mind(s). > The real burden is to show why ANY [mental processes] > of them are concious. I'm not convinced that this is quite the case. The problem, if one exists in the area of research/design strategy, is to show HOW any of them are concious. There is almost no doubt that toothache could be dealt with by an automaton - the fact that that it appears in at least one case (author listed above] to be conciously experienced must surely provoke both questions. However, the question of why conciousness has emerged is surely in the area of evolutionary biology (and to be sure workers like Armstrong have made some very interesting suggestions as to the reasons for concious- ness emerging). In the domain of AI, the only question that makes sense about conciousness is the most fundamental of all - how is it possible to know (aka:be aware of, be concious of) ANYTHING at all ? But in the meantime, I would re - echo the final sentiments expressed: just get on with building superb, rich and complicated machines - leave the installation of the 'conciousness chip' to good luck..... .....paul ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 87 09:44:44 PST From: Steven L. Speidel Subject: Discussion of "consciousness" I would say that if one is "conscious" of an event, then the features/schema of that event are available to his goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and vice-versa ). ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jan 87 01:36:30 GMT From: ssc-vax!bcsaic!tedk@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Ted Kitzmiller) Subject: Conference - Coupling Symbolic and Numeric Computing CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ---------------------- Workshop on Coupling Symbolic and Numeric Computing in Knowledge-based Systems The second workshop on coupling symbolic and numeric computing in knowledge-based systems will be held the 20-24 of July 1987 at the Boeing Advanced Technology Center, Bellevue, Washington. This workshop will be jointly sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and Boeing Computer Services (BCS). Many real-life problems encountered in science and industry require solution techniques that combine AI and conventional computation methods (coupled systems). Typically these problems have some major subproblems that are amenable to conventional techniques - such as numerical analysis, statistics, quantitative modeling - but others for which these techniques are not appropriate. This workshop will attempt to build upon last year's workshop and improve our understanding of the issues involved in developing coupled systems. During the workshop the methodology of designing and developing coupled systems will be explored by assessing alternative approaches. The primary goals of the workshop will be to establish criteria and guidelines for those involved in the design and implemention of coupled systems and to define the state-of-the-art and the future research needs in this area. To encourage a vigorous interaction and exchange of ideas between those attending, the workshop will be limited to approximately 35 participants. Ample time will be provided during the workshop for the presentation of technical papers and discussions of the material presented. Participation will be by invitation and will be based upon the referee of a submitted paper. Submittals are invited for consideration on the following topics: software and hardware architectures that facilitate the development and use of coupled systems (or those that don't), approaches to designing and developing coupled systems, deep reasoning involving quantitative models or numeric algorithms, representation of knowledge within coupled systems, generic coupled system languages/shells, and novel or state-of-the-art applications. All submitted papers will be refereed with respect to how well they identify and discuss the factors affecting the design and implementation of coupled systems. Authors should discuss their design decisions (why a particular approach or development environment was selected); what worked, what didn't and why; the advantages, disadvantages and limitations of their approach; and what they would recommend to others developing coupled systems. Preference will be given to those papers that discuss approaches that have been demonstrated in real applications. Four copies of a full-length paper (or extended abstract), double spaced draft up to 5000 words, should be submitted to the workshop chairman before 1 March 1987 (please notify the chairman by 30 January 1987 of your intent to submit). Acceptances will be mailed by 1 May 1987. Final papers will be required by 1 July 1987 so they may be bound together for distribution before or at the workshop. Potential attendees should also indicate their interest in chairing or participating in special discussion sessions. Workshop Chairman: C.T. Kitzmiller, MS: 7J-63, Boeing Advanced Technology Center, Boeing Computer Services, PO Box 24346, Seattle, Washington, 98124-0346. Telephone: (206) 865-3227. E-mail: tedk@boeing.com or bcsaic!tedk@uw-june.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jan 87 00:43:32 GMT From: mcnc!philabs!tg!len@seismo.css.gov (Len Schmirl) Subject: Presentation - Unigroup AI Meeting Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Wednesday, January 14, 1987 Shimmel Center for the Performing Arts Pace University, Park Row, New York, NY 6:00 - 7:00pm - Registration/Refreshments/Vendor Demos 7:00 - 9:30pm - Speakers and Vendor Presentaions Speaker: Karl M. Wiig - Director, AI Application Center Arthur D. Little, Inc. Vendors: The Carnegie Group, Pittsburgh, PA, will be displaying Knowledge Craft, a software environment for building expert systems, and Language Craft, a tool for producing a natural language front end for expert systems. Construction Software, Alameda, CA, will be displaying WProlog, a window and graphics oriented version of the Prolog language suitable for the development of AI applications. Inference, Los Angeles, CA, will be displaying ART, an applications development environment for the development of industrial grade expert systems. Intellicorp, Mountain View, CA, will be displaying KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment). KEE is designed to assist system developers in building knowledge based applications. Silogic, Los Angeles, CA, will be displaying their Knowledge WorkBench, which is designed to assist in the development of expert systems. Annual membership: $50.00 January 14 meeting only: $15.00 For further information, please contact: UNIGROUP of New York, Inc. GPO Box 1931 New York, NY 10116 uucp: {attunix, philabs, cubsvax}!pencom!unigroup UNIGROUP of New York, the New York Area UNIX Users Group, is an association of UNIX users dedicated to advancing their understanding of the UNIX system as well as the solutions it can provide. Through bimonthly meetings, newsletter, electronic bulletin board and other avenues of communication, our members interact and exchange valuable information and insight into the UNIX system. All individuals and corporations interested in the UNIX system are welcome to participate in the educational and social activities of UNIGROUP of New York. Please attend our next meeting and experience first hand how valuable the largest regional UNIX users group can be to you and your business. -- Len Schmirl uucp: philabs!tg!len Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc. attmail: tg!len 120 Wall Street New York, NY 10005 ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jan 87 14:30:33 EST From: MCCARTY@RED.RUTGERS.EDU Subject: Conference - AI and Law FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: First International Conference on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND LAW May 27-29, 1987 Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts, USA In recent years there has been an increased interest in the applications of artificial intelligence to law. Some of this interest is due to the potential practical applications: A number of researchers are developing legal expert systems, intended as an aid to lawyers and judges; other researchers are developing conceptual legal retrieval systems, intended as a complement to the existing full-text legal retrieval systems. But the problems in this field are very difficult. The natural language of the law is exceedingly complex, and it is grounded in the fundamental patterns of human common sense reasoning. Thus, many researchers have also adopted the law as an ideal problem domain in which to tackle some of the basic theoretical issues in AI: the representation of common sense concepts; the process of reasoning with concrete examples; the construction and use of analogies; etc. There is reason to believe that a thorough interdisciplinary approach to these problems will have significance for both fields, with both practical and theoretical benefits. The purpose of this First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law is to stimulate further collaboration between AI researchers and lawyers, and to provide a forum for the latest research results in the field. The conference is sponsored by the Center for Law and Computer Science at Northeastern University. The General Chair is: Carole D. Hafner, College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston MA 02115, USA; (617) 437-5116 or (617) 437-2462; hafner.northeastern@csnet-relay. Authors are invited to contribute papers on the following topics: - Legal Expert Systems - Conceptual Legal Retrieval Systems - Automatic Processing of Natural Legal Texts - Computational Models of Legal Reasoning In addition, papers on the relevant theoretical issues in AI are also invited, if the relationship to the law can be clearly demonstrated. It is important that authors identify the original contributions presented in their papers, and that they include a comparison with previous work. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee (listed below), and judged as to its originality, quality and significance. Authors should submit six (6) copies of an Extended Abstract (6 to 8 pages) by January 15, 1987, to the Program Chair: L. Thorne McCarty, Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ 08903, USA; (201) 932-2657; mccarty@rutgers.arpa. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent out by March 1, 1987. Final camera-ready copy of the complete paper (up to 15 pages) will be due by April 15, 1987. Conference Chair: Carole D. Hafner Northeastern University Program Chair: L. Thorne McCarty Rutgers University Program Committee: Donald H. Berman Northeastern University Michael G. Dyer UCLA Edwina L. Rissland University of Massachusetts Marek J. Sergot Imperial College, London Donald A. Waterman The RAND Corporation ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Mon Jan 19 18:19:54 1987 Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 18:19:41 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #7 Status: R AIList Digest Monday, 19 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 7 Today's Topics: Queries - Character Recognition & Lisp Machine Window Systems & Scheme & TOOLKIT, Games - Go, Sources - Postings from AI EXPERT Magazine, Magazine - Canadian Artificial Intelligence, Report - Learning to Predict ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 13 Jan 87 13:30:41 GMT From: lerouf.dec.com!denis@decwrl.dec.com (MICHEL DENIS, @KALAMAZOO@VBO) Subject: Character recognition. About CHARACTER RECOGNITION : Has anybody a list of books and publications related to character/words recognition and its algorithms ? Also especially any piece of software which implements some of those techniques would be useful for a start ! Thanks in advance and regards, Michel. ps: please mail me on : (DEC E-NET) LEROUF::DENIS (UUCP) ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-lerouf!denis (ARPA) denis%lerouf.DEC@decwrl.ARPA [For a starter, try Srihari's IEEE tutorial on Computer Text Recognition and Error Correction. The annual conferences on Pattern Recogniton are good, and there are always some papers on character recognition in the annual conferences on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (formerly Pattern Recognition and Image Processing). -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 87 09:58:16 PST From: TAYLOR%PLU@ames-io.ARPA Subject: Request for Info on Lisp Machine Window Systems We have been developing a user interface for a planning/scheduling application on the Symbolics, using Version 6.1 windows and flavors. For future long term development of the user interface, we are considering a possible change of the window system, before converting to Genera 7.0 Dynamic windows and Presentation types. We have heard mention of XWINDOWS and are interested in knowing about it and other "generic" window systems and the trade-offs between specialized features and portability. Issues we are looking at: o will window system be compatible with a future Common lisp window standard o will window system be portable between lisp machines and AI work stations, e.g. Symbolics, TI, LMI, Xerox, Sun, .. o how much conversion will be required to go from current implementation, now running under Genera 7.0, to a new window system o what are advantages/disadvantages of potential window systems as far as ease of implementation, facilities available to present information to user, use of object oriented techniques, etc o availability of potential window systems on the Symbolics Opinions and recommendations are solicited from Lisp machine users as to their experience and preferences. Please respond by e-mail. I will summarize for this bboard if requested and sufficient responses are received. Thanks - Will Will Taylor - Sterling Software, MS 244-7, NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 arpanet: taylor%plu@ames-io.ARPA uusenet: ..!ames!pluto.decnet!taylor phone : (415)694-6525 ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jan 87 19:42:44 GMT From: crawford@husc4.harvard.edu (alexander crawford) Subject: Re: IEEE Computer Society Meeting on AI Workstation (in Denver) In article <729@druxv.UUCP> sandy@druxv.UUCP (BishSL) talks about getting a copy of text on the SCHEME language. Does anyone know if this is available on PC's yet? ---Alec Crawford ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 87 12:55 EST From: Hoebel@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: TOOLKIT Anyone who has used Richard Cullingford's TOOLKIT and would like to share experiences/knowledge with our natural language group at Rome Air Development Center, please contact Walter at RADC-TOPS20 or Hoebel at RADC-MULTICS. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jan 87 From: vnend@ukecc.uky.csnet (D. W. James) Reply-to: vnend@ukecc.UUCP (D. W. James) Subject: Re: Go Forwarded by: "Edward C. Bennett" In article <8701120553.AA08679@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> 900380@UMDD.BITNET (Troy Shinbrot) writes: >Rumor has it that programs which play Go on personal computers have recently >become available. >- Troy Shinbrot (aka. 900380@umdd.bitnet) The one encounter that I have had with a GO program was very disappointing. The program is titled simply "Go" and is from Hayden Software (Sargon III, among others). I am not an experianced player, less than 50 games vs human opponents and a little reading, and I had no problem beating it even with a 9 stone handicap. Later y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. UUCP:cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!vnend; or vnend@engr.uky.csnet; or cn0001dj@ukcc.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: 14 Jan 87 23:30:08 GMT From: imagen!turner@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (D'arc Angel) Subject: source postings from AI EXPERT magazine The following was posted to mod.sources, but that group seems to be somewhat back logged. I have the following sources from AI EXPERT magazine and will post them if there is enough interest, my intention is to do this on a monthly basis and i need feedback as to: a) is this desired b) should i just post the index and post the sources (in arc format) only if there is interest c) should i post the sources every month and assume there is enough interest to justify the network traffic and now for this month's list of software, for now send me email if you want the sources and if i get enough requests i will post the whole arc file. =======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+=======+===== Articles and Departments that have Additional On-Line Files AI EXPERT January 1987 (Note: Contents page is in file CONTNT.JAN) ARTICLES RELEVANT FILES January Table of Contents CONTNT.JAN Adding Rete Net to Your OPS5 Toolbox OPSNET.JAN by Dan Neiman Perceptrons & Neural Nets PERCEP.JAN by Peter Reece DEPARTMENTS Expert's Toolbox EXPERT.JAN "Using Smalltalk to Implement Frames" by Marc Rettig AI Apprentice AIAPP.JAN "Creating Expert Systems from Examples" by Beverly and Bill Thompson C'est la vie, C'est la guerre, C'est la pomme de terre Mail: Imagen Corp. 2650 San Tomas Expressway Santa Clara, CA 95052-8101 UUCP: ...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!imagen!turner AT&T: (408) 986-9400 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 17:56:49 est From: Graeme Hirst Subject: /Canadian Artificial Intelligence/ magazine The January 1987 issue of /Canadian Artificial Intelligence/ has just been mailed, and all members of CSCSI/SCEIO should be receiving it soon (Canada Post willing). /Canadian A.I./ is a quarterly magazine sent to all members of CSCSI/SCEIO, the Canadian artificial intelligence society. The society, founded in 1973, has over 1000 members, and sponsors the bienniel Canadian A.I. conference as well as the magazine. (The next conference is in Edmonton, May 1988.) If you aren't a member and would like to be (and everyone working in A.I. in Canada should be!), then send $25* (students $15*) to: CSCSI/SCEIO, c/o CIPS 243 College Street, 5th floor Toronto, Ont CANADA M5T 2Y1 Ask for your membership to start with the January 1987 issue. No, you don't have to be a Canadian to be a member. Anyone who wants to know what's going on in A.I. in Canada is welcome! *Prices are in Canadian dollars; U.S. funds accepted at current exchange rates: full membership, US$18.50; student membership US$11.25. Graeme Hirst Senior Editor ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 87 17:24:25 EST From: Rich Sutton Subject: TR Abstract -- Learning to Predict ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LEARNING TO PREDICT BY THE METHODS OF TEMPORAL DIFFERENCES Richard S. Sutton GTE Labs Waltham, MA 02254 Rich@GTE-Labs.CSNet This technical report introduces and provides the first formal results in the theory of TEMPORAL-DIFFERENCE METHODS, a class of statistical learning procedures specialized for prediction---that is, for using past experience with an incompletely known system to predict its future behavior. Whereas in conventional prediction-learning methods the error term is the difference between predicted and actual outcomes, in temporal-difference methods it is the difference between temporally successive predictions. Although temporal-difference methods have been used in Samuel's checker-player, Holland's Bucket Brigade, and the author's Adaptive Heuristic Critic, they have remained poorly understood. Here we prove the convergence and optimality of temporal-difference methods for special cases, and relate them to supervised-learning procedures. For most real-world prediction problems, temporal-difference methods require less memory and peak computation than conventional methods AND produce more accurate predictions. It is argued that most problems to which supervised learning is currently applied are really prediction problems of the sort to which temporal-difference methods can be applied to advantage. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- p.s. Those who have previously requested a paper on "bootstrap learning" are already on my mailing list and should receive the paper sometime next week. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Mon Jan 19 18:20:25 1987 Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 18:19:56 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #8 Status: R AIList Digest Monday, 19 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: Seminars - General Logic (SRI) & Using Fast and Slow Weights (UCB) & An Implementation of Adaptive Search (SRI) & The Semantics of Clocks (CSLI) & Intelligent Database Systems (SRI) & Formal Theories of Action (SU) & Mid-Atlantic Math Logic Seminar (UPenn), Conference - Directions & Implications of Advanced Computing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 14 Jan 87 11:26:56-PST From: Jose Meseguer Subject: Seminar - General Logic (SRI) GENERAL LOGIC by Prof. Gordon Plotkin C.S. Dept. Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland WHEN: Thursday Jan. 15, at 1:30 pm WHERE: SRI, Room AA298 A wide variety of logics have been proposed for use in Computer Science , such as first-order , higher-order , type theories , temporal and modal logics , dynamic logic etc etc . One would like to write proof-checkers and (semi-) automatic theorem provers for them , but implementing any one is a major undertaking and it is very hard to vary the logic once work is underway . We propose a general syntactic theory of logic building on work of Martin-Lof and employing a lambda calculus of dependent types.It enables one to use a signature to enter the syntax and rules , in natural deuction style. It seems likely to allow the efficient production of basic proof checkers from the signature and to provide the user the tools to write theorem provers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 87 10:35:57 PST From: admin%cogsci.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu (Cognitive Science Program) Subject: Seminar - Using Fast and Slow Weights (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM SPRING - 1987 Cognitive Science Seminar - IDS 237B Tuesday, January 27, 11:00 - 12:30 2515 Tolman Hall Discussion: 12:30 - 1:30 2515 Tolman Hall ``Using fast weights to deblur old memories and assimilate new ones." Geoff Hinton Computer Science Carnegie Mellon Connectionist models usually have a single weight on each connection. Some interesting new properties emerge if each connection has two weights -- a slow, plastic weight which stores long-term knowledge and a fast, elastic weight which stores temporary knowledge and spontaneously decays towards zero. Suppose that a network learns a set of associations, and then subsequently learns more associations. Associations in the first set will be- come "blurred", but it is possible to deblur all the associations in the first set by rehearsing on just a few of them. The rehearsal allows the fast weights to take on values that cancel out the changes in the slow weights caused by the subsequent learning. Fast weights can also be used to minimize interference by minim- izing the changes to the slow weights that are required to as- similate new knowledge. The fast weights search for the smallest change in the slow weights that is capable of incorporating the new knowledge. This is equivalent to searching for analogies that allow the new knowledge to be represented as a minor varia- tion of the old knowledge. --------------------------------------------------------------- UPCOMING TALKS Feb 10: Anne Treisman, Psychology Department, UC Berkeley. --------------------------------------------------------------- ELSEWHERE ON CAMPUS Geoff Hinton will speak at the SESAME Colloquium on Monday Jan. 26, in Tolman 2515 from 4-6. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 87 16:56:24 PST From: lansky@sri-venice.ARPA (Amy Lansky) Subject: Seminar - An Implementation of Adaptive Search (SRI) AN IMPLEMENTATION OF ADAPTIVE SEARCH Takashi Sakuragawa (TAKASHI@IBM.COM) IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and Kyoto University 3:00 PM, FRIDAY, January 16 SRI International, Building E, Room EK242 The Adaptive Optimizer is a program that optimizes Prolog programs by reordering clauses. It is an implementation of Natarajan's adaptive search algorithm that reorders the subproblems of a disjunctive problem and minimizes the expected search effort. This talk will describe implementation details as well as how the efficiency of an example tree search program is improved. In this particular example, the execution speed of the optimized program is more than 200 times faster than the original one. The speed improvement observed is for an artificial example and is not necessarily representative of what might be obtained from real applications. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 14 Jan 87 17:45:10-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - The Semantics of Clocks (CSLI) The Semantics of Clocks Brian Smith January 22 Clocks participate in their subject matter. Temporal by nature, they also represent time. And yet, like other representational systems, clocks have been hard to build, and can be wrong. For these and other reasons clocks are a good foil with which to explore issues in AI and cognitive science about computation, mind, and the relation between semantics and mechanism. An analysis will be presented of clock face content and the function of clockworks, and of various notions of chronological correctness. The results are intended to illustrate a more general challenge to the formality of inference, to widen our conception of computation, and to clarify the conditions governing representational systems in general. Please note that this Thursday's Seminar will be in the Ventura Trailer Classroom, not in Redwood G-19. Future Thursday Seminars will also meet in the Ventura Trailer Classroom until a better room can be found. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 16 Jan 87 17:10:18-PST From: Amy Lansky Subject: Seminar - Intelligent Database Systems (SRI) INTELLIGENT DATABASE SYSTEMS Matthew Morgenstern (MORGENSTERN@SRI-CSL) SRI International 11:00 AM, THURSDAY, January 22 SRI International, Building E, Room EK242 The goal is to create databases which are more intelligent about the application they serve and more active as part of an overall system. Our approach builds upon expert systems and other A.I. techniques to develop capabilities for: (1) knowledge-based support for managing data, (2) integrity and fault tolerance of the database, (3) interactive formation and evaluation of what-if scenarios (plans), and (4) offloading data-oriented activities and requirements from application programs -- thus aiding the software development process by providing a higher level interface to the database. We also are interested in (5) the relationship between inference and DB security -- that is, detecting potential violations of security in a multi-level database due to inference of high level data from visible lower level data; and (6) support for heterogeneous distributed databases. These capabilities require that the database be augmented with knowledge of the application. We utilize constraints to describe the structure, behavior, and requirements (semantics) of the application. Collections of rules are associated with these constraints and automatically invoked in response to database activity to enforce the application requirements. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jan 87 2119 PST From: Vladimir Lifschitz Subject: Seminar - Formal Theories of Action (SU) Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Seminar FORMAL THEORIES OF ACTION Vladimir Lifschitz Thursday, January 22, 4pm Bldg. 160, Room 161K We apply circumscription to formalizing reasoning about the effects of actions in the framework of situation calculus. An axiomatic description of causal connections between actions and changes allows us to solve the qualification problem and the frame problem using only simple forms of circumscription. In this talk the method is illustrated by constructing a circumscriptive theory of the blocks world in which blocks can be moved and painted. We show that the theory allows us to compute the result of the execution of any sequential plan. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Jan 87 19:04:25 EST From: dale@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Dale Miller) Subject: Seminar - Mid-Atlantic Math Logic Seminar (UPenn) MID-ATLANTIC MATHEMATICAL LOGIC SEMINAR PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY 21-22, 1987 This meeting will be held at the University of Pennsylvania, Alumni Room, Towne Building. Please use ground level entrance on the west side just off Smith Walk, between 33rd and 34th Streets, south of Walnut Street. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 12 noon Coffee and snacks 1:00 - 2:00 Dana S. Scott, Carnegie-Mellon University HOW DESIRABLE IS THE REALIZABILITY UNIVERSE? 2:10 - 3:10 Albert R. Meyer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology FIXED POINT AND LOOPING COMBINATORS IN POLYMORPHIC LAMBDA CALCULUS 3:40 - 4:40 Peter J. Freyd, University of Pennsylvania CATEGORIES AND POLYMORPHIC LAMBDA CALCULUS 4:50 - 5:50 John C. Mitchell, A.T.&T. Bell Laboratories KRIPKE STRUCTURES AND TYPED LAMBDA CALCULUS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22 8:30 Coffee and doughnuts 9:00 - 10:00 Speaker T.B.A., Cornell University RECURSIVE TYPES IN THE NUPRL PROOF DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM 10:10 - 11:10 Garrel Pottinger, Odyssey Research Associates, Inc. STRONG NORMALIZATION FOR TERMS OF THE COQUAND-HUET THEORY OF CONSTRUCTIONS 11:25 - 12:25 Gaisi Takeuti, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign BOUNDED ARITHMETIC AND A WEAK CONSISTENCY 12:35 - 1:35 Scott Weinstein, University of Pennsylvania SOME RECENT RESULTS IN THE THEORY OF MACHINE INDUCTIVE INFERENCE ACCOMMODATIONS A block of 10 rooms has been set aside at the Sheraton Inn University City, Chestnut and 36th Streets (215/387-8000) for the participants of the "Logic Meeting", Saturday night, February 21. The price per room is $64 if you make your reservation by February 7. Private accommodations will be available for up to 10 people with sleeping bags. Please call at least 3 days in advance 215/898-8475 or 215/545-5443. Andre Scedrov ARPANET: Andre@cis.upenn.edu ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jan 87 20:56:26 GMT From: jade!iris.berkeley.edu!michael@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Slone [(415)486-5954]) Subject: Conference - Directions & Implications of Advanced Computing DIRECTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF ADVANCED COMPUTING Seattle, Washington July 12, 1987 The adoption of current computing technology, and of technologies that seem likely to emerge in the near future, will have a significant impact on the military, on financial affairs, on privacy and civil liberty, on the medical and educational professions, and on commerce and business. The aim of the symposium is to consider these influences in a social and political context as well as a technical one. The social implications of current computing technology, particularly in artificial intelligence, are such that attempts to separate science and policy are unrealistic. We therefore solicit papers that directly address the wide range of ethical and moral questions that lie at the junction of science and policy. Within this broad context, we request papers that address the following particular topics. The scope of the topics includes, but is not limited to, the sub-topics listed. RESEARCH FUNDING: Sources; Effects; Funding alternatives. DEFENSE APPLICATIONS: Machine autonomy and the conduct of war; Practical limits on the automation of war; Can an automated defense system make war obsolete? COMPUTING IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY: Community access; Computerized voting; Civil liberties; Computing and the future of work; Risks of the new technology COMPUTERS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST: Computing access for handicapped people; Resource modeling; Arbitration and conflict resolution; Educational, medical and legal software Submissions will be read by members of the program committee, with the assistance of outside referees. Tentative program committee includes Andrew Black (U.Wa), Alan Borning (U.Wa), Jonathan Jacky (U.Wa), Nancy Leveson (UCI), Abbe Mowshowitz (CCNY), Herb Simon (CMU) and Terry Winograd (Stanford). Complete papers, not exceeding 6000 words, should include an abstract, and a heading indicating to which topic it relates. Papers related to AI and/or in-progress work will be favored. Submissions will be judged on clarity, insight, significance, and originality. Papers (3 copies) are due by April 1. Notices of acceptance or rejection will by mailed by May 1. Camera ready copy will by due by June 1. Proceedings will be distributed at the Symposium, and will be on sale during the 1987 AAAI conference. For further information contact Jonathan Jacky (206-548-4117) or Doug Schuler (206-783-0145). Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, P.O. Box 85481, Seattle, WA 98105. michael@ucbiris.berkeley.edu michael%ucbiris@berkeley.arpa {bellcore|cbosgd|decvax|hplabs|ihnp4| \ nbires|sdcsvax|tektronix|ulysses}!ucbvax!ucbiris!michael "If there's going to be a bloodbath, let's get it over with." --Reagan ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From in%@vtcs1 Tue Jan 20 08:24:47 1987 Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 08:24:41 est From: vtcs1::in% To: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Subject: AIList Digest V5 #9 Status: R AIList Digest Tuesday, 20 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 9 Today's Topics: Queries - Math and Learning Programming & Proposals to Host IJCAI-91 Outside of North America, Humor - Clock Seminar, Philosophy - Minds & Inten(s/t)ion, Introspection ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Jan 87 13:29:06 GMT From: atux01!jlc@rutgers.rutgers.edu (J. Collymore) Subject: Math & Learning Programming: Cognitive Aspects I am posting this query for a friend of mine who does not have access to the net. Any of you who can provide help, please send e-mail to me and I will have it forwarded. Thank you. Jim Collymore ================================================================================ In computer science, mathematical expressions are used to describe events or objects. One of the difficulties that novice programmers may have in learning programming logic is that they do not understand that mathematical expressions model real situations or, if they do understand that then they don't understand how to go about setting up such an expression correctly for their application. I'm wondering if anyone out there in CRTville has references to how people come to understand these relationships between mathematical expressions and reality. Thanks. Jonthan Levine ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 14:13:35 est From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS TO HOST IJCAI-91 OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA PROPOSALS FOR SITES FOR IJCAI-91 SOLICITED The site for IJCAI-91 will be selected at the IJCAI-87 in Milan this coming summer (23-28 August). Because of the size of the conferences, it is now necessary to plan four years in advance. The selection process has become more complicated for the same reason. As a result, it will be necessary for countries that would like to host IJCAI-91 to submit detailed proposals describing their plans for the meeting and to prepare thorough budget estimates in advance. It will be necessary for an officially recognized AI organization in the country selected to sign an agreement with IJCAII that establishes a formal commitment to hold the conference and that defines mutual responsibilities. IJCAI conferences are organized every two years, usually in August, and they alternate between North America and other parts of the world. Since IJCAI-89 will be held in Detroit, Michigan, USA, IJCAI-91 will be held outside of North America. Proposals will be evaluated in relation to a number of site selection criteria: 1. National, regional, and local AI community support. 2. National, regional, and local government and industry support. 3. Accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability of proposed site. 4. Appropriateness of proposed dates. 5. Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for anticipated number of registrants (currently 7500-10000 for North America; 2000-3000 or more elsewhere, depending on the location). 6. Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in a range of price categories. 7. Adequacy of budget projections. Prospective hosts should request a detailed list of site information required and a set of budget categories as soon as possible. Initial draft proposals should be submitted by 15 April 1987; final proposals must be distributed to the Executive Committee by 15 July 1987. Direct requests for proposal information to the IJCAII Secretary-Treasurer: Dr. Donald E. Walker (IJCAII) Bell Communications Research 435 South Street, MRE 2A379 Morristown, NJ 07960-1961, USA +1 201 829-4312 telex: 275209 BELL UR arpanet: walker@flash.bellcore.com usenet: {ucbvax, ihnp4, mcvax, or ... }!bellcore!walker ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jan 87 12:46:55 pst From: laurieed%lapis.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Laurie Edwards) Subject: Re: AIList Digest V5 #8 I found it amusing that Brian Smith's talk on the Semantics of Clocks was posted without a time being mentioned! More seriously, it is an intriguing topic - I remember a seminar given by Gregory Bateson in 1974 in which the intial assignment was to say what a clock is ... [I believe the omission of the seminar time was my fault. The event had already taken place, though. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1987 01:55 EST From: MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: AIList Digest V5 #4 I don't believe that the phenomenon of "first order cosciousness" exists, that Harnad talks about. The part of the mind that speaks is not experiencing the toothache, but is reacting to signals that were sent some small time ago from other parts of the brain. I think Harnad's phenomenology is too simple-minded to take seriously. If he has ever had a toothache, he will remember that one is not conscious of it all the time, even if it is very painful; one become aware of it in episodes of various lengths. I suppose he'll argue that he remains unconsciously conscious of it. I don't want to carry on, only to ask him to review his insistence that ANTHING can happen instantaneously - no matter how convincing the illusion is, for example that you are seeing what is happening before your eyes, now, rather than something that happened d/c seconds ago, or that signals travel from one part of the brain/mind to another faster than light. As for that "mind/body problem" I repeat my slogan, "Minds are simply what brains do." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Jan 87 09:00 MST From: Mandel%pco@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark A. Mandel) Reply-to: Mandel%pco@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark A. Mandel) Subject: Discussion of "consciousness" > I would say that if one is "conscious" of an event, then > the features/schema of that event are available to his > goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and > vice-versa ). This is true, but its (in this context) implied converse is not. Clinical psychology furnishes ample examples of goalsetting/planning that is not accessible to the person's conscious awareness in the usual ways. Q: "Why did you walk into that restaurant?" A: "No particular reason, I just suddenly felt like having a cup of coffee." Further probing by the therapist brings forth the awareness that certain circumstances of weather, recent experience, and hearing a song on the radio, all associated with an emotion-packed memory of a dead friend, had "caused" the person to attempt to reproduce an occasion on which he had met with that friend. The example is wholly fictitious, but this sort of hidden cause comes up all the time in therapy. Evidently some process in the person planned to meet the friend by going into the restaurant, although the person was not consciously aware of the plan or the conditions that had produced it; if he had been, he would certainly have recognized the impossibility of meeting someone who is dead. And if we say that he was aware of the conditions and planned consciously, but immediately forgot the entire operation, how do we explain (except by special pleading) his failure to recognize the unreality of the plan? The only solution is to accept unconscious planning. So we cannot use "subject has access to event X for purposes of planning" as a criterion for "subject is conscious of event X." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jan 87 23:21:03 pst From: ucsbcsl!uncle@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Subject: minds and minsky [The following message is in the style of comments on comments on quoted text that was common on the Phil-Sci list at MIT. While I recognize that the potential for such annotation is a major advantage of online discussion, I hope that members of the list will show restraint in order to keep the traffic volume down. A well-reasoned argument is preferable to several quoted paragraphs and a one-line comment. -- KIL ] QUESTIONS (-->> ...) re: QUESTIONS (> ...) re: M.M. ANNOTATIONS TO THE ARTICLE: >From harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV@mind.UUCP Sat Feb 5 22:28:16 206 On mod.ai, MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) wrote: > the phenomena we call consciousness are involved with our > short term memories. This explains why... it makes little sense to > attribute consciousness to rocks. I agree that rocks probably don't have short-term memories. But I don't see how having a short-term memory explains why we're conscious and rocks aren't. In particular, why are any of our short-term memories conscious, rather than all being unconscious? -->> ?? maybe because `consciousness' has something to do with discriminating changes in a temporal sequence of events whose time scale is more like the duration of a heartbeat than the duration of a whole life or an eon ?? The extracts from Marvin Minsky's new book look as if they will be very insightful correlative accounts of the phenomenology of (i) subjective experience and (ii) the objective processes going on in machines that can be interpreted as analogous to (i) in various ways. What none of the extracts he has presented even hints at is (a) why interpreting any of these processes (and the performance they subserve) as conscious is warranted, and (b) why even our own processes and performance should be conscious, rather than completely unconscious. [...] [...] (2) Before claiming with conviction that one has shown "why" a certain performance is accomplished by a process that is validly interpreted as a conscious one, one should indicate why the very same performance could not be accomplished by the very same process, perfectly UNconsciously (thereby rendering the conscious interpretation supererogatory). > although people usually assume that consciousness is knowing > what is happening in the minds, right at the > present time, consciousness never is really concerned with the > present, but with how we think about the records of our recent > thoughts... how thinking about our short term memories changes them! -->> ?? I think I agree with `>', is he not saying here something about discriminating changes in a temporal sequence on a short time scale ?? [...] My question concerns how the memory hypothesis -- or any other -- accounts for the fact that what is going on there in real time is conscious rather than unconscious; how does it account for my EXPERIENCE of pain?) And once that's answered, the second question is (2) why couldn't all that have been accomplished completely unconsciously? [...] -->> ?? Hmmmmm: THINKING and FEELING or rather: COMPUTING and FEELING . As a marginal intelligence, artificial or otherwise, I can only grab at a straw such as the organizational/functional notion `goal'. Experience and Feeling are functions which evaluate elements of the short-term temporal sequence of events/representations with respect to `goals'. Hmmmmm, do planaria think? THE BIG QUESTION THAT DISTURBS ME IS MORE OR LESS IN LINE WITH THE QUESTIONER ABOVE: WHY SHOULD MATTER THINK?????? This, of course has nothing to do with the real universe where some material aggregates DO think; however, if the universe wants to blow up, convert itself into successive populations of stars etc etc, and then implode, why does it need to have us think about it? [...] [Let me also add that there are good reasons why it is called the "mind/body" problem and not the "mindS/body" problem, as Marvin Minsky's tacit pluralizations would seem to imply. The phenomenological fact is that, at any instant, I (singular) have a toothache experience (singular). Having this (singular) conscious experience is what one calls having a (singular) mind. Now it may well be that one can INFER multiple processes underlying the capacity to have such singular experiences. But the processes are unconscious ones, not directly EXPERIENCED ones, hence they are not plural minds, properly speaking. -->> ?? HOLD ON, aren't you indulging in a kind of , what is the word, psychologism, based upon a linguistic prejudice? The get-food-subsystem doesn't go through a speech-act trip ending in the formulation of the well formed english phrase `i'm hungry', but it knows what it wants and communicates its wishes by making `OUR' stomach hurt ?? [...] > Our brains have various agencies that learn to > recognize - and even name - various patterns of external sensations. > Similarly, there must be other agencies that learn to recognize > events *inside* the brain - for example, the activities of the > agencies that manage memories. And those, I claim, are the bases > of the awarenesses we recognize as consciousness... I claim that to > understand what we call consciousness, we must understand the > activities of the agents that are engaged in using and changing our > most recent memories. You need an argument for (1) why any process you propose is correctly interpreted as the basis of 1st-order awareness of anything -- external or internal -- rather than just a mindless process, and (2) why the functions you describe it as accomplishing in the way it does need to be accomplished consciously at all, rather than mindlessly. -->> ?? But (some) matter DOES think and we know that! Explaining WHY (some) matter should be conscious is like explaining why the universe is as it is. As for the question of HOW it is conscious, it seems quite plausible that evolution changed MOTILITY into MOTIVATION and when motivation got hold of adequate methods and representations, je pense, donc clyde est un elephant! ?? [...] > When people ask, "Could a machine ever be conscious?" I'm often > tempted to ask back, "Could a person ever be conscious?" > ...we can design our new machines as we wish, and > provide them with better ways to keep and examine records of their > own activities - and this means that machines are potentially capable > of far more consciousness than we are. -->> Sounds plausible to me! [...] > To "notice" change requires the ability to resist it, in order > to sense what persists through time, but one can do this only > by being able to examine and compare descriptions from the recent past. -->> ?? Yes! ?? Why should a process that allows a device to notice (respond to, encode, store) change, resist it, examine, compare, describe, remember, etc. be interpreted as (1) a conscious process, and (2) why couldn't it accomplish the exact same things unconsciously? -->> ?? We already traversed this semantic loophole!!! ?? I am not, by the way, a spokesman for the point of view advocated by Dreyfus or by Searle. In asking these pointed question I am trying to show that the mind/body problem is a red herring for cognitive science. I recommend methodological epiphenomenalism and performance modeling as (what I believe is) the correct research strategy. Instead of spending our time trying to build metaphorical perpetual motion machines, I believe we should try to build real machines that capture our total performance capacity (the Total Turing Test). ------- --->> ?? methodological epiphenomenalism \?\? I don't know the exact significance of that as a Flachausdruck, but perhaps M.M. is describing just the epiphenomenon you are looking for\? ?? ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jan 87 19:44:42 GMT From: berke@locus.ucla.edu Subject: inten(s/t)ion, introspection A couple of brief responses to postings: 1) 'Intention' is derived from 'intend' and should not be confused with 'intension'. People intend to do things and so can be said to have intentions. Intensional objects versus extensional objects is a distinction made by Mill and Frege in distinguishing connotations or senses of names from denotations, the (sometimes concrete) objects named by names. I believe that Carnap introduced the terms 'intensional' and 'extensional' to correspond to the distinction between properties and the sets to which the properties apply. It has to do with the identity criteria for properties, usually represented by singulary propositional functions. If you feel that, or require in your formal theory, that two functions are identical if they are true of (have the same value for) the same objects, then you are taking functions "in extension." If you feel that two functions can still be different even though they are true of the same objects, you are taking functions "in intension." That is to say that "intensional objects" have stronger identity criteria (there are more of them) than "extensional objects." There seem to be levels of degrees of intensionality, depending on the strength of your identity criteria. The spelling similarity (s/t) and identical pronunciation don't necessarily imply a confusion of the concepts expressed by the different words 'intention' and 'intension', though, given the state of semantics these days, we may want to make an explicit connection between them. That would require showing how desires give rise to conepts, or vice versa. 2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the" unconcious. (Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that enclosed words are used in a technical sense.) ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jan 87 19:17:00 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!rjf@seismo.css.gov (R.J.Faichney) Subject: Re: inten(s/t)ion, introspection In article <3784@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (Peter Berke) writes: >[..] >2) I thought introspection was out since Freud demonstrated "the" >unconcious. > >(Frege's single quotes used to denote a word rather than >it's meaning (whatever that is), double quotes to >denote the usual meaning of a word, but to emphasize the fact that >enclosed words are used in a technical sense.) Can 'introspection' be 'out'? Surely you are "thinking" of 'extraspection'. More seriously: I don't follow the reasoning which implies that the existence of the unconscious invalidates introspection. Having glanced at the history of psychology, I was under the impression that it was the rise of behaviour- ism - and associated attempts to make psychology wholly objective and respectable - which had caused the (temporary) eclipse of the introspective method. -- Robin Faichney ("My employers don't know anything about this.") UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!rjf Post: RJ Faichney, Computing Laboratory, JANET: rjf@uk.ac.ukc The University, Canterbury, Phone: 0227 66822 Ext 7681 Kent. CT2 7NF ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From LAWS@KL.SRI.COM Tue Dec 15 02:30:27 1987 Mail-From: LAWS created at 20-Jan-87 23:13:39 Date: Tue 20 Jan 1987 23:11-PST From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Us-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V5 #10 To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Resent-Date: Mon 14 Dec 87 22:44:07-PST Resent-From: Ken Laws Resent-To: isr@vtopus.CS.VT.EDU Resent-Message-Id: <12358590304.16.LAWS@KL.SRI.COM> Status: R AIList Digest Wednesday, 21 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: Queries - CMS Shells & Modelling Resource Allocation & Distributed Kalah, AI Tools - Scheme for PC, Correction - Brian Smith's Talk, Literature - Catalogue of AI Techniques ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 January 87 13:28-EDT From: ATSWAF%UOFT01.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Subject: CMS Shells Does anyone know of any expert system shells available to run on an IBM computer in CMS? Please send any information regarding price and manufacturer to: Krzysztof Cios FAC1765@UOFT01.BITNET Thanks ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jan 87 11:55 PST From: Gail Slemon Subject: Theoretical framework for modelling resource allocation. We are looking for a theoretical (cognitive science) framework for modelling a resource allocation problem for training purposes. Has anyone applied Jens Rasmussen's theory to training? We'd appreciate critiques of his theory. Any other candidates or suggestions are very welcome! Please reply to: sigart@logicon.arpa or Gail Slemon c/o Logicon, Inc. P.O. Box 85158 San Diego, CA 92138-5158 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 87 00:28:47 +0100 From: Hakon Styri Subject: Query - Distributed Kalah I'm writing a Kalah-playing program for a small number of transputers, using a simple alpha/beta algorithm with a few enhancements to cut down the communication cost. I would appreciate to receive information on any comparable work, i.e. parallel game-playing on less than 10 processors. Haakon Styri, RUNIT, The Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (SINTEF) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 9:25:42 EST From: Kenneth Van Camp -FSAC- Subject: Scheme for PC Alexander Crawford wanted to know if Scheme Lisp was available for the IBM PC. Yes, Texas Instruments puts out a version. --Ken Van Camp ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 15:56:22 pst From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) Subject: brian smith's talk on clocks is actually this thursday, i believe. you intimated in the digest that it had passed. cheers, peter [Rats! Mea culp. Here is the correct listing. -- KIL] Date: Wed 14 Jan 87 17:45:10-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: CSLI Calendar, January 15, No.12 2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar Classroom The Semantics of Clocks Ventura Trailers Brian Smith (BrianSmith.pa@xerox.com) NEXT WEEK'S SEMINAR The Semantics of Clocks Brian Smith January 22 Clocks participate in their subject matter. Temporal by nature, they also represent time. And yet, like other representational systems, clocks have been hard to build, and can be wrong. For these and other reasons clocks are a good foil with which to explore issues in AI and cognitive science about computation, mind, and the relation between semantics and mechanism. An analysis will be presented of clock face content and the function of clockworks, and of various notions of chronological correctness. The results are intended to illustrate a more general challenge to the formality of inference, to widen our conception of computation, and to clarify the conditions governing representational systems in general. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 17:31:27 GMT From: Alan Bundy Subject: Catalogue of AI Techniques: revised call for entries THE CATALOGUE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES Alan Bundy The Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Techniques is a kind of mail order catalogue. Its purpose is to promote interaction between members of the AI community. It does this by announcing the existence of AI techniques, and acting as a pointer into the literature. Thus the AI community will have access to a common, extensional definition of the field, which will: promote a common terminology, discourage the reinvention of wheels, and act as a clearing house for ideas and algorithms. The catalogue is a reference work providing a quick guide to the AI techniques available for different jobs. It is not intended to be a textbook like the Artificial Intelligence Handbook. It, intentionally, only provides a brief description of each technique, with no extended discussion of its historical origin or how it has been used in particular AI programs. The original version of the catalogue, was hastily built in 1983 as part of the UK SERC-DoI, IKBS, Architecture Study. It has now been adopted by the UK Alvey Programme and is both kept as an on-line document undergoing constant revision and refinement and published as a paperback by Springer Verlag. Springer Verlag have agreed to reprint the Catalogue at frequent intervals in order to keep it up to date. The on-line and paperback versions of the catalogue meet different needs and differ in the entries they contain. In particular, the on-line version was designed to promote UK interaction and contains all the entries which we received that meet the criteria defined below. Details of how to access the on-line version are available from John Smith of the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 OQX. The paperback version was designed to serve as a reference book for the international community, and does not contain entries which are only of interest in a UK context. By `AI techniques' we mean algorithms, data (knowledge) formalisms, architectures, and methodological techniques, which can be described in a precise, clean way. The catalogue entries are intended to be non-technical and brief, but with a literature reference. The reference might not be the `classic' one. It will often be to a textbook or survey article. The border between AI and non-AI techniques is fuzzy. Since the catalogue is to promote interaction some techniques are included because they are vital parts of many AI programs, even though they did not originate in AI. We have not included in the catalogue separate entries for each slight variation of a technique, nor have we included descriptions of AI programs tied to a particular application, nor of descriptions of work in progress. The catalogue is not intended to be a dictionary of AI terminology, nor to include definitions of AI problems, nor to include descriptions of paradigm examples. Entries are short (abstract length) descriptions of a technique. They include: a title, list of aliases, contributor's name, paragraph of description, and references. The contributor's name is that of the original author of the entry. Only occasionally is the contributor of the entry also the inventor of the technique. The reference is a better guide to the identity of the inventor. Some entries have been subsequently modified by the referees and/or editorial team, and these modifications have not always been checked with the original contributor, so (s)he should not always be held morally responsible, and should never be held legally responsible. The original version of the catalogue was called "The Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Tools" and also contained descriptions of portable software, e.g. expert systems shells and knowledge representation systems. Unfortunately, we found it impossible to maintain a comprehensive coverage of either all or only the best such software. New systems were being introduced too frequently and it required a major editorial job to discover all of them, to evaluate them and to decide what to include. It would also have required a much more frequent reprinting of the catalogue than either the publishers, editors or readers could afford. Also expert systems shells threatened to swamp the other entries. We have, therefore, decided to omit software entries from future editions and rename the catalogue to reflect this. The only exception to this is programming languages, for which we will provide generic entries. Any software entries sent to us will be passed on to Graeme Pub. Co., who publish a directory of AI vendors and products. If you would like to submit an entry for the catalogue then please fill in the attached form and send it to: Alan Bundy, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, Tel: 44-31-225-7774 ext 242 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1HN, JANet: Bundy@UK.Ac.Edinburgh Scotland. ARPAnet: Bundy@Rutgers.Edu CATALOGUE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES: FORMAT FOR ENTRIES Title: Alias: Abstract: Contributor: References: ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From LAWS@KL.SRI.COM Tue Dec 15 07:05:57 1987 Mail-From: LAWS created at 20-Jan-87 23:16:38 Date: Tue 20 Jan 1987 23:15-PST From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Us-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V5 #11 To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Resent-Date: Mon 14 Dec 87 22:44:11-PST Resent-From: Ken Laws Resent-To: isr@vtopus.CS.VT.EDU Resent-Message-Id: <12358590314.16.LAWS@KL.SRI.COM> Status: R AIList Digest Wednesday, 21 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 11 Today's Topics: Philosophy - Inten(s/t)ion, Introspection & Consciousness ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Jan 87 15:52:37 GMT From: ritcv!rocksvax!rocksanne!sunybcs!rapaport@rochester.arpa (William J. Rapaport) Subject: Re: inten(s/t)ion, introspection But also please note that 'intentionality' is ambiguous: Intentionality is the feature that Brentano cited as the mark of the mental, viz., the fact that mental acts (thinking, believing, etc.) are always "directed" to an object, whether or not that object exists or is true. Intentionality also refers to the feature of certain physical acts that we do them intentionally, i.e., we mean to do them rather than doing them by accident. Obviously, there are etymological connections here. Note, too, that it is often claimed that intentionality in the Brentano sense is strongly related to intensionality. William J. Rapaport Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (716) 636-3193, 3180 uucp: .!{allegra,boulder,decvax,mit-ems,nike,rocksanne,sbcs,watmath}!sunybcs!rapaport csnet: rapaport@buffalo.csnet bitnet: rapaport@sunybcs.bitnet ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 16:14:59 est From: Stevan Harnad Subject: More on Minsky on Minds(s) From: MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: AIList Digest V5 #4 > I don't believe that the phenomenon of "first order consciousness" > exists, that Harnad talks about. The part of the mind that speaks is > not experiencing the toothache, but is reacting to signals that were > sent some small time ago from other parts of the brain. There seems to be a contradiction in the above set of statements. If the meaning of "first order consciousness" (call it "C-1") has been understood, then one cannot at the same time say one does not believe C-1 exists AND that "the part of the mind that speaks is not experiencing the toothache" -- unless of course one believes NO part of the mind is experiencing the toothache; for whatever part of the mind IS experiencing the toothache is the part of the mind having C-1. If Minsky DOES mean that no part of the mind is experiencing the toothache, then I wish to offer my own humble experience as a counterexample: I (and therefore, a fortiori, some part of my mind) certainly do experience toothache. To minimize cross-talk and misunderstanding, I will explicitly define C-1 and C-2 ("2nd order consciousness"): To have (or be) C-1 is to have ANY qualitative experience at all; to feel, see, hear. Philosophers call having C-1 "having qualia." A helpful portmanteau we owe to the philosopher Tom Nagel is that whenever one has C-1 -- i.e., whenever one experiences anything at all -- there is something it is "like" to have that experience, and we experience what that something is like directly. Note: Everyone who is not in the grip of some theoretical position knows EXACTLY what I mean by the above, and I use the example of having a current toothache merely as a standard illustration. To have (or be) C-2 (or C-N) is to be aware of having a lower-order experience, such as C-1. The distinction between C-1 and C-2 is often formulated as the distinction between "being aware of something" (say, having a toothache) and "being aware of being aware of something" (including, say, remembering, thinking about or talking about having a toothache, or about what it's like to have a toothache). My critiques of the extracts from Minsky's book were based on the following simple point: His hypotheses about the functional substrates of consciousness are all based on analogies between things that can go on in machines (and perhaps brains) and things that seem to go on in C-2. But C-2 is really just a 2nd-order frill on the mind/body problem, compared with the problem of capturing the machine/brain substrates of C-1. Worse than that, C-2 already presupposes C-1. You can't have awareness-of-awareness without having awareness -- i.e., direct, first-order experiences like toothaches -- in the first place. This led directly to my challenge to Minsky: Why do any of the processes he describes require C-1 (and hence any level of C) at all? Why can't all the functions he describes be accomplished without being given the interpretation that they are conscious -- i.e. that they are accompanied by any experience -- at all? What is there about his scenario that could not be accomplished COMPLETELY UNCONSCIOUSLY? To answer the last question is finally to confront the real mind/body problem. And if Minsky did so, he would find that the conscious interpretation of all his machine processes is completely supererogatory. There's no particular reason to believe that systems with only the kinds of properties he describes would have (or be) C-1. Hence there's no reason to be persuaded by the analogies between their inner workings and some of our inferences and introspections about C-2 either. To put it more concretely using Minsky's own example: There is perhaps marginally more inclination to believe that systems with the inner workings he describes [objectively, of course, minus the conscious interpretation with which they are decorated] are more likely to be conscious than a stone, but even this marginal additional credibility derives only from the fact that such systems can (again, objectively) DO more than a stone, rather than from the C-2 interpretations and analogies. [And it is of course this performance criterion alone -- what I've called elsewhere the Total Turing Test -- that I have argued is the ONLY defensible criterion for inferring consciousness in any device other than oneself.] > I think Harnad's phenomenology is too simple-minded to take seriously. > If he has ever had a toothache, he will remember that one is not > conscious of it all the time, even if it is very painful; one becomes > aware of it in episodes of various lengths. I suppose he'll argue that > he remains unconsciously conscious of it. I...ask him to review his > insistence that ANTHING can happen instantaneously - no matter how > convincing the illusion is... I hope no one will ever catch me suggesting that we can be "unconsciously conscious" of anything, since I regard that as an unmitigated contradiction in terms (and probably a particularly unhelpful Nachlass from Freud). I am also reasonably confident that my simple-minded phenomenology is shared by anyone who can pry himself loose from prior theoretical commitments. I agree that toothaches fade in and out, and that conscious "instants" are not punctate, but smeared across a fuzzy interval. But so what? Call Delta-T one of those instants of consciousness of a toothache. It is when I'm feeling that toothache RIGHT NOW that I am having a 1st order conscious experience. Call it Delta-C-1 if you prefer, but it's still C-1 (i.e., experiencing pain now) and not just C-2 (i.e., remembering, describing, or reflecting on experiencing pain) that's going on then. And unless you can make a case for C-1, the case for C-2 is left trying to elevate itself by its boot-straps. I also agree, of course, that conscious experiences (both C-1 and C-2) involve illusions, including temporal illusions. [In an article in Cognition and Brain Theory (5:29-47, 1982) entitled "Consciousness: An Afterthought" I tried to show how an experience might be a pastische of temporal and causal illusions.] But one thing's no illusion, and that's the fact THAT we're having an experience. The toothache I feel I'm having right now may in fact have its causal origin in a tooth injury that happened 90 seconds ago, or a brain event that happened 30 milliseconds ago, but what I'm feeling when I feel it is a here-and-now toothache, and that's real. It's even real if there's no tooth injury at all. The point is that the temporal and causal CONTENTS of an experience may be illusory in their relation to, or representation of, real time and real causes, but they can't be illusions AS experiences. And it is this "phenomenological validity" of conscious experience (C-1 in particular) that is the real burden of any machine/brain theory of consciousness. It's a useful constraint to observe the following dichotomy (which corresponds roughly to the objective/subjective dichotomy): Keep behavioral performance and the processes that generate it on the objective side (O) of the ledger, and leave them uninterpreted. On the subjective (S) side, place conscious experience (1st order and higher-order) and its contents, such as they are; these are of course necessarily interpreted. You now need an argument for interpreting any theory of O in terms of S. In particular, you must show why the uninterpreted O story ALONE will not work (i.e., why ALL the processes you posit cannot be completely unconscious). [The history of the mind/body problem to date -- in my view, at least -- is that no one has yet managed to do the latter in any remotely rigorous or convincing way.] Consider the toothache. On the O side there may (or may not) be tooth injury, neural substrates of tooth injury, verbal and nonverbal expressions of pain, and neural substrates of verbal and nonverbal expressions of pain. These events may be arranged in real time in various ways. On the S side there is my feeling -- fading in and out, smeared across time, sometimes vocalized sometimes just silently suffered -- of having a toothache. The mind/body problem then becomes the problem of how (and why) to equate those objective phenomena (environmental events, neural events, behaviors) with those subjective phenomena (feelings of pain, etc.). My critique of the excerpts from Minsky's book was that he was conferring the subjective interpretation on his proposed objective processes and events without any apparent argument about why the VERY SAME objective story could not be told with equal objective validity WITHOUT the subjective interpretation. [If that sounds like a Catch-22, then I've succeeded in showing the true face of the mind/body problem at last. It also perhaps shows why I recommend methodological epiphenomenalism -- i.e., not trying to account for consciousness, but only for the objective substrates of our total performance capacity -- in place of subjective over-interpretations of those same processes: Because, at worst, the hermeneutic embellishments will mask or distract from performance weaknesses, and at best they are theoretically (i.e., objectively) superfluous. > As for that "mind/body problem" I repeat my slogan, "Minds are simply > what brains do." Easier said than done. And, as I've suggested, even when done, it's no "solution." Stevan Harnad {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet (609)-921-7771 ------------------------------ Date: Tue 20 Jan 87 22:04:27-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: C-2 as C-1 From: Stevan Harnad : Worse than that, C-2 already presupposes C-1. You can't have awareness-of-awareness without having awareness -- i.e., direct, first-order experiences like toothaches -- in the first place. A quibble: It would be possible to remember having a toothache without actually having one. It is also possible, as Minsky seems to suggest, that my entire conscious perception of a current toothache is an "illusory pain" based on the memory of a neural signal of a moment ago. These views do not solve the problem, of course; the C-2 consciousness must be explained even if the C-1 experience was an illusion. My conscious memory of the event is more than just an uninterpreted memory of a memory of a memory ... -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 15:57:00 PST From: Steven L. Speidel Subject: Discussion of "consciousness" Original statement of hypothesis: If one is "conscious" of an event, then the features/schema of that event are available to his goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and vice-versa ). Further discussion: This is true, but its ( in this context ) implied converse is not. Clinical psychology furnishes ample examples of goalsetting/planning that is not accessable to the person's conscious awareness in the usual ways... So we cannot use "subject has access to event X for purposes of planning" as a criterion for "subject is conscious of event X." Suppose we were to say that the therapist's evaluations of the subjects consciousness was based on the subjects ability or inability to present the pertinent material to the therapist. Perhaps the function of communication resides elsewhere in the brain (or requires additional connections) than mere consciousness and involves another process which the subject may or may not have performed as yet, though he is nevertheless "conscious" of the material on a low level. Once the subject of therapy is prompted to "express" the material in communicable form and that process is completed (or in progress) it is the therapists subjective evaluation that the person has become "conscious" of it. In this case, the hypothesis of interest would apply to the low-level consciousness associated with an individual as opposed to an "expressed consciousness" which may be shared with other individuals. Following this tack a little further, one would associate the label "unconscious" with things like reflex, control of peristalsis, some kinds of sensory processing, etc. As an aside, the concept of shared consciousness is an intriguing one, isn't it? It could make it easier to explain how man accomplishes what he does. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From LAWS@KL.SRI.COM Tue Dec 15 07:07:57 1987 Mail-From: LAWS created at 21-Jan-87 22:16:57 Date: Wed 21 Jan 1987 22:14-PST From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Us-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V5 #12 To: AIList@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA Resent-Date: Mon 14 Dec 87 22:44:14-PST Resent-From: Ken Laws Resent-To: isr@vtopus.CS.VT.EDU Resent-Message-Id: <12358590323.16.LAWS@KL.SRI.COM> Status: R AIList Digest Thursday, 22 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 12 Today's Topics: Query - Antiquity of AI, Discussion Lists - X windows and Lisp, Conference - University Demos at AAAI, Philosophy - Consciousness ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 87 17:23 EDT From: STANKULI%cs.umass.edu@RELAY.CS.NET Subject: Antiquity of AI THE ANTIQUITY OF AI As we are all probably aware, the term 'robot' was coined by Carel Kapek (circa 1930's AD), but the concept of manufacturing intelligent, speaking, humanoid, machines for labor dates back into antiquity. I have come upon the following passage in Homer's Iliad (circa 725 BC). I would like to know if anyone could send me other passages related to AI which predate the Renaissance (circa 1500's AD). Particularly, is this the earliest known reference to artificial intelligence? To set the scene, Hephaistos is working in his laboratory when he receives an unexpected visit from Thetis. (English translation will follow.) E KAI AP' AKMOTHETOIO PELOR AIETON ANESTE CHOLEUON; HYPO DE KNEMAI ROONTO ARAIAI. PHYSAS MEN RH' APANEUTHE TITHEI PUROS, HOPLA TE PANTA LARNAK' ES ARGUREEN SULLEXATO, TOIS EPONEITO. SPONGO D'AMPHI PROSOPA KAI AMPHO CHEIR' APOMORGNU AUCHENA TE STIBARON KAI STETHEA LACHNEENTA. DU DE CHITON', HELLE DE SKEPTRON PACHU, BE DE THYRAZE CHOLEUON. HYPO D'AMPHIPOLOI RHOONTO ANAKTI CHRUSEIAI, ZOESI NEENISIN EIOIKUIAI. TES EN MEN NOOS ESTI META PHRESIN, EN DE KAI AUDE KAI STHENOS, ATHANATON DE THEON APO ERGA ISASIN. HAI MEN HYPAITHA ANAKTOS EPOIPNUON; AUTAR HO ERRON PLESION, ENTHA THETIS PER, EPI THRONMOU HIZE PHAEINOU. EN T'ARA HOI PHU CHERI, EPOS T'EPHAT EK T'ONOMAZE, "TIPTE, THETI, TANUPEPLE, HIKANEIS HEMETERON DO?" HE SPOKE, AND TOOK THE HUGE BLOWER OFF THE ANVIL, LIMPING; BENEATH HIM, SHRUNKEN LEGS MOVED LIGHTLY. HE SET THE BELLOWS AWAY FROM THE FIRE, GATHERED ALL THE TOOLS IN A SILVER STRONGBOX, WITH WHICH HE WORKED. WITH A SPONGE HE WIPED HIS FOREHEAD AND BOTH HANDS, HIS MASSIVE NECK AND HAIRY CHEST, PUT ON A TUNIC, TOOK UP A HEAVY STICK, WENT TO THE DOORWAY, LIMPING. IN SUPPORT OF THEIR MASTER MOVED HIS ATTENDENTS. THESE ARE GOLDEN, IN APPEARANCE LIKE LIVING YOUNG WOMEN. AND THERE IS INTELLIGENCE IN THEIR HEARTS, AND THERE IS SPEECH IN THEM AND STRENGTH, FROM THE GODS THEY HAVE LEARNED HOW TO DO THINGS. THESE STIRRED NIMBLY IN SUPPORT OF THEIR MASTER, MOVING NEAR TO WHERE THETIS SAT IN HER SHINING CHAIR, AND TAKING HER BY THE HAND, CALLED HER BY NAME AND SPOKE A WORD TO HER: "WHY IS IT, THETIS OF THE LIGHT ROBES, YOU HAVE COME TO OUR HOUSE NOW?" I know the Romans used intricate machinations in their circuses and theatricals, but I have found no reference of them ever being imagined as anything other than amusing gear boxes. I have found nothing of the Egyptians ever considering a device more complicated than a hand tool. Yet Homer seems to have most of the essentials of AI described quite clearly. Well, perhaps the earliest inference engine was the scales on which Thoth weighed the human heart against the feather of truth. stan [Actually, "robot" was coined by Josef Capek in his story Opilec (Drunkard) in 1917, rather than by Carel Capek in his 1920 R.U.R. It apparently comes from the Czech word for "unpleasant work", rather than the oft-cited "worker". -- KIL ] ------------------------------ Date: Wed 21 Jan 87 13:10:32-PST From: Mark Richer Subject: X windows & Lisp There is a mailing list on commonlisp windows that discusses issues such as the ones you raise and a bunch of people that use or are interestsed in X windows are on the list. I have remailed your message, perhaps you will get a response from someone there. It would be appropriate if this discussion moved there. The list is cl-windows@sail.stanford.edu To get on send a request to cl-windows-request@sail.stanford.edu. There is also a list on X called xpert@athena.mit.edu. Send to xpert-request to get on that one. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Wed 21 Jan 87 11:50:25-PST From: AAAI Subject: University Demos ANNOUNCEMENT University and research institutes are invited to participate in the 1987 Exhibit Program at the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Booth space is free, and equipment vendors will loan hardware for your demonstrations. Last year the AAAI introduced this innovation and it was considered one of the highlights of the conference. For more information, please contact: Mr. Steve Taglio AAAI 445 Burgess Drive Menlo Park, CA 94025-3496 AAAI-office@sumex-aim.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jan 87 07:13:00 EST From: "CUGINI, JOHN" Reply-to: "CUGINI, JOHN" Subject: consciousness as a non-superfluous concept In general, I quite agree with most of Harnad's comments contra Minsky, but he and others keep asking a question which deserves a response - namely why do we NEED the concept of consciousness to explain anything: > Harnad: > > It's a useful constraint to observe the following dichotomy (which > corresponds roughly to the objective/subjective dichotomy): Keep > behavioral performance and the processes that generate it on the > objective side (O) of the ledger, and leave them uninterpreted. On the > subjective (S) side, place conscious experience (1st order and > higher-order) and its contents, such as they are; these are of course > necessarily interpreted. You now need an argument for interpreting any > theory of O in terms of S. In particular, you must show why the > uninterpreted O story ALONE will not work (i.e., why ALL the processes > you posit cannot be completely unconscious). [The history of the > mind/body problem to date -- in my view, at least -- is that no one > has yet managed to do the latter in any remotely rigorous or > convincing way.] But elsewhere: > I also agree, of course, that conscious experiences (both C-1 and C-2) > involve illusions, ...But one thing's no illusion, and > that's the fact THAT we're having an experience. The toothache I feel > I'm having right now may in fact have its causal origin in a tooth > injury that happened 90 seconds ago, or a brain event that happened 30 > milliseconds ago, but what I'm feeling when I feel it is a > here-and-now toothache, and that's real. It's even real if there's no > tooth injury at all. Hmmm...so the toothache is "real" but "subjective" - well OK, we need some terminology to distinguish the class of inner/experiential/subjective/ conscious/private events vs. external/public..etc. But the point is, if we believe in the existence of both classes, if both are real, then we know why we need consciousness as a concept- because without it we cannot explain/talk about the former class of events - even if the latter class is entirely explicable in its own terms. Ie, why should we demand of consciousness that it have explanatory power for objective events? It's like demanding that magnetism be acoustically detectible before we accept it as a valid concept. I can well understand how those who deny the reality of experiences (eg, toothaches) would then insist on the superfluousness of the concept of consciousness - but Harnad clearly is not one such. So...we need consciousness, not to explain public, objective events, such as neural activity, but to explain, or at least discuss, private subjective events. If it be objected that the latter are outside the proper realm of science, so be it, call it schmience or philosophy or whatever you like. - but surely anything that is REAL, even if subjective, can be the proper object for some sort of rational study, no? John Cugini ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jan 87 13:29:05 PST (Tue) From: Tom Hester Subject: Re: AIList Digest V5 #9 In response to: berke@locus.ucla.edu on inten(s/t)ion, introspection Intension comes from the same Greek root as the English word intense (meanings are more intens(iv)e in intensions), and the distinction between intension and extension goes all the way back to Aristotle. Anybody really interested in Aristotle's characterization of the distinction can send me an E-mail message and I will be glad to reply. Furthermore, semanticists have argued for many years that intensions and intentions are related. See the work of B.C. Van Fraassen for example. Finally, R.J. Faichney is absolutely correct. It was not Freud that side tracked psychology from introspection. Rather it was the "dust bowl empiricists" that rode behaviorism to fame and fortune that did it. "Don't touch that! When you are this far inside the human brain, you don't know what it might be connected to." B. Bonzai Tom Hester ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1987 23:53 EST From: MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: AIList Digest V5 #11 Steve Harnad says: Note: Everyone who is not in the grip of some theoretical position knows EXACTLY what I mean by the above, and I use the example of having a current toothache merely as a standard illustration. I like this because it is so EXACTLY the opposite of what I think, namely, that unless a person IS in the grip of some "theoretical position" - that is, some system of ideas, however inconsistent, they can't "know" what anything "means" The distinction between C-1 and C-2 is often formulated as the distinction between "aware of something" (say, having a toothache) and "being aware of being aware of something" (including, say, remembering, thinking about or talking about having a toothache, or about what it's like to have a toothache). But note that Steve included "say, remembering..." My point was that you can't think about, talk about, or remember anything that leaves no temporary trace in some part of your mind. In other words, I agree that you can't have C-2 without C-1 - but you can't have think, say, or remember that you have C-1 without C-2! So, assuming that I know EXACTLY what he means, I understand PERFECTLY that that meaning is vacuous. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Jan 87 00:06:21 est From: Stevan Harnad Subject: No C-2 without C-1 Ken Laws wrote in mod.ai: > A quibble: It would be possible to remember having a toothache > without actually having one. It is also possible, as Minsky seems > to suggest, that my entire conscious perception of a current toothache > is an "illusory pain" based on the memory of a neural signal > of a moment ago. These views do not solve the problem, of course; > the C-2 consciousness must be explained even if the C-1 experience > was an illusion. My conscious memory of the event is more than > just an uninterpreted memory of a memory of a memory ... There is still no C-2 without C-1. For accompanying every C-2 episode is a C-1 as substrate. Not only is there something it's like to have a toothache (C-1), but there's also something it's like to REMEMBER having a toothache (likewise C-1). The experience of remembering is a qualitative experience too. The toothache may never actually have happened. You may not even have a tooth. But the qualitative sense of remembering it has the "phenomenological validity" that I claimed all 1st order conscious experience does. For if the C-2 episode is not a qualitative experience, what qualifies it as conscious at all? My point is subtle, but valid. I advise the perplexed to reread the definitions of C-1 and C-2. Ken Laws's example of an "illusory" C-1 trades on the ambiguity between (a) the causal and temporal reality (i.e, when, whether and why the tooth injury and neural events actually happened in real time) of the CONTENTS of a conscious experience and (b) their phenomenological validity (i.e., what you experienced them AS). The memory of my toothache may be illusory in relation to the toothache I never in reality had, but it is no illusion that I am having such a memory now -- and that experience is the ineluctible C-1 substrate on which any C-2 or higher must piggy-back. (And there's no point doing another deferred-temporal number on THAT experience, analogous to the one on the toothache -- misremembering remembering, or some such -- because it only leads to infinite regress, and still logically requires an ongoing C-1 to justify calling it conscious.) No C-2 without an underlying C-1 too. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************