Date: Mon 14 Nov 1988 17:38-EST From: AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis Reply-To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Us-Mail: MIT LCS, 545 Tech Square, Rm# NE43-504, Cambridge MA 02139 Phone: (617) 253-6524 Subject: AIList Digest V8 #127 To: AIList@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Status: R AIList Digest Tuesday, 15 Nov 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 127 Should AIList distribute job listings? Responses: Expert Systems in Scheduling Inherit through net References On Mass Terms Valiant's Learning Model Use of alternative metaphors and Analogies ES shells & C Congress on Cybernetics and Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Nov 88 11:31 EST From: steven horst Subject: academic job listings and post-docs The AI Digest recently hosted a set of inquiries and replies on the topic of what universities offer programs in various areas of AI and CS. I should be interested in information on a similar and related topic: namely, What universities are either (a) hiring for positions in AI or CS (whether CS departments or in traditional departments like philosophy and psychology), or (b) offering fellowships for researchers in AI or CS? I am not really sure what sort of deluge of information I may be inviting here. I realize that the Digest cannot serve as a comprehensive job listing service for the entire AI community. I expect, however, that the list of jobs and fellowships for AI and CS within academia would not be prohibitively long and would be of interest to a large number of subscribers. Steven Horst bitnet: gkmarh@irishmvs Department of Philosophy Notre Dame, IN 46556 219-239-7458 [Editor's Note: As a matter of policy, I have not been including messages relating to employment. However, if enough interest is shown, perhaps the policy should be changed. To put things in perspective, let me point out that I receive an average of about three or four such postings per week, and that I would expect this number to increase if I actually started including such messages. Many of these are from companies (as opposed to universities), or individuals seeking employment. There are already existing channels for the dissemination of job-related messages. Traffic on AIList is very high by any standards. (I am trying very hard to reduce it.) Perhaps some generous person would volunteer to compile such a list, and then I could simply pass interested parties a pointer ... - nick] ------------------------------ Date: 4 Nov 88 16:00:54 GMT From: Pat Prosser Reply-to: Pat Prosser Subject: Expert Systems in Scheduling >Subject: ES for Scheduling Flexible Manufacturing Systems >Hi!... I am compiling a survey of expert systems for scheduling CIM in general >and FMS in particular. >I am particularly interested in the limitations and effectiveness > ...... and what role a human scheduler would play in the highly complex >and constantly evolving environment of FMS. Does anyone know if ISIS still >being used at Westinghouse? Some ES schedulers worthy of study are: (1) SEMIMAN: a scheduler for ASIC production, in use by Plessey, developed by Peter Ellerby in Reading University. This views scheduling as a dynamic CSP. Peter is currently installing his system ... it exists, I've seen it. (2) DAS: a Distributed Asynchronous Scheduler. This again views scheduling as a dynamic CSP but distributes the task over many processors. It has similarities with the contract net metaphor and blackboard systems. We in Strathclyde have developed/implemented a demonstrator. (3) SONIA: Claude le Pape's system. This is a blackboard architecture, looking much like OPIS (4) OPIS: Stephen Smith. Apparently SS is now installing this for IBM wafer fab plant (I think) (5) YAMS: Parunak's system, a contract net. (6) ISIS: The last I heard of this Nancy Skoogland was re-implementing this in KEE. (7) B.R Fox and Kempf: robot assembly ... opportunistic scheduling (apparently Fox was opportunistic to the degree of walking away from FMC with a Ferrari!) Limitations and Effectiveness: How long is a piece of string? Limitations depends on representations used. Generally representing problem as constraints (temporal, precedence, technological, preference) is rich enough to model most domains. Also knowledge elicitation ... generally no one knows what a good schedule is, generally they do know what a satisfactory schedule is. Therefore in many cases knowledge must be created via simulation. Effectiveness .... depends on what state the company's in. generally most companies don't schedule and even fewer schedule reactively. So ... expect a big win. Human Role: See Peter Ellerby's "junk box approach". Take the human out of the system and you are doomed. Until you can capture all domain knowledge, keep the user in there. The appropriatness of AI technology to scheduling: Want to make loadsamoney? Patrick Prosser University of Strathclyde Dept of Computer Science Glasgow ------------------------------ Date: 7 Nov 88 03:51:24 GMT From: sword!gamma!pyuxp!nvuxj!nvuxl!nvuxh!hall@faline.bellcore.com (Michael R Hall) Subject: Re: Inherit through net In a previous article, Siping Liu writes: >In frame knowledge representation systems, knowledge >can be inherited through the tree-style world hierarchies. >i.e., each world has only one parent world. > >The question is: [Why not allow multiple parents?] Sure, you can have multiple parents in some frame-inheritence implementations. KEE lets you do it. You should be able to find some literature on the research problems associated with doing this type of inheritence gracefully. -- Michael R. Hall | Bell Communications Research "I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's | nvuxh!hall@bellcore.COM gnawing at the heart of the country" -The The | bellcore!nvuxh!hall ------------------------------ Date: 7 Nov 88 11:06 PST From: Halvorsen.pa@Xerox.COM Subject: Re: AIList Digest V8 #120: References On Mass Terms An interesting and detailed analysis of mass terms can be found in Jan Tore Loenning's "Mass Terms and Quantification", pp 1-52, Linguistics and Philosophy, Vol 10, No. 1, February 1987. He has done more on mass terms and on the semantics of plural, and you can try to reach him at: m_loenning_j%use.uio.uninett@TOR.nta.no, or m_loenning_j@use.uio.uninett. --Per-Kristian ------------------------------ Date: 8 Nov 88 13:44:38 GMT From: bwk@mitre-bedford.arpa (Barry W. Kort) Subject: Re: Valiant's Learning Model In a previous article, Dario Ringach writes: > Has anyone attempted to approach learning as a discrete time Markov > process on the hypothesis space H? For instance at any time k let > h1=h(k) be the current hypothesis obviously there is defined for any > h2 in H a transition probability P(h(h+1)=h2|h(k)=h1) that depends > on the probability distribution Px and the learning algorithm A. Look into Bayesian inference, Kalman filtering, and Kailath's Innovations Process. In each of these approaches, a current best guess is updated as new information comes in. I believe Widrow's adaptive networks also exhibit such behavior. --Barry Kort ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Nov 88 21:32 EST From: F1UPCHURCH%SEMASSU.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: RE:use of alternative metaphors and Analogies I would suggest starting with the Gentner and Stevens book Mental Models (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publisher). The Chapter by Gentner and Gentner "Flowing Waters or Teeming Crowds: Mental Models of Electricity" sounds close to the description given. J. M. Carroll has several papers on metaphors and cognitive representations (Int. J. of Man-Machine Studies and IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics) but these date back to 1982 and 1985. The ACM SIGCHI proceedings usually have articles related to metaphors and analogies in learning to use software systems. Richard Upchurch F1UPCHURCH@SEMASSU.BITNET ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Nov 88 13:09:29 PST From: lambert@cod.nosc.mil (David R. Lambert) Subject: ES shells & C In response to query by sp@uunet.uu.net: Intelligence/Compiler (about $500) is a hybrid (rules + frames + inheritance) shell which can call C routines; I don't know whether it can be called by a C routine itself, however. For more information, contact: IntelligenceWare, Inc. 9800 S. Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 730 Los Angeles, CA 90045. Phone: (213) 417-8896. David R. Lambert lambert@nosc.mil ------------------------------ Date: 11 Nov 88 03:43:22 GMT From: avsd!childers@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Richard Childers) Subject: Re: Congress on Cybernetics and Systems In article <2412@cs.Buffalo.EDU> lammens@sunybcs.UUCP (Johan Lammens) writes: >What on earth is psychocybernetics and sociocybernetics? Psycho-: prefix, referring to that internal domain of reality recognized by the science of psychology. Socio-: prefix, referring to that portion of the external reality pertaining to human relationships which has been individually mapped by each one of us into the aforementioned internal domain. Cybernetics : the science of decision-making. Psychocybernetics : The study of one's internal decision-making process(es), usually for the purposes of self-analysis and/or self-improvement. Sociocybernetics : The study of one's society and its approach to making and implementing decisions, usually for similar purposes. >JL. -- richard ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************