Command Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66207 1330-1700 SESSION II - Presentation of Papers 1700-1830 Social Hour 1830-2030 Dinner/Evening Speaker: General Donn A. Starry (Ret) Vice President & General Manager Space Missions Group of Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation FRIDAY, 19 OCTOBER 1984 0800-1200 SESSION III - Panel Discussion: "User Perspectives of Pros and Cons of Knowledge Based Systems in Command and Control" Panel Moderator: Brigadier General David M. Maddox Commander, Combined Arms Operations Research Activity Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027 To make reservations or for further information, write or call: AFCEA SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE P.O. Box 456 Leavenworth, Kansas 66048 (913) 651-7800/AUTOVON 552-4721 MILITARY POC IS: CPT (P) CHRIS MERRICK CACDA, C3I DIRECTORATE FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-5300 AUTOVON: 552-4980/5338 COMMERCIAL: (913) 684-4980/5338 ARPANET: ABN.CJMERRICK ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 3-Oct-84 11:04:26-PDT,13138;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 3-Oct-84 11:02:08 Date: Wed 3 Oct 1984 10:56-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #130 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Wednesday, 3 Oct 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 130 Today's Topics: Games - Chess Program, Pattern Recognition - Minimal Spanning Trees, Books - Tim Johnson's Report, Academia - Top Graduate Programs, AI Tools - OPS5 & Windows, Games - Computer Chess Tournament & Delphi Game ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 84 21:46:14 EDT From: "David J. Littleboy" Subject: Chess Request I would like to acquire a state of the art chess program, preferably better than USCF 1500, to run on a 68000 based machine (an Apollo). Something written in any of the usual languages (C, Pascal) would probably be useful. Since I intend to use it as an opponent for the learning program I am building, I would also like the sources. I am, of course, willing to pay for the program. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. Alternatively, does anyone know of a commercial chess machine with an RS-232 port? Thanks much, David J. Littleboy Littleboy@Yale ...!decvax!yale!littleboy By the way, the basic theoretical claim I start from is that the "problem space" a chess player functions in is determined not so much by the position at hand, as by the set of ideas, plans, and experiences he brings to bear on that position. Thus I view chess as a planning activity, with the goals to be planned for deriving from a player's experiences in similar positions. ------------------------------ Date: 2 Oct 1984 11:25-cst From: "George R. Cross" Subject: MST distributions [Forwarded from the SRI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I am interested in references to the following problem: Suppose we have n-points uniformly distributed in a subset S contained in p-dimensional Euclidean space R^p: 1.What is the distribution of the largest length of the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) over the n-points? Assume Euclidean distance is used to define the edge weights. 2.What is the distribution of the length of edges in the MST? 3.What is the distribution of the size of the maximal clique? Asymptotic results or expected values of these quantities would be interesting also. We expect to make use of this information in cluster algorithms. Thanks, George Cross Computer Science Louisiana State University CSNET: cross%lsu@csnet-relay ------------------------------ Date: Tue 2 Oct 84 09:54:13-PDT From: C.S./Math Library Subject: Tim Johnson's Report The Commercial Application of Expert Systems Technology by Tim Johnson is a 1984 publication from Ovum Ltd., 14 Penn Road, London N7 9RD, England. It is also available from IPI, 164 Pecora Way, Portola Valley, Ca. 94025 and sells for $395. The report is 382 pages and primarily covers expert systems research in the USA and UK although it also describes some of the larger research projects worlwide. Harry Llull, Stanford University Math/CS Library ------------------------------ Date: 29 Sep 84 20:19:50-PDT (Sat) From: decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!daryoush @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Top Ten Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.149 Stanford is defintely one of the 3 best, if not THE best. --id ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 84 11:41:55 EDT From: BIESEL@RUTGERS.ARPA Subject: OPS5 info summary. Thanks are due to all the folks who responded to my request for information on OPS5. What follows is a summary of this information. There are at least three version of OPS5 currently available: 1) DEC Compiler QA668-CM in BLISS, available to 2 and 4 year degree granting institutions for $1000. Documentation: AA-GH00A-TE Forgy's Guide AA-BH99A-TE DEC's User Guide 2)Forgy's version (Charles.Forgy@CMU-CS-A), running under Franz Lisp on VAXen. A manual is also available from the same source. 3)A T Lisp version created by Dan Neiman and John Martin at ITT (decvax!ittvax!wxlvax!martin@Berkeley). This version is also supported by some software tools, but cannot be given away. For costs and procedures contact John Martin. Short courses on OPS5 are available from: Smart System Technology 6870 Elm Street McLean, VA 22101 (703) 448-8562 Elaine Kant and Lee Brownston@CMU-CS-A, Robert Farrell@Yale and Nancy Martin at Wang Labs are writing a book on OPS5, to be published this Spring by Addison_Wesley. Regards, Pete ------------------------------ Date: Mon 1 Oct 84 14:35:13-MDT From: Stan Shebs Subject: Summary of Window Responses I got several replies to my question about the relation between windows and expert systems. The consensus seemed to be that since an expert system development environment is like a programming environment, and since PEs are known to benefit from having multiple windows available, windows are an important part of expert system tools. Incidentally, the issue of graphics is orthogonal - graphics is useful in a great number of applications (try describing the weirder geologic formations in words!), although perhaps not all. I have a little trouble with both assumptions. I looked in my nifty collection of reprints, "Interactive Programming Environments" (Barstow, Shrobe, and Sandewall, eds., pub. by McGraw-Hill), and found no research supporting the second assertion. Its main support appeared to be anecdotal. My own anecdotal experience is that even experienced users spend an inordinate amount of clock time trying to do something right, but are not aware of just how much time they're taking (pick a menu item, oops!, undo, try again, then search all over the screen for 5 chars of text, then go through an elaborate sequence of ops to grab those chars, paste them in the wrong place when your mouse hand jiggles, delete, and try again, etc). It's interesting to note that Winograd's two papers (from 1974 and 1979) talk about all kinds of things that a PE should have, but with no mention of graphics anywhere. The first assertion appears to be true, and is a sad comment on the sophistication of today's expert system tools. If expert system environments are just PEs, why not just supply PEs? What's the important difference between a Lisp stack backtrace and a rule system backtrace? Why can't today's expert system tools at least provide a TMS and some detailed explanation facilities? Why hasn't anybody included some meta-level knowledge about the tool itself, as opposed to supplying an inscrutable block of code and a (possibly correct) user's manual? I don't understand. It seems as though the programming mentality reigns supreme (if you don't understand that remark, go back and carefully reread Winograd's 1979 paper "Beyond Programming Languages" (in CACM, and reprinted in the abovementioned book). stan shebs ------------------------------ Date: Tue Oct 2 12:24:29 1984 From: mclure@sri-prism Subject: reminder of upcoming computer chess tournament in San Francisco This is a reminder that this coming Sunday (Oct 7) will herald the beginning of the battle of the titans at the San Francisco Hilton "continental parlors" room at 1pm. Cray Blitz the reigning world champion program will attempt to squash the vengeful Belle. Nuchess, a perennial "top-finishing contender" and descendent of Chess 4.5, wants a piece of the action and would be very happy to see the Belle/Cray Blitz battle cause both to go up in a puff of greasy, black smoke, leaving Nuchess as the top dog for the entire year. It promises to be as interesting as it is every year. You don't have to be a computer-freak or chess-fanatic to enjoy the event. Come on by for a rip-roaring time. Stuart ------------------------------ Date: Sun Sep 30 16:02:03 1984 From: mclure@sri-prism Subject: Delphi 15: cruncher nudges bishop The Vote Tally -------------- The winner is: 14 ... Ne8 There were 16 votes. We had a wide mixture. The group seemed to have difficulty forming a plan. Many different plans were suggested. The Machine Moves ----------------- Depth Move Time for search Nodes Machine's Estimate 8 ply h3 6 hrs, 4 mins 2.18x10^ +4% of a pawn (P-KR3) Humans Move # Votes BR ** -- BQ BN BR BK ** 14 ... Ne8 4 ** BP ** -- BB BP BP BP 14 ... Rc8 3 BP ** -- BP -- ** -- ** 14 ... Nh5 3 ** -- ** WP BP -- ** -- 14 ... Nd7 2 -- ** -- ** WP ** BB ** 14 ... Qd7 2 ** -- WN -- WB WN ** WP 14 ... Nxe4 1 WP WP -- ** WQ WP WP ** 14 ... Qb6 1 WR -- ** -- WR -- WK -- Prestige 8-ply The machine's evaluation turned from negative to slightly positive. Apparently it likes this position somewhat but still considers the position even. The Game So Far --------------- 1. e4 (P-K4) c5 (P-QB4) 11. Be2 (B-K2) Nxe2 (NxB) 2. Nf3 (N-KB3) d6 (P-Q3) 12. Qxe2 (QxN) Be7 (B-K2) 3. Bb5+(B-N5ch) Nc6 (N-QB3) 13. Nc3 (N-QB3) O-O (O-O) 4. o-o (O-O) Bd7 (B-Q2) 14. Be3 (B-K3) Ne8 (N-K1) 5. c3 (P-QB3) Nf6 (N-KB3) 15. h3 (P-KR3) 6. Re1 (R-K1) a6 (P-QR3) 7. Bf1 (B-KB1) e5 (P-K4) 8. d4 (P-Q4) cxd4 (PXP) 9. cxd4 (PXP) Bg4 (B-N5) 10. d5 (P-Q5) Nd4 (N-Q5) Commentary ---------- BLEE.ES@XEROX 14 ... Ne8 as 14 ... Nh5?; 15. h3 B:f3 (if 15 ... Bd7?; 16. N:e5 and white wins a pawn) 16. Q:f3 Nf6 (now we've lost the bishop pair, a tempo and the knight still blockades the f pawn and the white queen is active...) (if 16 ... g6?; 16. Bh6 Ng7; 17. g4 and black can't support f5 because the light square bishop is gone) while 14 ... Nd7?; 15. h3 Bh5; 16. g4 Bg6; and black has trouble supporting f5. I expect play to proceed: 15. h3 Bd7 16. g4 g6 17. Bh6 Ng7 18. Qd3 f5 (at last!) 19. g:f5 g:f5 JPERRY@SRI-KL In keeping with the obvious strategic plan of f5, I vote for 14...N-K1. N-Q2 looks plausible but I would rather reserve that square for another piece. SMILE@UT-SALLY 14 ... Nh5. Paves the way for f5. Other possibility is Qd7 first. Either way I believe f5 is the key (as it often is!). REM@MIT-MC I'm not much for attacking correctly, so let's prepare to double rooks: 14. ... Q-Q2 (Qd7) (It also helps a K-side attack if somebody else can work out the details.) VANGELDER@SU-SCORE 14. ... Nxe4 (vote) In spite of what the master says, White can indefinitely prevent f5 by h3, Bd7, g4. Will the computer find this after Ne8 by Black? Stronger over the board is 14 ... Nxe4. If 15. Nxe4 f5 16. N/4g5 f4 and Black regains the piece with advantage. The majority will probably not select this move, which may be just as well, as attack-by-committee could present some real problems. Nevertheless, the computer presumably saw and examined several ply on this line and it would be interesting to see what it thinks White's best defense is. An alternate line for White is 15. Nxe4 f5 16. N/4d2 e4 17. h3 Bh5 18. Bd4 Bg4!? 19. Nxe4 fxe4 20. Qxe4 Bxf3 21. gxf3 Rf4. There are many variations, but most are not decisive in 8 ply, so the computer's evaluation function would be put to the acid test. ACHEN.PA@XEROX 13 ... Nh5 (keep up the pressure) this might provoke 14 g3 Bd7, either 15 Nd2 or h4 to start a counter attack. the black is hoping to exchange the remaining knight with queen's bishop 16 ... Nf4 then maybe attempt to encircle the white with Qb6 attacking the weakside behind the pawns. (note: if 13 ... Nh5 can't 14 ... f5 for the obvious reason) Solicitation ------------ Your move, please? Replies to Arpanet: mclure@sri-prism, mclure@sri-unix or Usenet: ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!sri-prism!mclure ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 5-Oct-84 10:02:25-PDT,20707;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 5-Oct-84 09:56:45 Date: Fri 5 Oct 1984 09:50-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #131 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Friday, 5 Oct 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 131 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Sastric Sanskrit & LOGLAN & Interlinquas ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 1984 23:55 PDT From: KIPARSKY@SU-CSLI.ARPA Subject: Sanskrit has ambiguity and syntax Contrary to what Briggs claims, Shastric Sanskrit the same kinds of ambiguities as other natural languages. In particular, the language allows, and the texts abundantly exemplify: (1) anaphoric pronouns with more than one possible antecedent, (2) ambigous scope of quantifiers and negation, (3) ellipses, (4) lexical homonymy, (5) morphological syncretism. Even the special regimented language in which Panini's grammar of Sanskrit is formalized (not a natural language though based on Sanskrit) falls short of complete unambiguity (see Kiparsky, Panini as a Variationist, MIT Press 1979). The claim that Sanskrit has no syntax is also untrue, even if syntax is understood to mean just word order: rajna bhikshuna bhavitavyam would normally mean "the beggar will have to become king", bhikshuna rajna bhavitavyam "the king will have to become a beggar" --- but in any case, there is a lot more to syntax than word order. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Oct 84 01:23:07 PDT From: "Dr. Michael G. Dyer" Subject: Sastric Sanskrit Re: Rick Briggs' comments on a version of Sastric Sanskrit. Well, I AM incredulous! Imagine. The entire natural language processing problem in AI has already been solved! and a millenium ago! All we need to do now is publish a 'manual' of this language and our representational problem in NLP is over! Since this language can say anything you want, and "mean exactly what you say" and "with no effort", and since it is unambiguous, it sounds like my problems as an NLP researcher are over. I DO have a few minor concerns (still). The comment that there are no translations, and that it takes sanskrit scholars a "very long time" to figure out what it says, makes it sound to me like maybe there's some complex interpretations going on. Does this mean that a 'parser' of some sort is still needed? Also, I'd greatly appreciate a clearer reference to the book (?) mentioned. Who is the publisher? Is it in English? What year was it published? How can we get a copy? Another problem: since this language has an "extensive literature" does that include poetry? novels? Are the poems unambiguous? are there plays on words? metaphor? (Can you say the equivalent of "Religion is the opiate of the masses"? and if not, it that natural? if not, then how are analogical mappings formed?) satire? humor? puns? exaggeration? fantasy? does the language look like a bunch of horn clauses? (most of the phenomena in the list above involve AMBIGUITY of context, beliefs, word senses, connotations, etc. How does the literature avoid these features and remain literature?) Finally, Yale researchers have been arguing that representational systems for story understanding requires explict conceptual structures making use of scripts, plans, goals, etc. Do such constructs (e.g. scripts) exist explicity in the language? does its literature make use of idioms? e.g. "John drove Mary [home]" vs "John drove Mary [to drink]" Also, why is English "worse" than other languages? Chinese has little syntax and it's ambiguous. Latin has very free word order with prefixes and suffixes and it's ambiguous. Both rely heavily on context and implicit world knowledge. Early work by Schank included representing a Mayan dialect (i.e. Quiche') in Conceptual Dependency. Quiche seems to have features standard to other natural languages, so how is English worse? In the book "Reader over Your Shoulder", Graves & Hodge have a humorous piece about some town councilmen trying to write a leash law. No matter how they state it, unhappy assumptions pop up. e.g. "No dogs in the park without a leash" seems to be addressed to the dogs. "People must take their dogs into the park on a leash" seems to FORCE people to drag there dogs into the park (and at what hour?) even if they don't want to do so. etc etc what about reference? does sastric sanskrit have pronouns? what about IT? does IT have THEM? etc if so, how does it avoid ambiguous references? how many different types of pronouns does it have (if any)? Let's have some specific examples. E.g. does it have the equivalent of the word "like"? Before you answer "yes", there's a difference between "John likes newsweek" and "John likes chocolate" In one case we want our computer to infer that John likes to "eat" chocolate (not read it) and in the other case that he likes to read newsweek (not eat it). Sure, I COULD have said "John likes to eat chocolate" specifically. but I can abbreviate that simply to "x likes " and let the intelligent listener figure out what I mean. When I say "John likes to eat chocolate" do I mean he enjoys the activity of eating, or that he feels better after he's eaten? When I say "John likes to eat chocolate but feels terrible afterwards" I used the word "but" because I know it violated a standard inference on the part of the listener. Natural languages are "expectation-based". Does this ancient language require the speaker to explicitly state all inferences & expectations? Like I said already, if this ancient language really does what is claimed, then we should all dump the puny representational systems we've been trying to invent and extend over the last decade and adopt this ancient language as our final say on semantics. Recent work by Layman Allen (1st Law & Technology conference) in normalizing American law shows that the logical connectives used by lawyers are horribly ambiguous. Lawyers use content semantics to avoid noticing these logical ambiguities. Does this brand of sanskrit have a text of ancient law? What connectives did they use? Maybe the legal normalization problem has also already been solved. Did they have a dictionary? If so, can we see some of the entries? How do the dictionary entries combine? No syntax AT ALL? Loglan adds suffixes onto everything and it's plenty awkward. It has people who write poems in it and other "literature" but you can probably pack all loglanners who "generate" loglanese into a single phone booth. Just how many ancient scholars spoke this sanskrit? I look forward to more discussion on this incredible language. -- A still open-minded but somewhat skeptical inquirer ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 4-Oct-84 23:59:06-BST From: O'KEEFE HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: An Unambiguous Natural Language? There was a recent claim in this digest that a "branch of Sastric Sanskrit" was an unambiguous natural language. There are a number of points I'd like to raise: (a) If there are no translated texts, and if it takes a very long time for an expert in "ordinary" Sanskrit to read untranslated texts, it seems more than likely that the appearance of being free from ambiguity is an illusion due to our ignorance. (b) Thanks for the reference. But judging by the title you need to know a lot more about Indian languages to read it than most of the readers of this digest, and without knowing the publisher one would have to be thoroughly at home with the literature to even find it. (c) It's news to me that Sanskrit wasn't an Indo-European language. The Greek-English dictionary I have a copy of keeps pointing to Sanskrit roots as if the two languages were related, but what do they know? If Sastric Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, it is astonishing that it alone is unambiguous. It's especially astonishing when the one non-Indo-European language of which I have even the sketchiest acquaintance (Maaori) isn't unambiguous either and when no-one seems to be claiming that Japanese or Chinese or any other common living language is unambiguous. (d) Dead languages are peculiarly subject to claims of perfection. Without a living informant, we cannot tell whether our failure to discover another reading means there isn't one or whether it just means that we're ignorant of a word sense. I suppose this is point (a) again. (e) If a language permits metaphor, it is ambiguous. The word for "see" in ordinary Sanskrit is something like "oide", and I'm told that it can mean "understand" as well as "perceive with the eye". Do we KNOW that the Sastric Sanskrit words for "see", "grasp", and so on were NEVER employed with this meaning? (f) We're actually dealing with an ambiguous term here: "ambiguous". The following definition is the only one I can think of which is not dependent on some "expert's" arbitrary choice: a sentence S in a text is ambiguous if taking into account assumed common knowledge and the context supplied by the rest of the text there is some natural language L such that S has at least two incompatible translations in L. Here's an example: there are four people in a room, A, B, C, D. This is the beginning of the text, and nothing else in the text lets us judge these points, and we've never heard of A,B,C,D before. A says to D: "we came from X." I assume we know exactly what place X is. Now, does A mean that A,B,C and D all came from X? (reminding D) A,B,C came from X? A and D came from X? (he knows B and C are listening) A and one of B and C came from X? We need to distinguish between dual and plural number, and between inclusive first person and exclusive first person. If the language L marks the gender of plural subjects, we may need to know in the case of A and (B or C but not both) which of B and C was intended. Now consider A mentioning to D "that table", assuming that there are several tables in the same room, all of the same sort. We need to know whether the table he is indicating is near D (it can't be near A or he'd say "this table") or whether it is distant from both A and D. Does the branch of Sanskrit in question make all these distinctions? Can every tense in it be translated to a unique English tense? Does it have no broad colour terms such as the "grue" present in several languages? Failing that, by what criterion IS it unambiguous? {What's a better definition of ambiguity? This one strikes most people I've offered it to as too strong.} (g) Absence of syntax is no guarantee of unambiguity. Consider the phrase "blackbird". It doesn't matter how we indicate that black modifies bird, the source of ambiguity is that we don't know whether the referent is some generic bird that happens to be black (a crow, say), or whether this phrase is used as the name of a species. In English you can tell the difference by prosody, but that doesn't work to well with long-dead languages, and if you thought it always meant turdus merula you might never find anything in the fixed stock of surviving texts to reveal the mistake. (h) What evidence is there that this language was spoken? Note that if a text in this language quotes someone as speaking in it, that still isn't evidence that the language was spoken. I've just been reading a book set in Greece, with Greek characters, but the whole thing was in English... Are there historians writing in other languages who say that the language was spoken? (i) There is another ambiguous term: "natural" language. Is Esperanto a natural language? Is Shelta? The pandits were nobody's fools, after all, Panini invented Backus-Naur form for the express purpose of describing Sanskrit, and I am not so contemptuous of the ancient Indians as to say that they couldn't do a better job of designing an artificial language than Zamenhof did. I'm not saying the language isn't unambiguous, just that it's such a startling claim that I'll need more evidence before I believe it. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 84 12:57:24-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!sdamos!elman @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Sanskrit Article-I.D.: sdamos.17 Rick, I am very skeptical about your claims that Sastric Sanskrit is an unambiguous language. I also feel you misunderstand the nature and consequences of ambiguity in natural human language. | The language is a branch of Sastric Sanskrit which flourished |between the 4th century B.C and 4th century A.D., although its |beginnings are somewhat older. That it is unambiguous is without |question. Your judgment is probably based on written sources. The sources may also be technical texts. All this indicates is that it was possible to write in Sastric Sanskrit with a minimum of ambiguity. So what? Most languages allow utterances which have no ambiguity. Read a mathematics text. |The problem is that most (maybe all) of us are used |to languages like English (one of the worst) or other languages which |are so poor as vehicles of transmission of logical data. I think you have fallen victim to the trap of the egocentrism. English is not particularly less (or more) effective than other languages as a vehicle for communicating logical data, although it may seem that way to a native monolingual speaker. | The facility and ease with which these Indians communicated |indicates that it is possible for a natural language to serve all |purposes of artificial languages based on logic. How do you know how easily they communicated? I'm serious. And how easily do you read a text on partial differential equations? An utterance which is structurally ambiguous may not be the easiest to read. |If one could say what one wishes to say with absolute clarity (although |with apparent redundancy) in the same time and with the same ease as |you say part of what you mean in English, why not do so? And if a |population actually got used to talking in this way there would be |much more clarity and less confusion in our communication. Here we come to an important point. You assume that the ambiguity of natural languages results in loss of clarity. I would argue that in most cases the structural ambiguity in utterances is resolved by other (linguistic or paralinguistic) means. Meaning is determined by a complex interaction of factors, of which surface structure is but one. Surface ambiguity gives the language a flexibility of expression. That flexibility does not necessarily entail lack of clarity. Automatic (machine-based) parsers, on the other hand, have a very difficult time taking all the necessary interactions into account and so must rely more heavily on a reliable mapping of surface to base structure. | As to how this is accomplished, basically SYNTAX IS ELIMINATED. |Word order is unimportant, speaking is thus comparable to adding a |series of facts to a data-base. Oops! Languages may have (relatively) free word order and still have syntax. A language without syntax would be the linguistic find of the century! In any event, the principal point I would like to make is that structural ambiguity is not particularly bad nor incompatible with "logical" expression. Human speech recognizers have a variety of means for dealing with ambiguity. In fact, my guess is we do better at understanding languages which use ambiguity than languages which exclude it. Jeff Elman Phonetics Lab, Dept. of Linguistics, C-008 Univ. of Calif., San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093 (619) 452-2536, (619) 452-3600 UUCP: ...ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdamos!elman ARPAnet: elman@nprdc.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 5 Oct 1984 10:15-EDT From: jmg@Mitre-Bedford Subject: Loglan, properties of interlinguas, and NLs as interlinguas There has been a running conversation regarding the use of an intermediate language or interlingua to facilitate communication between man and machine. The discussion lately has focused on whether or not it is possible or even desirable for a natural language (i.e., one which was made for and spoken/written by humans in some historical and cultural context) to serve in this role. At last glance it would seem to be a standoff between the cans and cannots. It might be interesting to see if a consensus can at least be reached regarding what an interlingua might be like and therefore whether any natural languages or formal ones for that matter would fit or could be made to fit the necessary form. It would seem that a candidate language would possess a fair sample of the following characteristics (feel free to add to or modify this list): 1) small number of grammar rules--to reduce the trauma of learninng a new language, simplify parsing program, and generally speed up the works 2) small number of speech sounds--to ease learning, and, if well chosen, improve the distinction between sounds and thus the apprehensibil- ity of the spoken language 3) phonologically consistent--for similar reasons as 2) above 4) relative freedom from syntactic ambiguity--to ease translation activities and provide an experimental tool for exploring ambiguity in NLs and thought 5) graphologically regular/consistent with phonology--to ease the transition to the interlingua by introducing no new characters and only simple spelling rules 6) simple morphology--to improve the recognizability of words and word types by limiting the structures of legal words to a few and making word construction regular 7) resolvability--to aid in machine and human information extraction, particularly in noisy environments, by combining well-chosen phonology and morphology 8) freedom from cultural or metaphysical bias--to avoid introducing unintended effects due to specific built-in assumptions about the universe that may be contained within the language 9) logical clarity--to ensure the ability to construct the classical logical connections important to semantically and linguistically useful expressions 10) wealth of metaphor--to allow this linguistic feature to be studied and provide a creative tool for expression These features were selected to try to characterize the intent of a hypothetical designer of an interlingua. Possibly no product could fully merge all the features without compromising unacceptably some of the desir- able traits. If this list appears unacceptable, make suggestions and/or additions and deletions until a workable list results. It is likely that no current or historical natural language would combine a sufficient number of the above features to stand out as an obvious choice to use as interlingua. Simplicity, regularity, ease of learning, ease of information extraction, lack of syntactic ambiguity, and the rest are the earmarks of a constructed language. It remains to be seen that a so-constructed language can be used by humans to express unrestrictedly the full range of human thought. In response to Dr. Dyer's comment about loglan, I can testify that it is not all that hard to get around in. It is a "foreign" language, however, and thus takes some learning and getting used to. It does have several of the features that an interlingua would. Only experience will ultimately reveal whether it is "natural" enough to be useful for exploring the rela- tionship between thought and language and formal enough to be machine- realizable. -Michael Gilmer jmg@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 7-Oct-84 09:52:21-PDT,12693;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 5-Oct-84 10:30:02 Date: Fri 5 Oct 1984 10:19-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #132 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Saturday, 6 Oct 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 132 Today's Topics: Bindings - Query about D. Hatfield, Applications - AI and Business, AI Literature - List of Sources, Academia - Top Graduate Programs, Conference - Fifth Generation at ACM 84, AI Tools - OPS5 & YAPS & Window Systems & M.1, Scientific Method - Induction, Seminar - Natural Language Structure ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 1984 15:54 EDT From: MONTALVO%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Query about D. Hatfield Wed., Aug. 29 Computer Science Seminar at IBM-SJ 10:00 A.M. WYSIWYG PROGRAMMING D. Hatfield, IBM Cambridge Scientific Center Host: D. Chamberlin This message appeared some time ago. [Can someone provide] any pointers to the speaker, D. Hatfield? Does he have any papers on the same subject? Thanks. Fanya Montalvo, MIT, AI Lab. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 84 8:39:05-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!noscvax!bloomber @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: AI for Business Article-I.D.: noscvax.641 I would also be interested in pointers to books or articles that emphasize the business (preferably practical) uses of AI. Thanks ... Mike -- Real Life: Michael Bloomberg MILNET: bloomber@nosc UUCP: [ihnp4,akgua,decvax,dcdwest,ucbvax]!sdcsvax!noscvax!bloomber ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Oct 84 00:05 CDT From: Jerry Bakin Subject: Keeping up with AI research I am interested in following trends and research in AI. What do active AI'ers feel are the important journals, organizations and conferences? Thanks, Jerry Bakin -- Bakin@HI-Multics [I have sent Jerry the list of journals and conferences compiled by Larry Cipriani and published in AIList V1 N43. In short, AI Magazine AISB Newsletter Annual Review in Automatic Programming Artificial Intelligence Behavioral and Brain Sciences Brain and Cognition Brain and Language Cognition Cognition and Brain Theory Cognitive Psychology Cognitive Science Communications of the ACM Computational Linguistics Computational Linguistics and Computer Languages Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing Computing Reviews Human Intelligence IEEE Computer IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Intelligence International Journal of Man Machine Studies Journal of the ACM Journal of the Assn. for the Study of Perception New Generation Computing Pattern Recognition Robotics Age Robotics Today SIGART Newsletter Speech Technology IJCAI International Joint Conference on AI AAAI American Association for Artificial Intelligence TINLAP Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing ACL Association of Computational Linguistics AIM AI in Medicine MLW Machine Learning Workshop CVPR Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (formerly PRIP) PR Pattern Recognition (also called ICPR) IUW Image Understanding Workshop (DARPA) T&A Trends and Applications (IEEE, NBS) DADCM Workshop on Data Abstraction, Databases, and Conceptual Modeling CogSci Cognitive Science Society EAIC European AI Conference Would anyone care to add a list of organizations? -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Oct 84 13:31:08 From: Bob Woodham Subject: Top Graduate Programs I cannot resist offering my contribution but first three comments: 1. A strict linear ordering is rather meaningless so I've simply listed schools alphabetically within two broad categories. 2. Not surprisingly, given my location, I've expanded things to all of North America. There are good programs outside the continent but I'm not qualified to comment. 3. If your favourite school is missing, let that indicate my ignorance rather than a slight. Since this is roughly the advice I give our own students, I'd like to hear more. Category I: Major Strength in all Areas of AI (alphabetic order) CMU, MIT, Stanford Category II: Major Strength in at least one Area of AI, adequate overall (alphabetic order) Illinois, McGill, Penn, Rochester, Rutgers, Texas (at Austin), Toronto, UBC, Yale There are other schools with strengths, or emerging strengths, that are worth considering. Thankfully, I'm already beyond the requested number of ten. Any of the above schools could be an excellent choice, depending on the particular area of interest. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 1984 14:24-PDT From: scacchi%usc-cse.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: ACM 84 Just a short note to point out that at the 1984 ACM Conference in San Francisco has a number of sessions on AI and Fifth Generation technologies. In particular, there are at least three sessions that focus on the broader social consequences that might arise from the widespread adoption and use of AI systems. The three sessions include: 1. "The Workplace Impacts of Fifth Generation Computing -- AI and Office Automation" on tuesday (9 Oct 84) morning 2. "Social and Organizational Consequences of New Generation Technology" on tuesday afternoon. 3. "Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence" on wednesday afternoon. If you are able to attend the ACM 84 conference and you are interested in discussing or learning about social analyses of AI technology development, then you should try to attend these sessions. -Walt- (Scacchi@Usc-cse via CSnet) ------------------------------ Date: 2 Oct 84 16:03:48-PDT (Tue) From: hplabs!hpda!fortune!wdl1!jbn @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: obtaining OPS-5 Article-I.D.: wdl1.458 OPS-5 is obtained from Charles Forgy at CMU, reached at the following address. Do not contact me regarding this. Forgy, Charles L. (CLF) CHARLES.FORGY@CMU-CS-A Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department Schenley Park Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 Phone: (412) 578-3612 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Oct 84 23:39:58 edt From: mark@tove (Mark Weiser) Subject: ops5 and yaps. For those of you interested in ops5, don't forget YAPS. Yaps was described by Liz Allen of Maryland at the '83 AAAI. Yaps, yet another production system, uses Forgy's high speed short cuts for left hands sides which fall into ops5's limited legal lhs, but yaps also allows fully general left hand sides. Yaps second advantage over ops5 is that it is imbedded in the Franz lisp flavors system (also from Maryland), so that one can have several simultaneous yaps objects and send them messages like add-a-rule, add-object-to-database, etc. For more information, mail liz@maryland. Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!mark ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 84 18:21:18-PDT (Mon) From: hplabs!hpda!fortune!wdl1!jbn @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Windows and Expert Systems Article-I.D.: wdl1.451 I've noticed this lately too; I've also seen the claim that ``windows were developed ten years ago by the AI community'', but the early Alto effort at PARC, which I saw demonstrated in 1975 by Allen Kay, was not AI-oriented; they were working primarily on improved user interfaces, including window systems. John Nagle ------------------------------ Date: 30 Sep 84 8:30:02-PDT (Sun) From: decvax!mcnc!unc!ulysses!burl!clyde!watmath!water!rggoebel@Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Clarification Regarding Teknowledge's M.1 Product Article-I.D.: water.20 I've just read what amounts to an advertisement for Teknowledge's M.1 software product. I can't believe there isn't something to be criticized in a product that comes from such an infant technology? I'd be interested to know what's wrong with M.1? Will Teknowledge give it away to universities to teach students about expert systems? Is SRI-KL using M.1 for anything (note origin of original message)? On a lighter note, what is novel about a software system that supports ``variables?'' Randy Goebel Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence Group Computer Science Department University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA N2L 3G1 UUCP: {decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!watmath!water!rggoebel CSNET: rggoebel%water@waterloo.csnet ARPA: rggoebel%water%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa [I am not aware of any SRI use of M.1, nor do I know of anyone at SRI who has a financial interest in it. Many people around the country have mailboxes on systems where they once worked or otherwise have incidental access; I assume that is the case here. An SRI group has recently come out with its own micro-based expert system toolkit, SeRIES-PC, a PROSPECTOR derivative. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 84 22:21:20-PDT (Mon) From: hplabs!hpda!fortune!wdl1!jbn @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Re: Clarification Regarding Teknowle Article-I.D.: wdl1.453 I'd like to see them offer a training version of the program for $50 or so which allowed, say, a maximum of 50 rules, enough to try out the system but not enough to implement a production application. This would get the tool (and the technology) some real exposure. John Nagle ------------------------------ Date: Wed 3 Oct 84 00:05:12-PDT From: Tom Dietterich Subject: re: Induction Well I guess I don't understand Stan Shebs' point regarding induction very well. I agree with everything he said in his message: It is indeed possible to generate all possible generalizations of some fact within some fixed, denumerable domain of discourse. The problem of induction is to infer PLAUSIBLE beliefs from a finite set of examples. Shebs is correct in saying that from any finite set of examples, a very large (usually infinite) set of generalizations can be generated. He is also correct in saying that--in the absence of any other knowledge or belief--all of these generalizations are equally plausible. The problem is that in common-sense reasoning, all of these generalizations are not equally plausible. Some seem (to people) to be more plausible than others. This reflects some hidden assumptions or biases held by people about the nature of the common sense world. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Oct 84 15:17:51 pdt From: chertok%ucbkim@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Natural Language Structure BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Fall 1984 Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237A TIME: Tuesday, October 9, 11 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 2 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: Gilles Fauconnier, Linguistics Dept, UC San Diego & University of Paris TITLE: Roles, Space Connectors & Identification Paths ABSTRACT: Key aspects of natural language organization involve a general theory of connections linking mental constructions. Logical and structural analyses have overlooked this important dimension, which unifies many superficially complex and disparate phenomena. I will focus here on the many interpretations of descriptions and names, and suggest a reassessment of notions like rigidity, attributivity, or ``cross-world identification.'' ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 8-Oct-84 10:17:47-PDT,16005;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 8-Oct-84 10:07:46 Date: Mon 8 Oct 1984 09:42-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #133 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Monday, 8 Oct 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 133 Today's Topics: Bindings - John Hosking Query, Workstations - Electrical CAD/CAE & TI LISP Machine, AI Tools - Graph Display, Expert Systems - Liability, Humor - Theorem Proving Contest, Comments - Zadeh & Poker, Seminar - First Order Logic Mechanization ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Saturday, 6-Oct-84 2:12:41-BST From: O'KEEFE HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: References wanted Anyone know where I can find anything by John Hosking, now of Auckland University New Zealand? Said to be in expert systems/knowledge representation field. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 84 17:08:44-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!intelca!qantel!dual!amd!turtlevax!ken @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Electrical CAE software/hardware Article-I.D.: turtleva.541 We've been gathering information about CAD/CAE for electrical/computer engineering and have been deluged with a foot's worth of literature. No on makes the entire package of what we want, which includes schematic entry, hierarchical simulation, timing verification, powerful functional specification language, finite-state machine generator, PAL primitives, PLA and PROM high-level language specification compiling down to JEDEC format, driver for a Data I/O or more dependable PROM/PAL programmer, transient and frequency analysis (SPICE works well here), symbolic, analytical, and graphical mathematics, etc. We've accepted the fact that we will need to get several packages of software, but are prepared to buy no more than 1 extra piece of hardware, if we can't get software to run on our VAX or Cadlinc workstations. Has anyone used any of the available products? Does anyone have any recommendations? Following is a list of suppliers of CAE tools of some sort, for which I managed to get some literature, and is in no way guaranteed to be complete: Altera Assisted Technology Avera Corporation Cad Internet, Inc. Cadmatics Cadnetix Cadtec CAE Systems Calma Chancellor Computer Corporation Control Data Daisy Design Aids, Inc. Futurenet GenRad HHB Softron Inference Corp. Intergraph Interlaken Technology Corp. Mentor Metalogic, Inc. Metheus Mirashanta Omnicad Corp. Phoenix Racal-Redac Signal Technology, Inc. Silvar-Lisco Step Engineering Symbolics Teradyne Valid Vectron Verstatec Via Systems VLSI Technology, Inc. -- Ken Turkowski @ CADLINC, Palo Alto, CA UUCP: {amd,decwrl,flairvax,nsc}!turtlevax!ken ARPA: turtlevax!ken@DECWRL.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Fri 5 Oct 84 16:23:15-PDT From: Margaret Olender Subject: TI LISP MACHINE [Forwarded from the SRI-AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Texas Instruments invites ACM attendees (and AIC-ers) to see the new TI LISP machine demo-ed at the San Francisco Hilton 333 O'Farrel Street Imperial Suite Room #1915 Monday, October 8, 1984 5:00pm - 8:00pm Refreshments and hors d'oeuvers. Bring your ACM badge for admission. ...margaret ------------------------------ Date: Sat 6 Oct 84 23:56:50-PDT From: Scott Meyers Subject: Wanted: info on printing directed graphs I am faced with the need to come up with an algorithm for producing hardcopy of a directed graph, i.e. printing such a graph on a lineprinter or a V80 plotter. Rather than just plopping the nodes down helter-skelter, I will have an entry node to the graph which I will place at the far left of the plot, and then I will want to plot things so that the edges generally point to the right. If anyone has solved this problem or can give me pointers to places where it has been solved, or can offer any other assistance, I would very much like to hear from you. Thanks. Scott [Scott could also use a routine printing graphs top to bottom if that is available. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Oct 84 13:47:09 pdt From: Howard Trickey Subject: printing graphs [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I did a program that takes a graph description and produces a TeX input file which in turn produces a reasonably nice looking graph on the Dover (\special's are used to draw lines at arbitrary angles; I can use Boise by specifying only rectilinear lines, but it doesn't look as good). There's no way to use it as is for the output devices mentioned in the previous message, but the algorithms I used may be of interest. There can be different types of nodes, each drawn with a user-specified TeX macro. The graph description says which nodes there are and of what type, and what edges there are. Edges go to and from symbolically specified points on nodes. The output looks best when the graph is acyclic or nearly acyclic, since that's what my graphs are so I didn't spend time on other cases. The program isn't robust enough or easy enough to use for general use, but I can point people to it. If you need the capability badly enough, it's not too difficult to get used to. It's written in Franz Lisp. Howard Trickey ------------------------------ Date: 3 Oct 84 12:46:11-PDT (Wed) From: decvax!cwruecmp!atvax!ncoast!rich @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: AI decision systems - What are the risks for the vendor? Article-I.D.: ncoast.386 The rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence Software has caused me to wonder about some of the possible legal problems. SITUATION: We are a software vendor that develops an AI software package. this package has been tested and appears to be correct in design and logic. Additionally, the package indicates several alternative solutions as well as stating that there could be alternatives that are overlooked. What risk from a legal standpoint does the developer/vendor have to the user IF they follow the recommendation of the package AND the decision is proven to be incorrect several months later? I would appreciate your opinions and shall post the compiled responses to the net. From: | the.world!ucbvax!decvax!cwruecmp! Richard Garrett @ North Coast Xenix | {atvax!}ncoast!rich 10205 Edgewater Drive: Cleveland, OH |................................... (216) 961-3397 \ 44102 | ncoast (216) 281-8006 (300 Baud) ------------------------------ Date: Sat 6 Oct 84 14:01:30-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Liability Just as damning as using an incompetent [software] advisor is failing to use a competent one. If a doctor's error makes you a cripple for life, and if he had available (and perhaps even used) an expert system counceling a better course of treatment, is he not guilty of malpractice? Does the doctor incur a different liability than if he had used/not used a human consultant? The human consultant would normally bear part of the liability. Since you can't sue an expert system, do you sue the company that sold it? The programmer? The theoretician who developed the algorithm? I'm sure there are abundant legal precedents for all of the above. For anyone with the answers to the above, here's an even more difficult problem. Systems for monitoring and interpreting electrocardiograms are commonly adjusted at the "factory" to match the diagnostic style of the purchasing physician. Suppose that the doctor requests that this be done, or even does it himself. Suppose further that he is incompetent at this type of diagnosis (after all, he's buying a system to do it for him), and that customization to match his preferences can be shown to degrade the performance of the software. Is he liable for operating the system at less than full capability? I assume so. Is the manufacturer liable for making the adjustment, or for providing him the means of doing it himself? I would assume that also. What are the relative liabilities for all parties? -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 4 Oct 1984 09:51 EDT (Thu) From: Walter Hamscher Subject: GSL sponsored Theorem Proving Contest [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] DATE: Friday, 5 October, 12 noon PLACE: 3rd Floor Playroom HOST: Reid Simmons REAGAN vs. MONDALE THEOREM PROVING CONTEST To help the scientific community better assess this year's presidential candidates, GSL (in conjunction with the Laboratory for Computer Research and Analysis of Politics) proudly presents the first Presidential Theorem Proving Contest. The candidates will have 10 minutes to prepare their proofs, 10 minutes to present, and then 5 minutes to criticise their opponents' proofs. A pseudorandom number generator will be used to determine the order of presentation. The candidates will be asked to prove the following theorem: * Let (a + a + a ...) be a conditionally convergent series. 1 2 3 Show by construction that there exists a rearrangement of the a such that i lim (a + ... a ) = 0. n -> inf 1 n Note: To increase public interest in this contest, the theorem will actually be phrased in the following way: Let (deficit + deficit + deficit ...) be a 1980 1981 1982 series with both positive and negative terms. Rearrange the terms so that: lim (deficit + ... deficit ) = $ 0.00 year -> inf 1980 year ------------------------------ Date: 2 Oct 84 21:50:35-PDT (Tue) From: hplabs!ames!jaw @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Humor & Seminar - Slimy Logic Article-I.D.: ames.548 This B-Board article [on slimy logic] is a master parody, right down to the "so to speak" mannerism. Thanks for the entertainment! I took a couple of courses from Professor Zadeh at Berkeley in the 70s, not just in Fuzzy Logic, but also formal languages, where we all struggled with LALR(1) lookahead sets. The fuzzy controversy was raging then, with Prof. William Kahan, numerical analyst, being Zadeh's arch-enemy. Kahan was a natural devil's advocate, himself none too popular for raving on, in courses on data structures, a bit muchly about the way CDC 6400 Fortrash treated roundoff of the 60th bit. Apparently, there's some bad blood over the size of Zadeh's grants (NSF?) for his fuzzy baby. They both have had tenure for years, so maybe a pie-throwing contest would be appropriate. Anyway, looks like the fuzzy stuff is now making the rounds at MIT. Zadeh, who ironically wrote the book on linear systems (circa 1948), at least got the linguistics department hopping with the fuzzies, influencing the Lakoffs (George, mainly) to trade in their equally ad hoc transformational grammars for fuzzy logic. Kinda soured me on natural language theory, too. I mean, is there life after YACC? Old Lotfi has left an interesting legacy via his children. Zadeh's daughter, I understand is a brilliant lawyer. One son, after getting his statistics Ph.D. at 20 or so, claims to have draw poker figured out. Bluffing is dealt with by simple probability theory. As I remember, "Winning Poker Systems" is one of those "just-memorize-the-equivalent-of- ten-phone-numbers-for-instant-riches" books. He worked his way through school with funds won in Emeryville poker parlors. Not too shabby, but not too fuzzy, either ... -- James A. Woods {ihnp4,hplabs,philabs}!ames!jaw (jaw@riacs.ARPA) [Dr. Zadeh also invented the Z-transform used in digital signal processing and control theory. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 5 Oct 84 18:31:33-PDT (Fri) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!rocksanne!sunybcs!gloria!colonel @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: fuzzy poker Article-I.D.: gloria.578 One son, after getting his statistics Ph.D. at 20 or so, claims to have draw poker figured out. ... When I was working with the SUNY-Buffalo POKER GROUP, we managed to verify some of N. Zadeh's tables with hard statistics. Anybody who's interested can find some of our results in Bramer's anthology _Computer Game-Playing: Theory and Practice_ (1983). -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel ------------------------------ Date: 05 Oct 84 1318 PDT From: Carolyn Talcott Subject: Continuing Seminar - FOL & First Order Logic Mechanization [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Seminar on FOL: a mechanized interpretation of logic presented by Richard Weyhrauch Time: 4:15 to 6:00 Date: Alternate Tuesdays begining October 9 Place: Room 252 Margret Jacks Hall The topic of this seminar is a description of FOL, a collection of structures that can be used to provide a mechanized interpretation of logic. We will present specific examples of interest for logic, philosophy and artificial intelligence to illustrate how the FOL structures give formal solutions, or at least shed light on, some classical problems. We will also describe the details of FOL, a computer program for constructing these structures. This provides a link between logic and AI. Mechanization is an alternative foundation to both constructive and classical logic. I have always found constructive foundations unconvincing. Taken by itself, it fails to explain how we can understand classical semantics well enough to make the distinction. Even more -- a philosophically satisfactory account of reasoning must explain why in the comparatively well behaved case of mathematical foundations the classical arguments carry conviction for practising mathematicians. On the other hand the use of set theoretic semantics also seems to require infinite structures to understand elementary arguments. This conflicts with the simple observation that people understand these arguments and they are built from only a finite amount of matter. Mechanization provides a semantics that is both finitist and at the same time allows the use of classical reasoning. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Oct 84 13:56:04 pdt From: Vaughan Pratt Subject: FOL seminar [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] On the other hand the use of set theoretic semantics also seems to require infinite structures to understand elementary arguments. This conflicts with the simple observation that people understand these arguments ... In my day it was not uncommon for students to reason about all the reals in a finite amount of time - in fact it was even required for exams, where you only had three hours. Whatever has modern mathematics come to? ... and they [people] are built from only a finite amount of matter. By weight and volume, yes, but with elementary particles breeding like rabbits one sometimes wonders about parts count. Now here's a problem spanning particle physics and number theory: if there exists such a thing as an elementary particle, and if there are a fixed finite n