IRList Digest Wednesday, 15 April 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 7 Today's Topics: Addresses - Richardson at UCLA (and query on expert systems bboards) Announcement - Computational Linguistics Post - U. Manchester Seminar - Tailoring Object Descriptions to User's Expertise Announcement - 1st Intl Conf on AI & Law (includes IR talks!) News addresses are ARPANET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 87 16:12 PST From: IBQ1JVR@UCLAMVS Subject: SIG IR list Would you kindly add me to the SIG IR list? And if you are aware of other BBS on expert systems I'd appreciate knowing about them too. John Richardson, Associate Professor UCLA GSLIS 405 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90024 [Note: AI in general is covered by AIList which has daily messages and can be requested from ailist-request@sri-stripe.arpa while natural language and knowledge representation is covered by less frequent digests sent from nl-kr-request@cs.rochester.edu - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Mar 87 00:49:21 est From: vtcs1::in% <<@wiscvm.wisc.edu:EMAILDEV@ukacrl.bitnet>> Subject: COMP LING POST AT UMIST Dear colleague, I would be grateful if you could bring this advertisement to the attention of your colleagues. Many thanks, John McNaught Lecturer ***************************************************************** UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (UMIST) Department of Language and Linguistics and Centre for Computational Linguistics SENIOR LECTURER An opportunity exists for an experienced scholar to take a leading role in the Centre's modest undergraduate and thriving post-graduate and research activities. There are numerous research personnel engaged on a variety of well-funded multilingual applications projects. Excellent computing facilities are available. Scope for new initiatives in current and new areas of research is wide. The successful candidate will have an excellent teaching and research record, the ability to organise and lead project teams, and be committed to furthering the specialised orientation of the Centre. Commencing salary will be on the scale: 14,870 - 18,625 (pounds sterling) per annum (under review). Requests for application forms and further particulars, quoting reference LL/1, should be sent to the Registrar, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK. It is intended to appoint for October 1987, therefore early application is advisable. UMIST is an equal opportunities employer. Technical information may be obtained from John McNaught at: e-mail: jck%umist.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa seismo,mcvax!ukc!uk.ac.umist!jck (uucp) telephone: +44-61-236-3311 extension 2333 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Mar 87 16:04:50 EST From: patricia@cs.rochester.edu Subject: Seminar - Tailoring Object Descriptions to a Users Level of Expertise [forwarded from NL-KR Digest (3/18/87 16:28:00) Volume 2 Number 16] SEMINAR Monday March 23, 1987 11th Floor Lounge 10:30 am Speaker Cecile L. Paris Columbia University Topic Tailoring Object Descriptions to a Users Level of Expertise A question answering program that provides access to a large amount of data will be most useful if it can tailor its answers to each individual user. In particular, a users level of knowledge about the domain of discourse is an important factor in this tailoring if the answer provided is to be both informative and understandable to the user. In this research, we address the issue of how the users domain knowledge, or the level of expertise, can affect an answer. By studying texts we found that the users level of domain knowledge affected the kind of information provided and not just the amount of information, as was previously assumed. Depending on the users assumed domain knowledge, a description can be either parts-oriented or process-oriented. Thus the users level of expertise in a domain can guide a system in choosing the appropriate facts from the knowledge base to include in an answer. We propose two distinct descriptive strategies that can be used to generate texts aimed at naive and expert users. Users are not necessarily truly expert or fully naive however, but can be anywhere along a knowledge spectrum whose extremes are naive and expert. In this work, we show how our generation system, TAILOR, can use information about a users level of expertise to combine several discourse strategies in a single text, choosing the most appropriate at each point in the generation process, in order to generate texts for users anywhere along the knowledge spectrum. TAILORs ability to combine discourse strategies based on a user model allows for the generation of a wider variety of texts and the most appropriate one for the user. This research was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Refreshments will be served in the 11th Floor Lounge at 10:15 Wine and Cheese will be served in the 11th Floor Lounge at 5:00 p.m ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Mar 87 19:17:29 est From: vtcs1::in% Subject: Conference on AI and Law - Program and Registration Info The First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law May 27-29, 1987 Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts Sponsored by: The Center for Law and Computer Science Northeastern University In Co-operation with ACM SIGART Schedule of Activities: ---------------------- Wednesday, May 27 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. - Tutorials 2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. - Research Presentations (see list below) 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. - Welcoming Reception - NU Faculty Center Thursday and Friday, May 28-29 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. - Research Presentations (continued) Thursday evening, May 28 - 7:00 p.m. - Gala Banquet at the Colonnade Hotel Tutorials: --------- A. "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (For Lawyers)." Edwina L. Rissland, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School, will present the fundamentals of AI from the perspective of a legal expert. B. "Applying Artificial Intelligence to Law: Opportunities and Challenges." Donald H. Berman, Richardson Professor of Law, and Carole D. Hafner, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Northeastern University, will survey the past accomplishments and current goals of research in AI and Law. Panels: ------ "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Legal System." Moderated by Cary G. deBessonet, Director of the Law and Artificial Intelligence Project, Louisiana State Law Institute. "Modeling the Legal Reasoning Process: Formal and Computational Approaches." Moderated by L. Thorne McCarty, Professor of Computer Science and Law, Rutgers University. List of Research Presentations: (final schedule is not yet determined) --------------------- "Expert Systems in Law: The Datalex Project" Graham Greenleaf, Andrew Mowbray, Alan L. Tyree Faculty of Law, University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA "The Application of Expert Systems Technology to Case-Based Law" J.C. Smith, Cal Deedman Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, CANADA "Legal Reasoning in 3-D" Marvin Belzer Advanced Computational Methods Center University of Georgia, USA "Explanation for an Expert System that Performs Estate Planning" Dean A. Schlobohm, Donald A. Waterman Moraga, California, USA "Expert Systems in Law: Out of the Research Laboratory and into the Marketplace" Richard E. Susskind Ernst & Whinney London, ENGLAND "An Expert System for Screening Employee Pension Plans for the Internal Revenue Service" Gary Grady, Ramesh S. Patil Internal Revenue Service Washington, D.C. USA "Conceptual Legal Document Retrieval Using the RUBRIC System" Richard M. Tong, Clifford A. Reid, Peter R. Douglas, Gregory J. Crowe Advanced Decision Systems Mountain View, California USA "Conceptual Retrieval and Case Law" Judith P. Dick Faculty of Library and Information Science, University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario CANADA "A Process Specification of Expert Lawyer Reasoning" D. Peter O'Neill Harvard Law School Cambridge, Massachusetts USA "Conceptual Organization of Case Law Knowledge Bases" Carole D. Hafner The Center for Law and Computer Science, Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts USA "A Case-Based System for Trade Secrets Law" Edwina L. Rissland Kevin D. Ashley Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts USA "But, See, Accord: Generating Blue Book Citations in HYPO" Kevin D. Ashley, Edwina L. Rissland Department of Computer and Information Science University of Massachusetts, Amherst Massachusetts USA "A Connectionist Approach to Conceptual Information Retrieval" Richard K. Belew Computer Science and Engineering Department, Univ. of California San Diego, California USA "System = Program + Programmers + Law" Naftaly H. Minsky, David Rozenshtein Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey USA "A Natural Language Based Legal Expert System Project for Consultation and Tutoring -- The LEX Project" F. Haft, R.P. Jones, Th. Wetter IBM Heidelberg Scientific Centre Heidelberg, WEST GERMANY "Handling of Significant Deviations from Boilerplate Text in the SPADES System" Gary Morris, Keith Taylor, Maury Harwood Internal Revenue Service Washington, D.C. USA "Legal Data Modeling: The Prohibited Transaction Exemption Analyst" Keith Bellairs Management Science Department, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota USA "Reasoning about `Hard' Cases in Talmudic Law Steven Weiner Somerville, Massachusetts USA "Designing Text Retrieval Systems for `Conceptual Searching'" Jon Bing Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law Oslo, NORWAY "Support for Policy Makers: Formulating Legislation with the Aid of Logical Models" T.J.M. Bench-Capon Department of Computing, Imperial College London, ENGLAND "Further Comments on McCarty's Semantics for Deontic Logic" Andrew J.I. Jones University of Oslo Oslo, NORWAY "Experiments Using Expert Systems Technology for Teaching Law: Special Knowledge Representation Approaches in DEFAULT and EVAN" Roger D. Purdy School of Law, The University of Akron Akron, Ohio USA "OBLOG-2: A Hybrid Knowledge Representation System for Defeasible Reasoning" Thomas F. Gordon FS-INFRE, GMD Sankt Augustin, WEST GERMANY "ESPLEX: A Rule and Conceptual Model for Representing Statutes" Carlo Biogioli, Paola Mariana, Daniela Tiscornia Istituto per la Documentazione Giuridica Florence, ITALY "A PROLOG Model of the Income Tax Act of Canada" David M. Sherman Maintnix Services Thornhill, Ontario CANADA "Some Problems in Designing Expert Systems to Aid Legal Reasoning" Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon Law School, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan USA "Precedent-Based Legal Reasoning and Knowledge Acquisition in Contract Law: A Process Model" Seth R. Goldman, Michael G. Dyer, Margot Flowers Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California USA "Logic Programming for Large Scale Applications in Law: A Formalism of Supplementary Benefit Legislation" T.J.M. Bench-Capon, G.O. Robinson, T.W. Routen, M.J. Sergot Department of Computing, Imperial College London, ENGLAND ___________________________________________________________________________ Program Committee Conference Information ----------------- ---------------------- L.Thorne McCarty, Chair Prof. Carole D. Hafner, Conference Chair Donald H. Berman (617) 437-5116 Michael G. Dyer Ms. Rita Laffey, Registration Anne v.d. L. Gardner (617) 437-3346 Edwina L. Rissland Marek J. Sergot Housing Information ------------------- Special Conference Rates are available at the following hotels: (Mention "Northeastern University Computers and Law Conference") 1. The Colonnade Hotel - $75 single/$95 double + tax ($8 parking) 120 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA (617) 424-7000 2. The Midtown Hotel - $58 single/$63 double + tax (includes free parking) 220 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA (617) 262-1000 or 1-800-343-1177 Both of these hotels are less than a 10-minute walk from the Conference. Rooms have also been arranged at Boston University dormitories, a 20-minute walk from the conference, or a 10-minute bus ride and a 5-minute walk. The rates are $29 single/$24 (per person) double. To reserve a room in the dormitory, use the attached registration form. SPACE IS LIMITED - RESERVE EARLY!! ____________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION FORM Make checks payable to: Name____________________________________ Northeastern University - ICAIL Address_________________________________ Mail to: ________________________________________ The Center for Law and Computer Sci. ________________________________________ Northeastern University ________________________________________ Boston, MA 02115 Conference Registration Fee (does not include tutorial or banquet) Regular Full-time Student Amt. Enclosed ------- ----------------- Received by April 20 $95 $55 Received after April 20 $135 $85 __________ Gala Banquest - May 28 ($40/person) Number of tickets __ __________ Tutorial Fee: ($50 with conference registration $100 otherwise) __________ Tutorial (select one): __ A. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (For Lawyers) __ B. Applying Artificial Intelligence to Law: Opporunities and Challenges Dormitory Reservations: Arrival Date: ______ Departure Date: _______ Number of Nights _____ Type of Room: Single__ Double __ If double, please indicate sex, and smoking/non-smoking, or give name of pre-arranged room-mate __________________________________ Dormitory Fee ($29/night single, $24/night double) __________ TOTAL AMOUNT ENCLOSED __________ ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************