IRList Digest Tuesday, 7 May 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 35 Today's Topics: Query - Metamorph from EPI Announcment - Metamorph from EPI News addresses are Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 12 May 88 10:59:00 PDT From: "SEF::ROSEMAN" Subject: IRList Digest ... I also have a question concerning a commercial product called Metamorph from EPI(Thunderstone/Expansion Programs International Inc.) I read about in an article passed to me with claims that as a text retrieval and correlation system this software is using some secret algorithms and is orders of magnitude better than anything else. I attended the MIT conference in Boston this spring and don't recall anything about this product or such a breakthough. Any information or comments would be helpful. [Note: You asked. See below - Ed.] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 May 88 12:55 EST From: Subject: interest -- Metamorph from EPI here's a possible article of interest of IRlist. [Note: This is rather long. I received a copy, asked the submitter to "sign" the submission and edit it, and to vouch that it was OK with the publisher to re-distribute this. I still have no "signature" but since there was the "distributed by permission" comment and since I had another query (see earlier in this issue), thought I should go ahead and send this out anyway. I have not seen any technical details or demonstrations or studies of this "Breakthrough" and so have no comments. If anyone has further information or evidence to support the claims made, please let us know. - Ed.] Defense Science April 1988 [distributed by permission] A Technological Breakthrough by Harry Zubkoff Stephen Aubin Sometimes technological breakthroughs come from the most unlikely places. Or, perhaps that is precisely where the most significant forms of scientific discovery are born - where you least expect it. A small, relatively unknown company in Cleveland, OH, has developed some strategic computer technology in the information and analysis field that is a quantum leap ahead of anything else that exists today - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believes that such technology is many years away. The technology has wide applications in the defense field, but at present is being used in limited ways by the US Air Force, NASA, the US Army, the US Department of Energy, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (as well as a number of private sector locations). To give just a few examples of its wider potential, it could be used by the intelligence agencies for research and analysis, the Army for tactical intelligence in the field on its new laptop computers, the Pentagon's competitive strategies office for use with its simulations of conflict with the Warsaw Pact, and the National Security Council's Crisis Management Center. It also has more standard uses: the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, for example may use it to more efficiently organize its voluminous procurement regulations. The story of this small company illustrates some of the problems with our procurement system. It provides a microcosm of the scientific discovery and advances being made across this country by not only well-funded research efforts in large organizations, but also small- and medium-sized companies that do not have great resources. But these smaller companies do have some advantages over their bigger rivals: they are not constrained by the bureaucracy of larger organizations, for example. The tale also provides some lessons into how the US must take better advantage of these advances if we are to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Once again, it shows in clear definition how the US is still the spawning ground for scientific discovery, but often fails to take advantage of these discoveries itself. Ironically, the technology may stimulate the attention it deserves in the US through the back door: DoD may legitimately become concerned about such strategic technology falling into the wrong hands. Thunderstone/Expansion Programs International Inc. (EPI) has been raising eyebrows with its text retrieval and correlation products since 1985. Its recently developed software product, Metamorph, is unlike any other existing retrieval system. Most people have heard of programs that let you enter a word or phrase and then find an exact match within some form of indexed text. Metamorph, on the other hand, can find and match concepts in unindexed text. Dr. Frederick W. Hegge, a research psychologist for the military, believes the key to Metamorph's "startlingly powerful capabilities" is its "morphemic" search capabilities. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in language. EPI, he said, went back to the fundamentals and worked on aning meaning is carried in the English language. By searching at that level, as opposed to simply matching words, the way standard retrieval programs do, "you are one step ahead," he explained. Metamorph is a software program that incorporates artificial intelligence. It can correlate concepts by using an intricate search algorithm, the part of the program that performs extremely rapid string and word comparisons. It uses this algorithm to look at information via a matrix or web of 250,000 English-language morphemes. Unlike other programs, Metamorph is driven by natural language. And the operator doesn't even have to use perfect grammar; Metamorph automatically compensates for those less gifted in the use of the English language. Metamorph is also very fast at what it does. It is so fast that one highly credentialed academic, who works at a high-tech firm and specializes in artifical intelligence, accused EPI of fabricating the demonstration because he could not believe the speed with which Metamorph went about its task. In an IBM/AT microcomputer, Metamorph can search unidexed ASCII (a common language employed in the most personal computers) text at the rate of 500,000 characters per second. "We started working in an area of software beyond simple data retrieval," says Michael Pincus, CEO of EPI. "We were interested in going one step past existing software and creating a product able to operationally correlate information. Our idea was to take much of the correlation burden away from the human - to the extent it is possible with a computer - so as to free up human mind to go to the next step, which is a finer correlation of correlated data." Pincus pointed out that an article in "Scientific America" last August discussed how researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories were "proud of themselves because they had been able to build a little program that could correlate a matrix of around 60 words and do it fairly well with a body of text." "We thought it was funny," says Pincus, "for at the time, we had just succeeded in building a matrix that had in excess of 100,000 associated words in it. That, of course, has grown to well in excess of a quarter of a million words in matrix." Pincus was surprised in other ways, too. For instance, what his program was able to accomplish on a microcomputer, he assumed the government had already developed for mini- or mainframe computers, "simply because the government spent so much money on the subject of information analysis, content analysis and so on." In fact, last July, Dave Ross, who runs a syndicated radio program called "Chip Talk," interviewed Bob Simpson of DARPA, who was working on machine intelligence research. [Metamorph had been out on the street for seven months at this time.] The project was aimed at designing a system of field computers that could collect and organize battlefield information about enemy forces and then crank it through the "brains" of the Army's best strategists, whose expertise would be programmed into the system. Simpson pointed out during the interview that if such a system had existed during the incident involving the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf, the captain might have been alerted to the hostile intent of the Iraqi aircraft. As he pointed out, the captain knew the Iraqi plane was out there, but had no way to determine or "interpret" its intent as hostile. Curiously enough, the kind of system the Captain of the Stark needed already existed. The first people who ever bought Metamorph was the Japanese. "When the product was first advertised, I could not keep the Japanese out of our office," says Pincus. In one instance, a Japanese businessman arrived with a suitcase containing documents authorizing the transfer of a quarter of a million dollars in cash to EPI if the company would immediately give him the rights to a Japanese conversion of the product, along with the exporta- tion and importation rights to Japan. Pincus declined. As he explains, "We had to fend off some considerable attention from the Japanese while at the same time not being stupid and failing to sell the product ... The Japanese are all over our society looking for opportunities in high-tech, particularly in artificial intelligence because of their own fifth-generation artificial intelligence group." EPI is a company of seven employees. And even though he has to pay attention to the bottom line, Pincus is leery of allowing the Japanese and other foreign customers to procure his most sophisticated software programs, including a number of versions of Metamorph. He describes his company as pretty "red, white and blue," and believes that what he is doing could greatly benefit the US government. In fact, Pincus is very careful about what version he sells to foreign customers, as well as who the foreign customers are. But, he notes, even technology legitimately sold to US allies tends to make its way to the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union. He already knows, for example, of one unauthorized copy of a less powerful version of Metamorph that ended up somewhere in West Germany and then disappeared. In another instance, a Polish software company proposed a joint venture in software development with EPI. Inquiries were also received from a Czechoslovakian firm. Once again, Pincus declined on both counts. And, at a 1987 international conference on artificial intelligence and robotics in Japan, while EPI's distributor was there demonstrating Metamorph, the only country that was ready with the cash to make the purchase on the spot was the Soviet Union. When the distributor called Pincus for approved for the sale, he denied the request. Pincus is confident that his company's software cannot be "reverse engineered," since it was built using previously unknown techniques and complex algorithms. There is a certain type of chauvinism that exists in the scientific world. Oftentimes, if a scientist hasn't been able to replicate the success of another, he simply dismisses the possibility that what the other claims actually exists. A perfect example of this is the now well-known case of Stanford R. Ovshinsky's "amorphous" circuit technology. Because Ovshinsky was not connected with any acknowledged research center, his breakthroughs were disregarded by many US scientists in the early 1960s and 1970s. Ovshinsky's work, however, was not ignored by the Japanese. Seeing an opportunity, the Japanese, working through Sharp Electronics, financed Ovshinsky, who had become utterly destitute and declared bankruptcy. Today, his co-owned factories are in Detroit, but the US government is forced to buy amorphous circuits from Sharp. A similar phenomenon exists in industry and government. Some have dubbed his NIH, the "not-invented-here syndrome." If a company didn't create the product, or the US government did not fund its research and development, then it must not exist or be very useful. There is also the question of the US technology base and the government's role in sustaining the United States' technological lead in the world. Recently, the government created disincentives to what is called independent research and development (IR&D) through its procurement policies. EPI used its IR&D funds to create Metamorph. IR&D consists of research projects that companies themselves initiate, fund, and manage in order to develop new technologies. IR&D funds are distinct from R&D funds, which are provided by the government and applied to fairly rigid government specifications. True innovation, more often than not, comes from the private sector. Small and large companies alike need the freedom (and financial security) required if they are to take risks in developing new technology. Congress, in its wisdom, has placed ceilings on IR&D funds. Many in industry have pointed out that such disincentives discourage US scientific curiousity and ingenuity. In a nation where maintaining the technological edge over potential adversaries is such a high priority, it is odd to see policies emerge that threaten US industry's ability to continue to do so. Robert B. Reich, writing in the "Atlantic" a year ago, echoed that point. "Americans continue to lead the world in scientific discoveries and Nobel laureates," he wrote. "But we have had difficulty turning our basic inventions into streams of commercial products. We tend to get bogged down somewhere between the big breakthrough and its application." Reich cites a number of examples. American scientists invented the solid state transitor, for instance. However, in 1953 Western Electric licensed the technology to Sony. Sony made dramatic improvements and launched a line of high-tech electronic products. Similarly, he notes, Unimation, an American company in the forefront of industrial robotic technology in 1963, licensed Kawasaki Heavy Industries to make industrial robots. The result: the American robotics industry never got off its feet; the Japanese, however, have flourished. According to Reich, the same pattern exists for video-cassette recorders, basic oxygen furnances, microwave ovens, computerized machine tools, integrated circuits, and so on. While the US has had its share of technological breakthroughs, this generally means less to the nation in military or economic terms than the speed and success with which it is "absorbed improved upon, and incorporated into new products and processes," writes Reich. Pincus' new software seems to be another potential area for the Japanese to exploit, if they can unlock its secret. Unfortunately, American industry and government have yet to publicly recognize its value as a technological breakthrough. EPI is, however, deluged on a daily basis with requests for technical information from all major private and government research groups. Many seem to want the secret while discounting the usefulness of the Metamorph product. Again, the not-invented-here syndrome? There are a number of questions that need to be posed based on the story about this small Ohio-based company engaged in creating new leading-edge technology. For one, will that company, and others like it, be there tomorrow? Reich described in his article how the US forfeited its lead in the produc- tion of memory chips. In 1980, he writes, US companies were producing most of the world's memory chips. The Japanese then entered the game. Today, of the 15 American companies who were producing memory chips, only three are still around and they are all in the red. Failure to take the next step once a new technology is invented involves serious economic and military implications. As Reich points out, the US National Security Agency now buys all its ceramic packages (used to house chip circuits) from Kyocera, a Japanese company. Other examples abound. What will it mean for the US if other countries capitalize on American know- how because the US is unable or willing to apply its own technological breakthroughs? An even more serious question involves how well the govern- ment provides incentives to the private sector so that companies of all sizes will continue to innovate and develop new technlogy. Initiatives like these are good. However, what the US seems to lack is an overall vision for the Twenty-first Century. After leading the world in innovation and technology for over 40 years, will the US become a follower, forced to play catch up as other countries pass us technologically? Information is power in today's world. Possessing it, managing it, analyzing it, and making sense of it before others do, are keys to staying out in front economically and militarily. It is almost ironic that nobody wants to believe that a seven-man company might hold part of the answer to maintaining the United States' competitive edge in the world that is completely dependent upon communicating and receiving information. Mike Pincus continues to marvel at the amount of attention that is company's new technology has received from technical people and foreigners, but how little interest many in established companies and in the government show for a potentially revolutionary product. Metamorph represents another US breakthrough in technology. Let's hope the Japanese are not the ones who reap its benefits. If they do,we have only ourselves to blame. #### ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************