25-Apr-83 17:27:44-PDT,12137;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 2-Aug-83 12:02:11 Date: Monday, April 25, 1983 5:27PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #1 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Tuesday, 26 Apr 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 1 Today's Topics: Welcome Charter Membership Request for Report Abstracts Statistics on IJCAI-83 Papers Standardized Correspondence ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 25 Apr 83 14:51:42-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Welcome Welcome to the AIList. I am the moderator of the AIList discussion. I am responsible for composing the digest from pending submissions, controlling the daily volume of mail, keeping an archive, and answering administrative requests. You may submit mail for the digest by addressing it to AIList@SRI-AI. Administrative requests should be sent to AIList-Request@SRI-AI. An archival copy of all list remailings will be kept; feel free to ask AIList-Request for back issues until a formal archive system is instituted. AIList is open to discussion of any topic related to artificial intelligence. My own interests are primarily in Expert Systems AI Applications Knowledge Representation Knowledge Acquisition Problem Solving Hierarchical Inference Machine Learning Pattern Recognition AI Techniques Data Analysis Techniques Contributions concerning Cognitive Psychology Human Perception Vision Analysis Speech Analysis Language Understanding Natural Languages AI Languages AI Environments Automatic Programming AI Systems Support Theorem Proving Logic Programming Robotics Automated Design Planning and Search Cybernetics Game Theory Computer Science Data Abstraction Library Science Statistical Techniques Information Theory AI Hardware Information Display and related topics are also welcome. Contributions may be anything from tutorials to rampant speculation. In particular, the following are sought. Abstracts Reviews Lab Descriptions Research Overviews Work Planned or in Progress Half-Baked Ideas Conference Announcements Conference Reports Bibliographies History of AI Puzzles and Unsolved Problems Anecdotes, Jokes, and Poems Queries and Requests Address Changes (Bindings) The only real boundaries to the discussion are defined by the topics of other mailing lists. Robotic mythology, for instance, might be more appropriate for SF-LOVERS. Logic programming and theorem proving are also covered by the PROLOG list. I suggest that you "sign" submissions longer than a paragraph so that readers don't have to scroll backwards to see the FROM line. Editing of contributions will usually be limited to text justifications and spelling corrections. Editorial remarks and elisions will be marked with square brackets. The author will be contacted if significant editing is required. I have no objection to distributing material that is destined for conference proceedings or any other publication. You may want to send copies of your submissions to SIGART @USC-ECLC or to the AI Magazine (currently Engelmore @SUMEX-Aim) for hardcopy publication. List items should be considered unrefereed working papers, and opinions to be those of the author and not of any organization. Copies of list items should credit the original author, not necessarily to the AIList. The list does not assume copyright, nor does it accept any liability arising from remailing of submitted material. I reserve the right, however, to refuse to remail any contribution that I judge to be obscene, libelous, irrelevant, or pointless. Names and net addresses of list members are in the public domain. Your name will be made available (for noncommercial purposes) unless special arrangements are made. Replies to public requests for information should be sent, at least in "carbon" form, to this list unless the request states otherwise. If necessary, I will digest or abstract the replies to control the volume of distributed mail. Please contribute freely. I would rather deal with too much material than with too little. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Mon 25 Apr 83 09:34:04-PDT From: AIList Subject: Charter Membership The AIList is off to a good start. We have approximately 168 subscribers, plus an unknown number through remailing or BBoard services at AI-INFO@CIT-20 DSN-AI@SU-DSN (*) AIList@BRL AI-BBD.UMCP-CS@UDel-Relay (*) AIList@Cornell BBOARD.AIList@UTEXAS-20 (*) bbAI-List@MIT-XX G.TI.DAK@UTEXAS-20 AI-BBOARD@SRI-AI AI-LOCAL@YALE Incoming-AIList@SUMEX AI@RADC-TOPS20 AIList-Distribution@MIT-EE AIList-BBOARD@RUTGERS Spaf.GATech@UDel-Relay (Maintainers of the starred BBoards have specifically requested that local subscribers drop their individual memberships.) The "charter membership" is distributed as follows: AIDS-UNIX(2), BBNA, BBNG, BBN-UNIX, BRL(bb), BRL-VLD, CIT-20(bb), CORNELL(1+bb), CMU-CS-A(12), CMU-CS-C(2), CMU-CS-G, CMU-CS-IUS, CMU-CS-SPICE, CMU-RI-FAS(2), CMU-RI-ISL, DSN-AI@SU-DSN(1+bb), GATech@UDel_Relay(bb), KESTREL, MIT-DSPG(2), MIT-EE(bb), MIT-MC(10), MIT-EECS@MIT-MC, MIT-OZ@MIT-MC(17), MIT-ML(3), MIT-OZ@MIT-ML, MIT-SPEECH, MIT-XX(5+bb), OFFICE-3, PARC-MAXC(8), RADC-TOPS-20(bb),RUTGERS(6+bb), S1-C, SRI-AI(5+bb), SRI-CSL, SRI-KL(2), SRI-TSC, SU-AI@USC-ECL(10), SUMEX(1+bb), SUMEX-AIM(7), SU-SCORE(11), UCI-20A@Rand-Relay, UCLA-SECURITY, UMASS-CS@UDel-Relay, UMCP-CS@UDel-Relay(bb), USC-ECL(3), USC-ECLB(2), USC-ECLC, USC-ISI(2), USC-ISIB(5), USC-ISID, USC-ISIE, USC-ISIF(4), UTAH-20(7), UTEXAS-20(6+bb), WASHINGTON(5), YALE(3+bb) -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 22 Apr 1983 0227-EST From: TYG%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC Subject: addition and woe Please add me to the list. Sigh. I came up with the idea of a list to disseminate abstracts and ordering info for AI papers last Dec., but held off due to the Arpanet changeover. I then got busy with other things, and planned to get it going in a few weeks. Sigh. Anyway, I may as well share my ideas for the list. I think all sites doing AI should be asked to submit the following info about papers as they come out: Title, Author, Length, Type (Master's thesis, Ph.D. thesis, Tech report, Journal article, etc.), Abstract, Cost, and ordering information. Presumably the person at each site in charge of publications would enter this. Good Luck Tom "Next time I won't procrastinate" Galloway [I would welcome such input. The "person in charge" need not be a member of this list. I suggest that administrative personnel send such information both to AIList and to SIGART@USC-ECLC. Ordering information for AIList could be abbreviated to a net address if the sender is willing to respond to queries. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 21-Apr-83 15:23:45-BST From: BUNDY HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Statistics on IJCAI-83 Papers [I don't think Alan Bundy will mind my passing along these statistics. I have edited the table slightly to fit the 70-column capacity of the digesting software made available by Mel Pleasant, the Human-Nets moderator. The digester was developed by James McGrath at SCORE. -- KIL] PAPER STATISTICS - IJCAI-83 Submitted Accepted Moved Subfield Long Short Long Short L -> S Miscellaneous - 3 - 1 Automatic Prog. 8 11 1 7 4 Cognitive Modelling 9 32 2 12 3 Expert Systems 31 56 8 31 9 Knowledge Repn. 28 40 7 24 6 Learning & Know. Acq. 14 35 1 22 5 Logic Prog. 14 17 4 9 4 Natural Language 23 74 2 39 7 Planning & Search 11 20 3 11 5 Robotics 11 8 5 7 2 System Support 4 9 - 5 2 Theorem Proving 7 16 5 8 - Vision 32 38 10 31 14 TOTAL 192 359 48 207 61 COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS IJCAI CONFERENCES LONG SHORT TOTAL IJCAI-79 Submitted Total unk unk 428 IJCAI-79 Accepted Total 83 145 228 IJCAI-79 Acceptance Rate 53% IJCAI-81 Submitted Total unk unk 576 IJCAI-81 Accepted Total 127 74 201 IJCAI-81 Acceptance Rate 35% IJCAI-83 Submitted Total 192 359 551 IJCAI-83 Accepted Total 48 207 255 IJCAI-83 Acceptance Rate 46% REMARKS You will see that I succeeded in my aim of shifting the burden of papers from the long to the short categories. This enabled us to apply high standards to the long papers without decreasing the overall acceptance rate. Alan ------------------------------ Date: Sun 24 Apr 83 20:41:46-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Standardized Correspondence [This is arguably more appropriate for Human-Nets, but I want to illustrate the level of reporting and/or discussion that I consider appropriate for this list. -- KIL] The May issue of High Technology describes the Prentice-Hall Letter Pac system from Dictronics Publishing. It is a semiautomatic business letter generator that customizes prototypical letters by substituting synonyms categorized into four levels of formality (e.g., ask, request, demand). The user need only insert a few particulars before sending the letter out. The article also suggests automatic letter reading (i.e., parsing). There is already a system that compresses text by discarding all but the first sentence of each paragraph. More sophisticated text condensation and text understanding systems are being developed. A short-cut is available, however. If everyone used Letter Pac or an equivalent, parsing the text would be a simple matter of extracting the original generating parameters: (dunning-letter-7 formality-level-3 car-payment-overdue $127.38). The "Dear Sir" form of the letter would then exist only for transmission between computers. If this became common, could elimination of the text form be long in coming? I believe that John McCarthy has been working on ideas along this line. Most transactions could be handled directly by computers using standardized transaction formats. When transmission of English text is necessary, it might make sense to send preparsed sentences instead of having one computer synthesize a message and a second one parse it. All that is needed is to have identical synthesis and parsing software available to both machines for those rare occasions when a human wants to enter the loop. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 1-May-83 11:00:49-PDT,8633;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 2-Aug-83 12:02:11 Date: Sunday, May 1, 1983 11:00AM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #2 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 1 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 2 Today's Topics: New BBoards The T Programming Language Parallel Nonnumeric Algorithms Pattern Recognition Standardized Correspondence Alternate Distribution of AIlist Facetia ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat 30 Apr 83 17:17:00-PDT From: AIList Subject: New BBoards The following new BBoards and remailing lists have been created: AIList-BBOARD@RUTGERS NYU-AIList@NYU "XeroxAIList^.PA"@PARC-MAXC UCI-AIList.UCI@Rand-Relay I am told that the PARC list has 94 members. As yet there is no BBoard at CMU (36 members); someone might want to establish one. I will publish an updated list of hosts after the membership settles down. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 83 18:26:42 EDT From: John O'Donnell Subject: The T Programming Language I am pleased to announce the availability of our implementation of the T programming language for the VAX under the Unix (4.xBSD) and VMS (3.x) operating systems and for the Apollo Domain workstation. T is a new dialect of Lisp comparable in power to other recent dialects such as Lisp Machine Lisp and Common Lisp, but fundamentally more similar in spirit to Scheme than to traditional Lisps. The current system, version 2, is in production use at Yale and elsewhere, in AI and systems research and in education. A number of large programs have been built in T, and the implementation is acceptably stable and robust. Yale and Harvard successfully taught undergraduate courses this semester in T (Harvard used Sussman and Abelson's 6.001 course). Much work remains to be done; we are currently expanding the programming environment and improving performance. Our next release is planned for sometime this fall. Please contact me directly if you're interested in getting the distribution. John O'Donnell Department of Computer Science Box 2158 Yale Station New Haven CT 06520 (203) 432-4666 ODonnell@Yale ...decvax!yale-comix!odonnell ------------------------------ Date: Thu 28 Apr 83 14:40:26-PDT From: David Rogers Subject: parallel non-numeric algorithms Part of my Ph.D. work has been in parallel processing algorithms in graph theory (unfortunately, no hardware is currently available for an implementation, but that only makes the excursion a little less satisfying). Specifically, I have been simulating the performance of an algorithm for the utilization of parallel processing in speeding up the common subgraph search problem. Commonly, this problem involves finding all sufficiently large subgraphs common to two given graphs. No efficient algorithm exists for doing this search. I know that several AI groups are working on parallel processing in AI, but have not found any discussion involving graph searching techniques. The bias in parallel processing has been toward numerical algorithms and the use of array processors; I figured that there MUST be some AI group working at parallel processing in a non-numerical field such as graph searching. I would like to hear from anyone who knows of such or similar work. By the way, I had heard that workers had had 'problems' with the parallel LISP machines, but have not been able to pin anyone down exactly as to the nature or extent of these problems. Anyone know exactly what was discovered in those researches? Thanks-- David Rogers DROGERS@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Fri 29 Apr 83 08:35:25-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Pattern Recognition PR People should take note of "Candide's Practical Principles of Experimental Pattern Recognition", by George Nagy, in the March issue of IEEE PAMI. I particularly like ... any feature may be presumed to be normally distributed if its mean and variance can be estimated from its empirically observed distribution. and ... adapting the classifier to the test set is superior to adaptation on the training set. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 30 April 1983 04:00 EDT From: Steven A. Swernofsky Subject: Standardized Correspondence Rather than distributing the same software to every site, it would make more sense to develop a machine-to-machine language which would express (dunning-letter-7 formality-level-3 car-payment-overdue $127.38) in an easily parseable form. English is complex, redundant, and vague. Is there any reason why we can't design a language which is simple, efficient, and precise? It would be awful for (intelligent) people, but great for (stupid) machines. -- Steve [If the parsing and synthesis functions were common, the software might be compiled into hardware; if rare, it might be accessed remotely over a network. I doubt that software storage requirements will be a problem for long. There have been attempts at developing simpler natural languages. One idea is to structure the language so that any idea can only be expressed in one canonical form (DuckSpeak, Basic English, controlled-vocabulary English as taught in our grade schools). The other idea is to allow any semantic term to fill any syntactic slot (sign language, Loglan). Langauges of the first type present difficulties because of the overloading of words (e.g., "get" in English). This can be avoided in limited domains such as repair manuals, but for general usage something like Roger Shank's canonical forms would be needed. I don't know what computational difficulties are presented by languages of the second type. If the Whorfian hypothesis is correct, more ideas can be "thought", which may lead to greater complexity. On the other hand, the algorithm needn't keep track of awkward or stereotyped methods of expressing basically simple concepts. ("I greened my house", or what is the past tense of "beware"?) I trust that computational difficulties can be overcome. The greatest problem in achieving user acceptance of parsed transmissions may be that resynthesis will generate a paraphrase, or corrected version, of the original. Humans tend to be sentimental about their own syntactic constructs, even down to where the lines are broken. -- KIL ] ------------------------------ Date: Thu 28 Apr 83 00:52:52-PDT From: Dan Dolata Subject: Alternate distribution of AIlist I am moving to Sweden soon, and while I will be able to touch back to my home base via international-net occasionally, the long ditance rates make it prohibitive to try to read any large number of lines each day. I was wondering if it might be possible to set up some ort of system where AIlist could be spooled onto small tapes or floppies monthly, and mailed to people who are away from the net? Of course, I would be happy to pay for mailing costs, and would be happy to buy the person who did the grunt work a nice meal when I got back from Europe (or in Karlsruhe during IJCAI). Of course, if it became neccesary to charge $ because you had to hire a person to mount the media, I would be happy to subscribe! Thanks for your time Dan [dolata@sumex] [I'm afraid that I haven't the resources to oblige. I suggest that printed copies be sent, providing that doesn't violate any technology export laws. Dan would like to know if others are interested in getting or providing machine-readable copies. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Fri 29 Apr 83 09:02:22-PDT From: AIList Subject: Facetia I hope everyone kept V1 #1. Someday it may be as valuable as the first edition of Superman comics. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 8-May-83 23:12:26-PDT,5014;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 2-Aug-83 12:02:11 Date: Sunday, May 8, 1983 11:12PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #3 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Monday, 9 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 3 Today's Topics: Administrivia Re: the Whorfian hypothesis Re: Artificial Languages Putting programmers out of a Job? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun 8 May 83 23:05:43-PDT From: Laws@SRI-AI Subject: Administrivia We have been joined by new BBoards or remailing nodes at AI@NLM-MCS AIList-Usenet@SRI-UNIX Post-AIList.UNC@UDel-Relay The Usenet connection is a two-way link with the net.ai discussion group. More on this later. I have been responding to additions by sending out back issues. Henceforth I will only send a welcome message and statement of policy. Back issues are available by request. I have tried to establish contact with all who have asked to be enrolled, but several sites have been unreachable for the last two weeks. I cannot guarantee delivery of every issue to every site, and may cut short the usual two-week retry period in order to reduce the system load. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 2 May 1983 1038-EDT (Monday) From: Robert.Frederking@CMU-CS-A (C410RF60) Subject: Re: the Whorfian hypothesis I just thought I should point out that the Whorfian hypothesis is one of those things which was rejected a long time ago in its original field (at least in its strong form), but has remained interesting and widely talked about in other fields. At the time Whorf hypothesized that language constrains the way people think, the views of language and culture were that language was a highly systematic, constrained thing, whereas culture was just an arbitrary collection of facts. By the time Whorf was getting really popular in other circles, anthropologists had realized that culture was also systematic, with constraints between different parts. In other words, the likelihood that an idea will be invented or imported by a culture depends to a degree on the kinds of ideas the people in the culture are already familiar with. The current view in anthropology (current in the 70s, that is) is that language and culture do influence each other, but that the influence is much weaker, more subtle, and more bidirectional, than the Whorfian hypothesis suggested. ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 83 17:31:01 EDT (Tue) From: Fred Blonder Subject: Artificial Languages [Fred has pointed out that the "DuckSpeak" I cited was officially called Newspeak in Orwell's 1984. -- KIL] Also: are you aware of Esperanto? It's grammar (only 16 rules) allows any word to function as any part of speech by an appropriate change to its suffix. ------------------------------ [We are now linked to the Usenet net.ai discussion, which is more nearly real-time than the AIList digest. The following is evidently from a continuing discussion, and I apologize to the author if he did not expect such a wide audience. A more formal submission system might be arranged if Usenet members want both private and public discussions, or if they object to receiving digested copies of previously seen messages. The possibility of forwarding undigested AIList submissions to Usenet is being considered. -- KIL] Date: 1 May 83 22:31:14-PDT (Sun) From: decvax!utzoo!watmath!bstempleton @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Putting programmers out of a Job? I hope the person who stated that this self programming computer project will eliminate the need for programmers is not on the AI project. If so they should fire him/her and get somebody who is a good programmer. Programming is a highly creative art that uses some highly complex technological tools. No AI project will put a good programmer out of a job without being able to pass a Turing test first. This is because a good programmer spends more time designing than coding. In fact, I would be all for a machine which I could tell to write a program to traverse a data structure doing this and that to it. It would get rid of all the tedious stuff, and I would be able to produce all kinds of wonderful programs. Out of a job? Hardly - I'd be rich, and so would a lot of other people, notably those on AI projects. I doubt that ten years will show a computer that can do things like design (or invent) things like screen editors, VisiCalc(TM), relational databases and compilers. If it could do all that, it's intelligent - not just a self-programming machine. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 15-May-83 11:33:27-PDT,14580;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:16 Date: Sunday, May 15, 1983 9:33PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #4 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Monday, 16 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 4 Today's Topics: Research Posts in AI at Edinburgh University AI at the AAAS Expert System for IC Processiong Re: Artificial languages Loglan Excerpt about AI from a NYTimes interview with Stanislaw Lem ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wednesday, 11-May-83 16:29:52-BST From: DAVE FHL (on ERCC DEC-10) Reply-to: bowen%edxa%ucl-cs@isid Subject: Research Posts in AI at Edinburgh University -------- UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH DEPARTMENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 2 Research Fellows Applications are invited for these SERC-funded posts, tenable from July 1 1983 or a mutually agreed date, to work on a project to formulate techniques whereby an intelligent knowledge-based training system can deduce what a user's aims are. Experience of UNIX and programming is essential. Experience of PROLOG or LISP and some knowledge of IKBS techniques would be an advantage. The posts are tenable for three years, on the R1A scale (6375-11105 pounds). Candidates should have a higher degree in a relevant discipline, such as Mathematics, Computer Science or Experimental Psychology. Applications, including a curriculum vitae and names of two referees, should be sent to The Secretary's Office, University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, Scotland, (from whom further details can be obtained), by 31 May 1983. ------------------------------ Date: 13 May 83 10:53:04 EDT From: DAVID.LEWIN Subject: AI at the AAAS The following session at the upcoming AAAS meeting should be of interest to readers of AI-LIST. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ITS SCIENCE AND APPLICATION American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting- Detroit, MI; Sunday, May 29, 1983 Arranged by: Daniel Berg, Provost--Carnegie-Mellon University Raj Reddy, Director--Robotics Institute, CMU "Robust Man-Machine Communication" Jaime Carbonell, CMU "Artificial Intelligence Applications in Electronic Manufacturing" Samuel H. Fuller, Digital Equipment Corp. (Hudson, MA) "Expert Systems in VLSI Design" Mark Stefik, Xerox-PARC "Science Needs in Artificial Intelligence" Nils Nilsson, SRI International "Medical Applicationns of Artificial Intelligence" Jack D. Myers, Univ. of Pittsburgh "The Application of Strategic Planning and Artificial Inntelligence to the Management of the Urban Infrastructure" Charles Steger, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ. ------------------------------ Date: 14 May 1983 2154-PDT (Saturday) From: ricks%UCBCAD@Berkeley Subject: Expert System for IC Processiong I'm about to start preliminary work on an expert system for integrated circuit processing. At this time, its not clear whether it will deal with diagnosing and correcting problems in a process line, or with designing new process lines. I would like to know if anybody has done any work in this area, and what the readers of this list think about building an expert system for this purpose. I realize that this letter is somewhat vague, but I'm in the early stages of this and I'd like to see what has been done and what options I have. Thanks, Rick L Spickelmier ricks@berkeley University of California Electronics Research Laboratory Cory Hall Berkeley, CA 94720 (415) 642-8186 ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1983 19:10 EDT From: Stephen G. Rowley Subject: Artificial languages Since people seem to be interested in artificial languages and the Whorfian hypothesis, some words about Loglan might be interesting. (If that's what started the discussion and I missed it, apologies to all...) Loglan is a language invented by J. Brown in the mid-50's to test the Whorfian hypothesis with a radically different language. It's got a simple grammar believed to be utterly unambiguous, a syntax based on predicate calculus, and morpholgy that tells you what "part of speech" (to stretch a term) a word is from its vowel-consonant pattern. Of the 14 non-vacuous logical connectives, all are pronounceable in one syllable. By comparison, English Dances about a LOT to say some of them. There are some books about it, and even a couple of regular journals. Once upon a time, there was a Loglan mailing list here at MIT, but it died of lack of interest. -SGR ------------------------------ [Here is further info on Loglan culled from Human-Nets. -- KIL] Date: 11 Dec 1981 2314-PST From: JSP at WASHINGTON Subject: Loglan as command language. English is optimized to serve as a verbal means of communication between intelligences. It would be highly surprising if it turned out to be optimal for the much different task of communicating between an intelligent (human) and a stupid (computer) via keyboard. In fact, it would be surprising if English proved well suited to any sort of precise description, given that various mathematical notations, Algol and BNF, for example, all originated as attempts to escape the ambiguity and opacity of English. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Algol was originally a publication language for human-human communication, programming applications coming later.) Much the same may be said, with less force, for Loglan, which is also targeted on human-human communication, albeit with a special focus on simplicity and avoidance of syntactic ambiguity. (Other Loglanists might not agree.) For those interested, the Loglan Institute is alive and well, if rather hard to find pending completion of a revised grammar and word morphology. I'd be happy to correspond with anyone interested in the language... and delighted to hear from any YACCaholic TL subscribers interested in working on the grammar... --Jeff Prothero ------------------------------ Date: 11 Dec 1981 06:46:30-PST From: decvax!pur-ee!purdue!kad at Berkeley (Ken Dickey at Purdue CS) Subject: Loglan I have received several requests for more information on Loglan, a language which may be ideal for man-computer communication. Here is a brief description: Synopsis: (from the book jacket of LOGLAN 1: A LOGICAL LANGUAGE, James C. Brown, Third Edition) Loglan is a language designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the natural languages limit human thought. It does this so by pushing those limits outward in predictable directions by: *incorporating the notational elegance of symbolic logic (it is TRANSFORMATIONALLY POWERFUL); *forcing the fewest possible assumptions about "reality" on its speakers (it is METAPHYSICALLY PARSIMONIOUS); *removing all structural sources of ambiguity (in Loglon anything, no matter how implausible, can be said clearly; for it is SYNTACTICALLY UNAMBIGUOUS); *generalizing all semantic operations (whatever can be done to any Loglan word can be done to every Loglan word; for it is SEMANTICALLY NON-RESTRICTIVE); *deriving its basic word-stock from eight natural languages, including three Oriental ones (it is therefore CULTURALLY NEUTRAL); Notes: Loglan has a small grammar (an order of magnitude smaller than any "natural" grammar). It is isomorphic (spelled phonetically-- all punctuation is spoken).  There are a set of rules for word usage so that words are uniquely resolvable (No "Marzee Dotes" problem). The most frequently used grammatical operators are the shortest words. The word stock is derived from eight languages (Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian, French, and German), weighted by usage for recognizability. I.e. using Loglan rules to satisfy form, words are made up to be mnemonic to most of the worlds speakers. Loglan "predicates" are, in a sense, complete. For example MATMA means X is the MOTHER of Y by father W. Joan matma == Joan is the mother of .. by .. == Joan is a mother. Matma Paul == Paul's mother, etc. These "slots" can change positions by means of operators. Modifiers precede modified words. Garfs school => a garfs type of school (a school FOR garfs) as opposed to a school BELONGING to garfs. Language assumptions can be quite different. For example, there are a number of words for "yes", meaning "yes, I will", "yes, I agree", etc. Although considered an experimental tool, there are people that actually speak it. (It is a USEFUL tool). Pointer: The Loglan Institute 2261 Soledad Rancho Road San Diego, California 92109 As I am an armchair linguist, you should reference the above pointer for more information. -Ken ------------------------------ Date: 8 Apr 1982 01:32:44-PST From: ihnss!houxi!u1100a!rick at Berkeley Subject: Loglan A while ago somebody (I believe it was in fa.human-nets during a discussion of sexism in personal pronouns) asked the question "What does Loglan do about gender?". As usual with such questions the answer is not easy to describe in a few words. But to simplify somewhat, Loglan has no concept of grammatical gender at all. The language has a series of five words that act (approximately) like third person pronouns, but there is no notion of sex associated with them. Loglan also does away with most of the usual grammatical categories, such as "nouns", "adjectives" and "verbs". In their place it has a single category called "predicate". Thus the loglan word "blanu" can be variously translated as "blue" (an adjective), "is a blue thing" (a verb-like usage), and "blue thing" (a noun-like usage). Loglan is uninflected. It has no declensions or conjugations. But it does have a flock of "little words" that serve various grammatical and punctuational purposes. They also take the place of such affixes as "-ness" (as in "blueness") in English. More information about Loglan can be gotten by writing to: The Loglan Institute, Inc. 2261 Soledad Rancho Road San Diego, CA 92109 ------------------------------ Date: Sun 15 May 83 12:17:41-PDT From: Robert Amsler Subject: Excerpt about AI from a NYTimes interview with Stanislaw Lem Sunday, March 20th, NYTimes Book Review Interview with Stanislaw Lem by Peter Engel Interviewer: "You mentioned robots, and certainly one of the most important themes in your writing is the equality of men and robots as thinking, sentient beings. Do you feel that artificial intelligence at this level will be achieved within the forseeable future?" Lem: "My opinion is that in roughly 100 years we will arrive at an artificial intelligence that is more intelligent and reasonable than human intelligence, but it will be completely different. There are no signs indicating that computers will in certain fields become equal to men. You should not be misled by the fact that you can play chess with a computer. If you want to accomplish certain individual tasks, computers are fine. But when you are talking about psychological matters, every one of us carries in his head the heritage of the armored fish, the dinosaurs, and other mammals. These limitations do not exist outside the domain of biological evolution. And there's no reason why we should imitate them -- the very idea is silly. In the field of mechanics it would be the same as if the Arabs were to say they didn't want airplanes and automobiles, only improved camels. Or that you shouldn't supply automobiles with wheels, that you must invent mechanical legs. I'm going to show you a book. 'Golem XIV' is going to be published next year in America. It's a story about the construction of a supercomputer and how it didn't want to solve the military task it was given, the purpose it had been constructed for in the first place. So it started to devote itself to higher philosophical problems. There are two stories in 'Golem XIV,' two lectures for scientists. In the first Golem talks about humans and the way it sees them, in the second about itself. It tries to explain that it's already arrived at a level of biological evolution will never reach on it own (sic). It's on the lowest rung of a ladder, and above it there might exist now or in the future more potent intelligences. Golem does not know whether there are any bounds in its progress to the upper sphere. And when it, in a manner of speaking, takes leave of man, it is primarily for the purpose of advancing further up this ladder. In my own view, man will probably never be able to understand and recognize everything directly, but in an indirect manner he will be able to achieve command of everything if he constructs intelligence amplifiers to fulfill his wishes. Like a small child, he will then be receiving gifts. But he will not be able to perceive the world directly, like a small child who is given an electric railway. The child can play with it, he can even dismantle it, but he will not understand Maxwell's theory of electricity. The main difference is that the child will one day become an adult, and then if he wants he will eventually study and understand Maxwell's theory. But we will never grow up any further. We will only be able to receive gifts from the giants of intelligence that we'll be able to build. There is a limit to human perception, and beyond this horizon the fruit of observation will be gleaned from other beings, research machines or whatever. Progress may continue, but we will somehow be staying behind." ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 18-May-83 9:33:28-PDT,7014;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:17 Date: Wednesday, May 18, 1983 9:33AM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #5 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Wednesday, 18 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 5 Today's Topics: AI in Business Symposium Expert Systems Reports ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 16 May 83 06:34:58-PDT From: Ted Markowitz Subject: AI in Business Symposium [I apologize for not getting this out before the conference, but my net connection has been down since Monday morning. -- KIL] I'd just like to remind folks in the NYC area that NYU is offering a 3-day sysmposium on AI in Business. Among those to speak will be Robert Bobrow, Rich Duda, Harry Pople, John McDermott, and Roger Schank. Several of the lectures deal with NLP and expert systems both in the abstract and as they apply in the real worls. The symposium is on 5/18-20 at NYU (100 Trinity Place, NY, NY 10006). For more information call 212-285-6120. --Ted ------------------------------ Date: Tue 17 May 83 23:18:48-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Expert Systems Reports Here is a selection of recent technical reports relating to expert systems and hierarchical inference. I would appreciate additions, particularly any relating to expert systems for image understanding and general vision. -- Ken Laws J.S. Aikins, J.C. Kunz, E.H. Shortliffe, and R.J. Fallat, PUFF: An Expert System for Interpretation of Pulmonary Function Data. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-931; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-013, 1982, 21p. C. Apte, Expert Knowledge Management for Multi-Level Modelling. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., LCSR-TR-41, 1982. B.G. Buchanan and R.O. Duda, Principles of Rule Based Expert Systems. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-926; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-014, 1982, 55p. B.G. Buchanan, Partial Bibliography of Work on Expert Systems. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-953; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-30, 1982, 13p. A. Bundy and B. Silver, A Critical Survey of Rule Learning Programs. Edinburgh U. A.I. Dept., Res. Paper 169, 1982. R. Davis, Expert Systems: Where are We? And Where Do We Go from Here? M.I.T. A.I. Lab., Memo 665, 1982. T.G. Dietterich, B. London, K. Clarkson, and G. Dromey, Learning and Inductive Inference (a section of the Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Paul R. Cohen and Edward A. Feigenbaum). Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-913; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-010, 1982, 215p. G.A. Drastal and C.A. Kulikowski, Knowledge Based Acquisition of Rules for Medical Diagnosis. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., CBM-TM-97, 1982. N.V. Findler, An Expert Subsystem Based on Generalized Production Rules. Arizona State U. Comp. Sci. Dept., TR-82-003, 1982. N.V. Findler and R. Lo, A Note on the Functional Estimation of Values of Hidden Variables--An Extended Module for Expert Systems. Arizona State U. Comp. Sci. Dept., TR-82-004, 1982. K.E. Huff and V.R. Lesser, Knowledge Based Command Understanding: An Example for the Software Development Environment. Massachusetts U. Comp. & Info. Sci. Dept., COINS Tech.Rpt. 82-06, 1982. J.K. Kastner, S.M. Weiss, and C.A. Kulikowske, Treatment Selection and Explanation in Expert Medical Consultation: Application to a Model of Ocular Herpes Simplex. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., CBM-TR-132, 1982. R.M. Keller, A Survey of Research in Strategy Acquisition. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Dept., DCS-TR-115, 1982. V.E. Kelly and L.I. Steinberg, The Critter System: Analyzing Digital Circuits by Propagating Behaviors and Specifications. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., LCSR-TR-030, 1982. J.J. King, An Investigation of Expert Systems Technology for Automated Troubleshooting of Scientific Instrumentation. Hewlett Packard Co. Comp. Sci. Lab., CSL-82-012; Hewlett Packard Co. Comp. Res. Center, CRC-TR-82-002, 1982. J.J. King, Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Device Troubleshooting. Hewlett Packard Co. Comp. Sci. Lab., CSL-82-009; Hewlett Packard Co. Comp. Res. Center, CRC-TR-82-004, 1982. G.M.E. Lafue and T.M. Mitchell, Data Base Management Systems and Expert Systems for CAD. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., LCSR-TR-028, 1982. R.J. Lytle, Site Characterization using Knowledge Engineering -- An Approach for Improving Future Performance. Cal U. Lawrence Livermore Lab., UCID-19560, 1982. T.M. Mitchell, P.E. Utgoff, and R. Banerji, Learning by Experimentation: Acquiring and Modifying Problem Solving Heuristics. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., LCSR-TR-31, 1982. P.G. Politakis, Using Empirical Analysis to Refine Expert System Knowledge Bases. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., CBM-TR-130, Ph.D. Thesis, 1982. M.D. Rychener, Approaches to Knowledge Acquisition: The Instructable Production System Project. Carnegie Mellon U. Comp. Sci. Dept., 1981. R.D. Schachter, An Incentive Approach to Eliciting Probabilities. Cal. U., Berkeley. O.R. Center, ORC 82-09, 1982. E.H. Shortliffe and L.M. Fagan, Expert Systems Research: Modeling the Medical Decision Making Process. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-932; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-003, 1982, 23p. M. Suwa, A.C. Scott, and E.H. Shortliffe, An Approach to Verifying Completeness and Consistency in a Rule Based Expert System. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-922, 1982, 19p. J.A. Wald and C.J. Colbourn, Steiner Trees, Partial 2-Trees, and Minimum IFI Networks. Saskatchewan U. Computational Sci. Dept., Rpt. 82-06, 1982. J.A. Wald and C.J. Colbourn, Steiner Trees in Probabilistic Networks. Saskatchewan U. Computational Sci. Dept., Rpt. 82-07, 1982. A. Walker, Automatic Generation of Explanations of Results from Knowledge Bases. IBM Watson Res. Center, RJ 3481, 1982. J.W. Wallis and E.H. Shortliffe, Explanatory Power for Medical Expert Systems: Studies in the Representation of Causal Relationships for Clinical Consultation. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-923, 1982, 37p. S. Weiss, C. Kulikowske, C. Apte, and M. Uschold, Building Expert Systems for Controlling Complex Programs. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., LCSR-TR-40, 1982. Y. Yuchuan and C.A. Kulikowske, Multiple Strategies of Reasoning for Expert Systems. Rutgers U. Comp. Sci. Res. Lab., CBM-TR-131, 1982. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 21-May-83 23:11:30-PDT,6864;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:17 Date: Saturday, May 21, 1983 11:11PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #6 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 22 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 6 Today's Topics: Lectureships at Edinburgh University Distributed Problem-Solving: An Annotated Bibliography Loglan Cross Reference Re: Esperanto and LOGLAN Latest AI Journal Issue IBM EPISTLE System Software Copyright Info ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday, 12-May-83 10:31:00-BST From: DAVE FHL (on ERCC DEC-10) Reply-to: bowen%edxa%ucl-cs@isid Subject: Lectureships at Edinburgh University -------- UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - VLSI design and IKBS. 1 Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence (ref IT2/1) 1 Lecturer in Computer Science (ref IT2/2) 1 Lecturer in Electrical Engineering (ref IT2/3) These new lectureships are being funded to expand the M.Sc. teaching carried out by the 3 departments in collaboration. The posts are available from 1 October 83, but the starting dates could be adjusted to attract the right candidates. These are tenure track posts. The teaching and research interests sought are: Artificial Intelligence: Intelligent Knowledge-Based Systems. Computer Science: Probably VLSI design, but need not be so. Electrical Engineering: VLSI design. Salary scales (under review): 6375-13505 pounds p.a. according to age, qualifications and experience. For further details write to the Secretary to the University, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, Scotland, quoting one or more reference numbers as required (IT2/1-3 as above). Applications (3 copies) including CV and names and adresses of 3 referees should be sent to the same address. If you have applied in response to the previous Computer Science advert, ref. 1055, then you will be considered for posts IT2/2 and IT2/3 without further application. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 17 May 83 23:14:55-PDT From: Vineet Singh Subject: Distributed Problem-Solving: An Annotated Bibliography This is to request contributions to an annotated bibliography of papers in *Distributed Problem-Solving* that I am currently compiling. My plan is to make the bibliography available to anybody that is interested in it at any stage in its compilation. Papers will be from many diverse areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Systems (especially Distributed Systems and Multiprocessors), Analysis of Algorithms, Economics, Organizational Theory, etc. Some miscellaneous comments. My definition of distributed problem-solving is a very general one, namely "the process of many entities engaged in solving a problem", so feel free to send a contribution if you are not sure that a paper is suitable for this bibliography. I also encourage you to make short annotations; more than 5 sentences is long. All annotations in the bibliography will carry a reference to the author. If your bibliography entries are in Scribe format that's great because the entire bibliography will be in Scribe. Vineet Singh (VSINGH@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA) ------------------------------ Date: 18 May 83 17:46:05-PDT (Wed) From: harpo!seismo!rlgvax!jack @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Loglan Cross Reference People interested by submissions on Loglan should see also net.nlang. ------------------------------ Date: 16 May 1983 1817-EDT (Monday) From: Robert.Frederking@CMU-CS-A (C410RF60) Subject: Re: Esperanto and LOGLAN I'm curious about something mentioned about these languages: has anyone made any claims regarding the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the fluent users of these languages? Bob ------------------------------ Date: 11 May 1983 2151-EDT From: NUDEL.CL@RUTGERS (NUDEL.CL) Subject: Latest AI Journal Issue [I just pulled this and the following messages from various local BBoards that Mabry Tyson makes available at SRI-AI. -- KIL] [...] I just received a copy of the March issue of the AI journal from North Holland and I see that the talk Haralick gave here Monday appears in that issue of AI as well. You may like to look at the March AI in general - it is a special issue devoted to Search and Heuristics (in memory of John Gaschnig), and covers recent AI research of a more formal nature than the usual AI variety. It looks like it will become something of a classic, with papers by Pearl, Simon, Karp, Lenat, Purdom (who also spoke here a while ago), yours-truly, Kanal, Nau and Haralick. Bernard ------------------------------ Date: 9 May 83 22:57:31 EDT From: John Stuckey @CMUC Subject: Presentation of IBM EPISTLE system Dr. Lance A. Miller, director of the Language and Knowledge Systems Laboratory of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, will be on campus Tuesday, 10 May. He will give a presentation of the lab's EPISTLE system for language analysis from 2 to 3 pm in Gregg Hall, PH 100. The presentation is entitled "On Text Composition and Quality: The IBM EPISTLE system's alternatives to NEWSPEAK." Abstract: The immediate goals of the EPISTLE system are to provide useful text-critiquing functions for assuring the "quality" of written English text. Today the system plunges through the densest prose and provides an "automatic unique parse" description of the surface syntactic structure of each sentence. This description provides the basis for the present capability to detect almost all errors of grammar and, shortly, to raise its editorial eyebrow at a large number of stylistic questionables (e.g., a la @i). This present Orwellian capability to render binary evaluative decisions on arbitrary text does not, however, reflect the ultimate design goals of the system. These, the present state, and the internal workings of the system will be discussed. ------------------------------ Date: 16 May 1983 17:28:42-EDT From: Michael.Young at CMU-CS-SPICE Subject: software copyright info IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications January/Februrary issue of this year has an interesting article on software copyrighting and patents, and includes loads of references to other cases and references. It is a well-documented case history and summary of the current situation for anyone concerned with legal issues. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 22-May-83 22:39:32-PDT,12833;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:19 Date: Sunday, May 22, 1983 10:39AM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #7 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 22 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 7 Today's Topics: LISP for VAX VMS AI Job Phil-Sci Mailing List (2) Computer Resident Intelligent Entity (CRIE) [Long Article] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 May 1983 09:19 cdt From: Silverman.CST at HI-MULTICS Subject: lisp for vax vms We are trying to find out what implementations of lisp exist that we can run on our vax under vms. Any information about existing systems and how to get them would be appreciated. Reply to Silverman at HI-Multics. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 19 May 83 10:41:33-PDT From: Gordon Novak Subject: AI Job Two individuals with strong CS background and specific interest in A.I. sought for development of a modern air traffic control system for the whole U.S. Position located on East Coast in mid-Atlantic states. Contact Jay. R. Kronfeld, Kronfeld & Young Inc., 412 Main St., Ridgefield, Conn. 06877. (203) 438-0478 ------------------------------ Date: 9 May 1983 1047-EDT From: Don Subject: Prolog, Phil-Sci mailing lists [...] Also of interest to local readers might be the local Phil-Sci BBoard, which receives the Philosophy-of-Science mailing list. Here is its description: PHILOSOPHY-OF-SCIENCE@MIT-MC (or PHIL-SCI@MIT-MC) An immediate redistribution list discussing philosophy of science with emphasis on its relevance for Artificial Intelligence. The list is archived@MIT-OZ in the twenex mail file: OZ:SRC:PHILOSOPHY-OF-SCIENCE-ARCHIVES.TXT.1 All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems, questions, etc., should be sent to PHILOSOPHY-OF-SCIENCE-REQUEST@MIT-MC (or PHIL-SCI-REQUEST@MIT-MC). Coordinator: John Mallery ------------------------------ Date: 10 May 1983 01:36 EDT (Tue) From: _Bob Subject: Phil-Sci Readers, Please Note Hi, Before FTP'ing the archive mentioned by Don's Phil-Sci announcement, [OZ]SRC:PHILOSOPHY-OF-SCIENCE-ARCHIVE.TXT please note that this OZ file is written in ZMAIL format, and is not readable with either MM or BBOARD.EXE. ZMAIL is a LISPMachine mail reader from MIT. You can TYPE or edit ZMAIL files, but they are sometimes pretty hard to follow that way. If you are interested in looking at back issues of this list in a more civilized fashion, I have been following it from the beginning, and have a home-built archive archived (howzat again?) on GREEN, as I-PHIL-SCI.BABYL through VI-PHIL-SCI.BABYL. These files have been reformatted for convenient reading with the BABYL, an EMACS-based mail-reader available at Rutgers. Also archived on GREEN is a help file named USING-BABYL-TO-READ-PHIL-SCI.HLP. Please do not attempt to RETRIEVE this stuff; drop me a note instead. These files total several hundred pages and would swamp my GREEN directory if restored to disk all at once. _Bob ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 May 83 19:12:45 EDT From: Mark Weiser Subject: Computer Resident Intelligent Entity (CRIE) [Long Article] 1. The Operating System World An interesting test-bed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods is the world of computer systems. Previous work has focused on limited particular subdomains, such as digital design [Sussman 77], computer configuration [McDermott & Steele 81], and programming knowledge [Waters 82]. Even these restricted domains have proven themselves very rich areas for AI techniques. However, no one has (yet) gone far enough in applying Artificial Intelligence techniques to computer systems. The far out question I'm thinking of is: what sort of entity would live in the ecological niche supplied by the computer system environment? Organisms evolved in the biological world have been shaped primarily by evolutionary forces. They cannot be wholistically studied without considering, for instance, their energy intake and expenditure and their necessity for reproduction [Kormondy 69]. These particular constraints are biological universals, but are not necessariy paradigmatic for non-biological intelligent organisms. Consider human beings, necessarily the prime subjects of those studying intelligent biological organisms. We* are specifically attuned to a particular environmental niche by virtue of our sensory systems, our cognitive processing capabilities, and our motor systems. Dreyfus [Dreyfus 72], argues from this that machines cannot be intelligent. Our discussion begins from a view more akin to Weizenbaum's [Weizenbaum 76]: a machine intelligence is an alien intelligence. What sort of sensory system is appropriate to this particular alien intelligence? 2. Traditional perceptual interfaces to the computer world The usual way of observing a computer system is to take snapshots. Such a snapshot might be a list of the active jobs on the system, or the names and sizes of the files, or the contents of a file. If more information than a snapshot is needed, then many snapshots are packed together to create a "history" of system behavior. Unfortunately a history of snapshots is not a history of the system. This is well known in performance modeling of computer systems, where a snapshot of a system every 15 minutes is useless. Instead an average over the 15 minute interval is the proper level of information gathering. The problem with snapshots is their time domain is fixed externally and irrelevantly to the world being monitored. It is sometimes possible to recreate the behavior of system objects by examining a stream of snapshots of the object's states. But this is the wrong approach to the problem. Rather ask: what sort of perceptual system would best notice the important objects (invariants) in a computer system world [Gibson 66]? A snapshot contains irrelevant information, and is gathered at irrelevant times. 3. New perceptual interfaces Imagine your favorite computer system. It consists of objects changing in time: files, programs, processes, descriptions, data flowing hither and yon--a very active world. A retinal level description of the biological world would display a similar confusion of unintegrated sensations. But our retina wins because it is part of a perceptual system which quickly transforms the input flux to invariant forms. Let's ignore the back end (invariant deduction end) of a computer perceptual system for a moment, and consider just the "retinal" end. What kind of raw data is available about important system activities? On the one hand are the contents of files, data structures, program descriptions, etc. The understanding of these items is relatively well studied--as a first approximation it is what programs do. The hard problem is perceiving the information flux. Values in memory and files are constantly changing and often it is the changes themselves which are interesting, more than from what the value was changed or to what it was changed. For instance, noticing someone poking around in my files is a "who is looking" question rather than a data value question. Noticing important changes in the system requires an event-based perceptual system. Activities occur in widely distributed places in a computer system. User programs, file systems, system data structures, may all be relevant to the intelligent computer resident entity. The human visual system has evolved to make good use of the transparency of our atmosphere to electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength to allow us to perceive activities in a wide range around us. A great deal of our intelligence is oriented towards the three dimensional space which we can survey, because it is here that we have effortless access to information about the objects which can immediately affect us [Kaplan 78]. A computer entity must also have effortless access to information about objects in its area of prime concern. Its perceptual apparatus should be attuned to changes in those entities so interesting events are immediately apparent to it. With our current technology** one solution is to distribute the perceptual apparatus of the entity onto the objects of concern. This is radically different from any solution chosen by nature, but the computer system world is radically different from the biological world. It amounts to daemon-based perception. The perceptual mechanism of a computer resident intelligent entity (CRIE) WOULD be similar to production rules [Forgy 81] and daemons [Rieger 78]. A CRIE retina would have two distinctive features: (1) it is made up of demons, which are (2) attached to the objects being observed. A CRIE perceptual system is quiescent until some event occurs to which it is attuned. When that happens, a CRIE reacts by invoking various reasoning and acquisition daemons associated with that event. These reasoning and acquisition daemons are modular pieces of information which are the low level meaning of events within a CRIE. The daemons not only watch for events occurring on the system, but also can observe larger contexts (such as themselves). To conclude: Artificial Intelligence research has, as one goal, understanding how to embed intelligence in a machine. The criticisms of AI from Dreyfus, Weizenbaum, and others can be used constructively to design an intelligence appropriate to a machine. This approach to intelligent system design leads to new kinds of design constraints for computer perceptual systems, and gives new meaning to the term "computer vision". FOOTNOTES *With apologies to those readers who are not human beings. **Implementation issues are important for the design of any intelli- gent entity. Why are our eyes in our head? REFERENCES [Dreyfus 72] Dreyfus, Hubert, What Computers Can't Do, Harper and Row, 1972. [Forgy 81] Forgy, C. L., OPS5 User's Manual, Carnegie-Mellon University CMU-CS-78-116, 1981. [Gibson 66] Gibson, James J., The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966. [Kaplan 78] Kaplan, R., The green experience, in Humanscape: environments for people, ed. S. Kaplan and R. Kaplan, Duxbury Press, North Scituate, Mass., 1978. [Kormondy 69] Kormondy, Edward J., Concepts of Ecology, Prentice-Hall, 1969. [McDermott & Steele 81] McDermott, J. and Steele, B., Extending a Knowledge-Based System to Deal with Ad Hoc Constraints, Proc. IJCAI-81, Vancouver, BC, 1981. [Rieger 78] Rieger, C., Spontaneous Computation and Its Role in AI Modelling, in Pattern-Directed Inference Systems, ed. Waterman & Hayes-Roth, Academic Press, New York, 1978. [Sussman 77] Sussman, G., Electrical Design: A Problem for Artificial Intelligence Research, Proc. IJCAI5, Cambridge, MA, 1977. [Waters 82] Waters, R. C., The Programmer's Apprentice: Knowledge Based Program Editing, IEEE Trans. on Software Eng. SE-8, 1, January 1982. [Weizenbaum 76] Weizenbaum, Joseph, Computer Power and Human Reason, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1976. [Editors comment: Mark doesn't seem to be asking about the natural course of evolution in a digital environment, although that is also an interesting question. It is not clear to me whether he is proposing a life form with the usual survival goals, or a monitoring system built by design and serving some useful purpose. Since it is difficult to discuss such a thing without knowing its purpose, I suggest that anyone responding state his own assumptions or teleology. I think the new LOOPS language/environment at Xerox offers much of the "instrumentation capability" that Mark's CRIE needs. The software probes can be attached to any variable a posteriori, in the manner of a dynamic debugger. This opens up a world of data-based (or dataflow) techniques integrated with rule-based and other AI techniques. -- KIL] ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 22-May-83 11:16:34-PDT,12487;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:20 Date: Sunday, May 22, 1983 11:16AM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #8 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 22 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 8 Today's Topics: 1984 IEEE Logic Programming Symposium More Expert Systems Reports Requests for Addresses (2) Sources for Reports [Long List] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 16 May 83 11:08:44-PDT From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: 1984 IEEE Logic Programming Symposium CALL FOR PAPERS The 1984 International Symposium on LOGIC PROGRAMMING Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 6-9, 1984 Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and its Technical Committee on Computer Languages The symposium will consider fundamental principles and important innovations in the design, definition, and implementation of logic programming systems and applications. Of special interest are papers related to parallel processing. Other topics of interest include (but are not limited to): distributed control schemes, FGCS, novel implementation techniques, performance issues, expert systems, natural language processing and systems programming. Please send ten copies of an 8- to 20-page, double spaced, typed manuscript, including a 200-250 word abstract and figures to: Doug DeGroot Program Chairman IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center P.O. Box 218 Yorktown Heights, New York 10598 Technical Committee Jacques Cohen (Brandeis) Fernando Pereira (SRI International) Doug DeGroot (IBM Yorktown) Alan Robinson (Syracuse) Don Dwiggins (Logicon) Joe Urban (Univ. Southwestern Louisiana) Bob Keller (Utah) Adrian Walker (IBM San Jose) Jan Kormorowski (Harvard) David Warren (SRI International) Michael McCord (IBM Yorktown) Jim Weiner (Univ. New Hampshire) Walter Wilson (IBM DSD Poughkeepsie) Summaries should explain what is new or interesting about the work and what has been accomplished. It is important to include specific findings or results, and specific comparisons with relevant previous work. The committee will consider appropriateness, clarity, originality, significance, and overall quality of each manuscript. Manuscripts whose length exceeds 20 double spaced, typed pages may receive less careful scrutiny than the work merits. If submissions warrant, the committee will compose a four day program. --------------------------------------------------------------------- September 1, 1983 is the deadline for the submission of manuscripts. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by October 30, 1983. The accepted papers must e typed on special forms and received by the program chairman at the above address by December 15, 1983. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to sign a copyright release form. Proceedings will be distributed at the symposium and will be subsequently available for purchase from IEEE Computer Society. Conference Chairman Technical Chairman Joe Urban Doug DeGroot Univ. of Southwest Louisiana IBM T. J. Watson Res Ctr CS Dept. P. O. Box 218 P.O. Box 44330 Yorktown Hts., NY 10598 Lafayette, LA 70504 (914)945-3497 (318)231-6304 Publicity Chairman David Warren SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 (415)859-2128 ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 83 11:13:56 EDT (Thu) From: Dana S. Nau Subject: Re: Expert Systems Reports Here are some additions: Reggia, J. A., Nau, D. S., and Wang, P., Diagnostic Expert Systems Based on a Set Covering Model, INTERNAT. JOUR. MAN-MACHINE STU- DIES, 1983. To appear. Nau, D. S., Expert Computer Systems, COMPUTER 16, 2, pp. 63-85, Feb. 1983. Nau, D. S., Reggia, J. A., and Wang, P., Knowledge-Based Problem Solv- ing Without Production Rules, IEEE 1983 TRENDS AND APPLICATIONS CONFERENCE, May 1983. To appear. Reggia, J. A., Wang, P., and Nau, D. S., Minimal Set Covers as a Model for Diagnostic Problem Solving, PROC. FIRST IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY INTERNAT. CONF. ON MEDICAL COMPUTER SCI./COMPUTATIONAL MEDICINE, Sept. 1982. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 18 May 83 13:55:16-PDT From: Samuel Holtzman Subject: Expert system references. Ken, In the latest AILIST you posted a set of references which were of interest to me. Is there any simple way (other than writing directly to the authors) to get copies of these papers? Some of them are published very locally, and might be difficult to obtain. In general, a nice feature to add on to each reference would be a net address to send for copies. Thanks, Sam Holtzman ------------------------------ Date: 18 May 1983 1454-PDT (Wednesday) From: ricks%UCBCAD@Berkeley Subject: AI Memos I would like to get some memos from the MIT AI Lab and the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. Could somebody send me information on how to order documents from them? Thanks, Rick L Spickelmier ricks@berkeley ------------------------------ Date: Sat 21 May 83 22:30:00-PDT From: Laws@SRI-AI Subject: Sources for Reports [Long List] Sam is in luck: the reports I listed are all available at the Stanford Math/CS library. I have sorted out other AI-related topics from the Stanford recent acquisitions list and plan to make them available in some form. (Direct mailing to the AIList membership seems inappropriate unless the bibliography is short or there is a need for a wide spectrum of readers to scan the material for errors and omissions. I would be interested in metacomments or personal communication on this matter.) For those who want to order reports, it seems economical to list source addresses once rather than every time a new report becomes available. I have culled the following from the Abstracts section of the SIGART newsletters for the last few years. (Only a handful of organizations have regularly announced new reports in this forum.) I will publish corrections and additions as they are sent in. -- Ken Laws Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. 50 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA 02238 Brown University Department of Computer Science Box 1910 Providence, RI 02912 Computer Science Department Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Mathematics Department Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 CMU Robotics Institute Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Robin Wallace@CMU-10A Dept. of Computer Science Duke University Durham, NC 27706 Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research 4001 Miranda Ave. MS 30-888 Palo Alto, CA 94304 General Electric Research and Development Center P.O. Box 43 Schenectady, NY 12301 Computer Science Department General Motors Research Laboratories Warren, MI 48090 Hewlett Packard Laboratories 1501 Page Mill Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 Behavioral Sciences and Linguistics Group Computer Science Department IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 Document Distribution USC/Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90291 Instituto de Investigaciones en Matematicos Aplicados y en Sistemas Apartado Postal 20-726 Mexico 20, D.F ISSCO Working Papers Institut pour les Etudes Semantiques et Cognitives 17 rue de Candolle CH1205 Geneve Switzerland Information Systems Research Section Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91103 Department of Information Sciences Kyoto University Kyoto, 606, JAPAN Centro de Informatics Laboratorio Nacional de Engenharia Civil 101, Av. do Brazil 1799 Lisboa Codex Portugal Computer Vision and Graphics Laboratory Dept. of Electrical Engineering McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada Massachusetts Institute Laboratory for Computer Science Cambridge, MA 02139 MIT AI Lab. 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 Laboratory of Statistical and Mathematical Methodology Division of Computer Research and Technology National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD 20205 National Technical Information Service 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield, Virginia 22161 Computing Systems Dept., IIMAS National University of Mexico Admon 20 Deleg Alv Obregon Apdo. 20-76 01000 Mexico DF Mexico Naval Research Laboratory Washington, D.C. 20375 AI Group Dept. of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 42210 Dept. of Computer Science Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 School of Electrical and Civil Engineering Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 Artificial Intelligence Center EJ250 SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 Heuristic Programming Project Department of Computer Science Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 Department of Computer Science State Univ. of New York at Buffalo 4226 Ridge Lea Road Amherst, NY 14226 Department of Computer Science State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794 Systems Performance Dept. TRW One Space Park, 02/1733 Redondo Beach, CA 90278 Department of Computer Science The Univ. of British Columbia Vancouver, British Colombia V6T 1W5 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of California 275 Cory Hall Berkeley, CA 94720 Dept. of Information and Computer Science University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92717 Cognitive Systems Laboratory School of Engineering and Applied Science University of California Los Angeles, CA 90024 Dept. of Artificial Intelligence University of Edinburgh Forrest Hill Edinburgh EH1 2QL Scotland Cognitive Studies Centre Department of Computer Science University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO4 3Sq Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence University of Hamburg Mittelweg 179 D-2000 Hamburg 13 Federal Republic of Germany Fachbereich Informatik Universitaet Hamburg Schlueterstr. 70 D-2000 Hamburg 13 West Germany Universitaet Hamburg Germanisches Seminar Von-Melle-Park 6 D-2000 Hamburg 13 Federal Republic of Germany Publications Editor Department of Computing Imperial College of Science and Technology University of London 180 Queen's Gate London SW7 2BZ Publications Advanced Automation Research Group Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 Artificial Intelligence Group Department of Computer Science University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Department of Neurology University of Maryland Hospital Baltimore, MD 21201 University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Department of Computer and Information Science The Moore School / D2 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 Computer Science Department University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627 Dept. of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada Dept. of Computer Science University of Utah 3160 Merrill Engineering Building Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 Department of Electrical Engineering University of Washington Seattle, WA 98105 Computer Science Dept. University of Wisconsin Madison, WI 53706 Department of Computer Science Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202 XEROX Palo Alto Research Center Palo Alto, CA Yale Artificial Intelligence Project Department of Computer Science Box 2158 Yale Station 10 Hillhouse Ave. New Haven, Conn. 06520 Department of Computer Science York University Downsview, Ontario M3J 1P3 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 28-May-83 22:58:35-PDT,9228;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:21:21 Date: Saturday, May 28, 1983 10:58PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #9 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 29 May 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 9 Today's Topics: More information on Esperanto Address Correction & Addition High Technology Articles Request for Expert System Info Reading machines (2) Administrative Policy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 23 May 83 21:24:39 EDT (Mon) From: Fred Blonder Subject: More information on Esperanto [...] The best place to contact is: Esperanto League for North America, Inc. P.O. Box 1129 El Cerrito, CA 34530 They promote Esperanto wherever they can and publish a newsletter every few months. They also operate the ``Esperanto Book Service'' (at the same address) which can supply Esperanto textbooks, Esperanto translations of literary works, original Esperanto literary works, tapes, records etc. Send them a dollar when writing to them if you want their complete catalog. This is a partial listing of their books which may be of interest (and is probably out of date, but it's all I have): Teach Yourself Esperanto, 205p $3.95 (basic text) Esperanto Dictionary, 419p $3.50 Pasoj al Plena Posedo, 240p $5.50 (advanced text) La ingenia hidalgo Don Quijote da la Mancha 820p $35.00 (just what you think it is) Asteriks la Gaulo 48p $7.00 (comic book) There's also some strange Esperanto/Computer-Science organization based in Budapest, which mails their newsletter from Sofia Bulgaria. I'm on their mailing list, but haven't heard from them in over a year. Whatever it was, it probably died out. I've also seen some pornographic books written in Esperanto, but don't know where they can be obtained. Speaking of which: all of the fivortoj (fee-VOR-toy: dirty words) in Esperanto were originated by a doctor who was a friend of the originator of the language, and who had a sincere interest in the language, so you know they're medically and grammatically correct. What other language do you know which can boast this? Bonan tagon, Fred ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 1983 1021-CDT From: Jonathan Slocum Subject: Address Correction & Addition Note that ISSCO has moved; here's the new address: ISSCO 54 rte. des Acacias 1227 Geneve Switzerland (No telephone numbers changed.) While I'm at it, I'll plug my org: The Linguistics Research Center of the University of Texas (host of our friendly MCC) is engaged in R&D for Machine Translation [of natural languages]. A German-English translation system is running, has translated close to 700 pages of material of various sorts (mostly op./maint. manuals, but also things like software/hardware descriptions and sales brochures), and is near commercial viability. An English-German system is underway, with another major effort to develop a third language about to begin. In addition, a visiting Chinese scholar is expected to begin experimenting with English-Chinese translation later this year. Address for technical reports, etc: Linguistics Research Center P.O. Box 7247 University Station Austin, Texas 78712 ------------------------------ Date: Sat 28 May 83 22:25:40-PDT From: Laws@SRI-AI Subject: High Technology Articles The June edition of High Technology contains a several interesting articles. There are minor pieces on industrial robots, laser printers for electronic publishing, and 16-bit micros; also a feature on video games (again). There is a lengthy extract from Ed Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck's new book on the Japanese fifth generation effort. It seems to be a balanced presentation. There is also a good review of dataflow and reduction architectures, with some mention of other alternatives to von Neumann computers. The Real World is beginning to take notice. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 24 May 1983 0827-PDT From: RTAYLOR at USC-ECL Subject: Request for Expert System Info Ken, I get the AIList via the BB at RADC-TOPS20. (I have access to RADC-Multics and TOPS-20 both, as well as the USC-ECL machine. I usually use the USC-ECL machine for msg composing.) I am the newest member of the AI Group located at RADC (Rome, NY) working with Nort Fowler. I am responsible for expert systems and expert systems tools. Like Sam Holtzman, I am interested in expert systems literature and AI in general. I am trying to "build" a reference library for our use here at RADC. My in house project is "to evaluate existing knowledge base tools which have been used to build expert systems. This evaluation will determine the strengths and weaknesses of these various tools; such as their ease of use, their knowlege base management techniques, and their knowledge base maintenance techniques." Those systems/tools I am currently pursing are: age, ap3, emycin, expert, frl, hearsay, kas, kee, ops5, prospector, rll, ross, and units. We have access to interlisp, and are in the process of acquinring maclisp. Among other things, I am supposed to acquire these and any others I can find and that we can afford. After acquiring them, I am to "get up to speed" on each, then bring the other members of the group up to speed on each. Then we are to take a series of problems ("graded levels of difficulty"), and solve each problem using each tool/system. In a sense, for each tool, I'll have to come up with suggested instructions or some sort of tutorial--at least enough to get each member started experimenting on their own. Needless to say, I've never worked with any of these tools before, and have limited knowledge of what might be available (out there) to help me. In summary, I am looking for 1) literature and references for our library, 2) expert systems/tools for our collection and in house use and evaluation, and 3) any existing tutorial-oriented help for the above tools and any other (tools) which might be suggested we investigate. Thanks for the help and for listening. Please direct info and/or further questions to me: rtaylor at ecl. Roz ------------------------------ Date: 25 May 83 5:38:25-PDT (Wed) From: decvax!cca!linus!genrad!wjh12!n44a!ima!inmet!bhyde @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Reading machines? - (nf) Ah why is that you can't seem to buy a machine to read printed text that actually works? Ben Hyde bhyde!inmet [This seems to be an indirect request for information on the state of the art in reading machines. As a start, I suggest J. Schurman, Reading Machines, Proc. 6th Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition, Munich, Oct. 1982, pp. 1031-1044. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 27 May 83 20:11:30-PDT (Fri) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!presby!burdvax!hdj @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Re: Reading machines -- an answer to the question Doesn't Kurzweil (sp?), a Xerox Company, I think, make such a machine? I heard about it a couple of years ago; it can supposedly recognize almost any font, is trainable, can read four or five lines of text at once, and more. I haven't heard much about the company or their machine recently. Anyone know more? Herb Jellinek, SDC Logic-Based Systems Group, burdvax!hdj ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 1983 1321-PDT From: Keith Wescourt Reply-to: Wescourt@USC-ISI Subject: Administrative Policy Ken, You might want to consider whether job announcements, like the one posted by Gordon Novak (originally only to SU-BBOARDS) included in this AILIST issue, violate the ARPANET policies about commercial use. I can imagine that job announcements from universities and non-profits are acceptable, but that those from private, profit-making outfits and their contracted headhunters are not. Note that Gordon's original was not transmitted via ARPANET, so he could not have violated any DCA policies. Note that I work for a private, profit-making R&D company and it would be very much to our advantage to exploit our access to the ARPANET for advertising job openings. Keith [Quite right; I apologize for picking up the item and will not report specific solicitations in the future. Lab descriptions and other indirect information are still welcome. -- KIL] ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 3-Jun-83 17:27:43-PDT,6844;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 2-Aug-83 12:00:11 Date: Friday, June 3, 1983 5:27PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #10 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Saturday, 4 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 10 Today's Topics: VAX Interlisp Availability LIPS Kurzweil Reading Machine Chemical AI, Scientific Journals Current List of Hosts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 May 1983 1434-PDT From: Raymond Bates Subject: VAX Interlisp Availability In response to the Silverman [V1 #7] message: Interlisp is available for both the VMS and UNIX operating systems for the VAX family. For more information send a note to Interlisp@ISIB with a post office address in it. /Ray ------------------------------ Date: Thu 12 May 83 22:59:59-PDT From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: LIPS [Reprinted from the Prolog Digest.] The LIPS (logical inferences per sec.) measure for Prolog (and maybe other logic programming systems) is not as useless as it might appear at first sight. Of course, resolving a goal against a clause head takes a different amount of work for different goals and clauses, but a similar observation could be made about the MIPS measure for conventional machines. The speed of the concatenate loop conc([],L,L). conc([X|L1],L2,[X|L3]) :- conc(L1,L2,L3). appears to be a remarkably good indicator of the speed of a Prolog implementation for large "pure" Prolog programs (ie. Horn clauses+cut but no evaluable predicates except maybe arithmetic). For example, compiled Prolog on a DEC 2060 runs at 43000 LIPS with this estimate, and (interpreted) C-Prolog on a VAX 11/780 runs at 1500 LIPS. Prolog compilers for the VAX and similar machines are starting to be developed, and at least one is expected to reach 15000 LIPS on a VAX 780 (it will be quite a while before these are incorporated into full Prolog systems). The first Prolog machine prototype from Japan (the Psi machine from ICOT) is expected to reach 40000 LIPS. Extensive use of evaluable predicates may invalidate the measure to a large extent (but then, we aren't talking about *logic* programs anymore, and "logical inference" is no longer the main operation). -- Fernando Pereira ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 May 83 10:25 PDT From: GMEREDITH.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA Subject: Kurzweil Reading Machine The Kurzweil company, a subsidiary of Xerox, is producing a reading machine which is, to my knowledge, the most advanced in the industry. Xerox had the unit on display at the NCC in Anaheim in May. Xerox has recently donated a number of the Kurzweil units to various educational institutes to aid blind students, so some people on the nets have probably had experience with them or can locate one nearby to check out. Guy ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jun 1983 1238-PDT From: RTAYLOR at USC-ECL Subject: Chemical AI, Scientific Journals Ken (and everyone else!), Thanks for the response to my cry for help [concerning expert systems for evaluation at RADC]. From 9 Jun thru 20 Jun I will be enjoying "God's Country" (Oregon to the uninformed). But, until my storage quota is exceeded, my mailbox will accept msgs--which I will dilligently answer on my return. For those of you who don't know me personally, I was a chemist before being "lured" away to the US Air Force and electronics. I still maintain my ACS membership (American Chemical Society). C&E News (the ACS weekly info publication) devoted a large part of their 9 May 83 issue to computers and mathematical tools and their influence on Chemistry. Their "Special Report" feature was entitled "A computer program for organic synthesis". I have not studied it, but have skimmed it, thinking it would be worth reading. I have just received my 30 May issue, and its "Special Report" feature is entitled "Troubled Times for Scientific Journals", which should be of interest to those of us who do (or must) publish. (Only a small section on Electronic Publishing.) Those interested in reprints of either special report can send $3.00 for each report (although 10 or more cys of one report are only $1.75 each). Requests are sent to: Distribution, Room 210, American Chemical Society, 1155--16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. They want prepayment for orders less than or equal to $20. For those of you who are fans of Asimov's robot novels/stories, the article "Molecular Electronic Devices Offer Challenging Goal" might be one way of accomplishing the "positronic brain".?! (This, too, was in C&E News, but the 23 May issue...yes, C&E News is not my highest reading priority--note the dates.) Thanks again for all your help. Roz ------------------------------ Date: Thu 2 Jun 83 14:54:15-PDT From: Laws@SRI-AI Subject: Current List of Hosts The following BBoards and hosts are currently on the mailing list. AIDS-UNIX (4), BBNA, BBNG, BBN-UNIX (2), BBN-VAX, UCBCAD@BERKELEY, UCBCORY@BERKELEY, AIList%UCBKIM@BERKELEY, AIList@BRL, AI-Info@CIT-20, CMUA (4), CMU-CS-A (19), CMU-CS-C (5), CMU-CS-G, CMU-CS-IUS, CMU-CS-SPICE (2), CMU-CS-VLSI, CMU-CS-ZOG, CMU-RI-FAS (2), CMU-RI-ISL (3), AIList@CORNELL, DEC-MARLBORO (3), ECLA, KESTREL, HI-MULTICS, UW-Beaver!UTCSRGV@LBL-CSAM, VORTEX@LBL-CSAM, MIT-DSPG (2), AIList-Distribution@MIT-EE, MIT-MC (16), MIT-CIPG@MIT-MC, MIT-EECS@MIT-MC, MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (18), MIT-ML (3), MIT-OZ@MIT-ML, MIT-MULTICS, MIT-SPEECH, bbAI-List@MIT-XX (+6), NADC, NBS-VMS, AI@NLM-MCS, NPRDC (2), NYU-AIList@NYU, OFFICE-3, XeroxAIList^.PA@PARC-MAXC, AI@RADC-TOPS20, {EMORY, IBM-SJ, AIList.RICE, TEKTRONIX, UCI-AIList.UCI, UIUC}@Rand-Relay, AIList-BBOARD@RUTGERS (+3), S1-C, AIList@SRI-AI (+7), SRI-CSL, SRI-KL (7), SRI-TSC (2), AIList-Usenet@SRI-UNIX, SU-AI, Incoming-AIList@SUMEX, SUMEX-AIM, DSN-AI@SU-DSN, SU-SIERRA@SU-DSN, SU-SCORE (10), G@SU-SCORE (2), Local-AI-BBoard%SAIL@SU-SCORE (+2), UCLA-LOCUS (2), V.AI-News@UCLA-LOCUS, {BUFFALO-CS, Spaf.GATech, AIList.UMASS-CS (+1), AI-BBD.UMCP-CS, Post-AIList.UNC}@UDel-Relay, USC-ECL (5), USC-ECLB (3), USC-ECLC (3), SU-AI@USC-ECL (6), USC-ISI (3), USC-ISIB (7), USC-ISID, EDXA%UCL-CS@ISID, USC-ISIE, USC-ISIF (8), UTAH-20 (8), BBOARD.AIList@UTEXAS-20, CC@UTEXAS-20, CMP@UTEXAS-20, G.TI.DAK@UTEXAS-20, WASHINGTON (5), XX, AI-LOCAL@YALE (+1). -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 3-Jun-83 17:34:20-PDT,22104;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:00:53 Date: Friday, June 3, 1983 5:34PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #11 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Saturday, 4 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 11 Today's Topics: Quasiformal languages Prolog Expert Systems Expert Systems Bibliography (19,000 chars) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 6 May 83 17:50:20-PDT From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Quasiformal languages [Reprinted from the Prolog Digest.] LESK is [a quasiformal] language, developed by Doug Skuce of the CS Dept. of the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has implemented it in Prolog. The language allows the definition of classes (types), isa relationships, and complex part-whole relationships, and has a formal semantics (it's just logic in disguise). It has a nice English-like flavor. A reference is "Expressing Qualitative Biomedical Knowledge Exactly Using the Language LESK", D. S. Skuce, Comput. Biol. Med., vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 57-69, 1982. Fernando ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 1983 20:46:53-PDT (Sunday) From: Adrian Walker Subject: Prolog Expert Systems [Reprinted from the Prolog Digest.] Reports available from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Distribution Services, Post Office Box 218, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598. Automatic Generation Of Explanations Of Results From Knowledge Bases. Report RJ 3481. Adrian Walker. Prolog/Ex1, An Inference Engine Which Explains Both Yes and No Answers. Report RJ 3771. Adrian Walker. Report available from Adrian Walker, Department K51, IBM Research Laboratory, 5600 Cottle Road, San Jose, CA 95193. (Adrian @ IBM-SJ). Data bases, Expert Systems, and Prolog. Report RJ 3870. Adrian Walker. Report available from Department of Computer Science, New York University, 251 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Syllog: a knowledge based data management system. Report No. 034, Department of Computer Science, New York University. Adrian Walker. [...] Adrian ------------------------------ Date: Thu 2 Jun 83 09:56:00-PDT From: Ken Laws Subject: Expert Systems Bibliography (19,000 chars) I published a bibliography of recent expert systems reports in AIList #5. There is also a brief bibliography by Michael Rychener in the Oct. 1981 issue of SIGART and an extensive bibliography by Bruce Buchanan in the April 1983 issue of SIGART. These three lists have almost no overlap. I present here an additional list of references for expert systems, problem solving, and learning. It contains only references not given in the previously mentioned sources. I am still looking for material on expert systems and vision. I have lists of technical reports from Stanford, MIT, and SRI. I have also gone through the latest proceedings for IJCAI, AAAI, PatRec, PRIP, and the DARPA IU Workshop. Other sources or machine-readable citations would be most welcome. Please send them to Laws@SRI-AI or to the AIList. -- Ken Laws J. Bamberger, Capturing Intuitive Knowledge in Procedural Description, AIM-398 (LOGO Memo 42), AI-MIT, Dec. 1976. H.G. Barrow, Artificial Intelligence: State of the Art, TN 198, SRI-AI, Oct. 1979. D.G. Bobrow and B. Raphael, New Programming Languages for AI Research, Computing Surveys, Vol. 6, No. 3, Sept. 1974. Originally CSL-73-2, Aug. 1973. Reprinted by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, July 1976. G. Bracchi and B. Pernici, Modelling Control Structures in Office Systems, Milan. Politecnico. Dipartimento di Elettronica. Lab. di Calcolatori, Rapporto Interno N. 82-19, 1982. A. Brown and G. Sussman, Localization of Failures in Radio Circuits -- A Study in Causal and Teleological Reasoning, AIM-319, AI-MIT, (AD-A011-839), Dec. 1974. A. Brown, Qualitative Knowledge, Causal Reasoning, and the Localization of Failures, AI-TR-362, AI-MIT, (AD-A052-952), Dec. 1976. R. Brown, Use of Analogy to Achieve New Expertise, AI-TR-403, AI-MIT, (AD-A043-809), Apr. 1977. B.G. Buchanan and R.O. Duda, Principles of Rule Based Expert Systems. Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept., STAN-CS-82-926; Stanford U. Comp. Sci. Dept. Heuristic Programming Project, HPP-82-014, 55 pp, 1982. A. Bundy, G. Luger, and M. Stone, A Program to Solve Mechanics Problems Stated in English, DAI Working Paper 8, Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, England, 1975. U. Bussolati, M. Fugini, and G. Martella, ACTEN: An Action Entity Model for Conceptual Modeling of Security Information, Milan. Politecnico. Dipartimento di Elettronica. Lab. di Calcolatori, Rapporto Interno N. 82-21, 1982. E. Charniak, CARPS: A Program Which Solves Calculus Word Problems, AI-TR-227 (MAC-TR-51), AI-MIT, (AD-673-670), July 1968. E. Charniak, Toward a Model of Children's Story Comprehension, AI-TR-266, AI-MIT, Dec. 1972. J.G. Cleary, Implementation of a Sequential Learning Machine, Man-Machine Studies Report UC-DSE/6, Dept. of EE., Univ. of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1975. M. Davis, On Constructing a Preprocessor for STRIPS-World Problem Solvers, Research Memo MIP-R-111, Machine Intelligence Unit, Univ. of Edinburgh, England, 1975. R. Davis and R.G. Smith, Negotiation as a Metaphor for Distributed Problem Solving, AIM-624, AI-MIT, (AD-A100-367), May 1981. J. de Kleer, Qualitative and Quantitative Knowledge in Classical Mechanics, AI-TR-352, AI-MIT, (AD-A021-515), Dec. 1975. J. de Kleer, Local Methods for Localizing Faults in Electronic Circuits, AIM-394, AI-MIT, (AD-A036-007), Nov. 1976. J. de Kleer, J. Doyle, G.L. Steele, Jr., and G.J. Sussman, Explicit Control of Reasoning, AIM-427, AI-MIT, (AD-A078-244), June 1977. Also in AIPL Aug. 1977 Proc. in SIGPLAN/SIGART, 1977. J. de Kleer, J. Doyle, C. Rich, G.L. Steele, Jr., and G.J. Sussman, AMORD: A Deductive Procedure System, AIM-435, AI-MIT, Jan. 1978. J. de Kleer and G.J. Sussman, Propagation of Constraints Applied to Circuit Synthesis, AIM-485, AI-MIT, Sep. 1978. Also in Int. J. of Circuit Theory, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 127-144, Apr. 1980. J. de Kleer, Causal Reasoning and Rationalization in Electronics, AIM-499, AI-MIT, Sep. 1978. D. Dellarosa and L.E. Bourne, Jr., Text-Based Decisions: Changes in the Availability of Facts Due to Instructions and the Passage of Time, Colorado U. Cognitive Sci. Inst., Tech. Rpt. 115-ONR, 1982. M.E. Denofsky, How Near Is Near? A Near Specialist, AIM-344, AI-MIT, Feb. 1976. J. Doyle, Truth Maintenance Systems for Problem Solving, AI-TR-419, AI-MIT, (AD-A054-826), Jan. 1978. J. Doyle, A Truth Maintenance System, AIM-521, AI-MIT, June 1979. Also in Artificial Intelligence Journal, Vol. 12, pp. 231-272, 1979. J. Doyle and P. London, A Selected Descriptor-Indexed Bibliography to the Literature on Belief Revision, AIM-568, AI-MIT, Feb. 1980. J. Doyle, A Model for Deliberation, Action, and Introspection, AI-TR-581, AI-MIT, May 1980. R.O. Duda, P.E. Hart, and N.J. Nilsson, Subjective Bayesian Methods for Rule-Based Inference Systems, TN 124, SRI-AI, Jan. 1976. R.O. Duda, Semantic Network Representation in Rule Based Inference System, TN 136, SRI-AI, Jan. 1977. R.O. Duda, N.J. Nilsson, and B. Raphael, State of Technology in Artificial Intelligence, TN 211, SRI-AI, Mar. 1980. L.D. Erman and V.R. Lesser, A Multi-Level Organization for Problem Solving Using Many, Diverse, Co-operating Sources of Knowledge, CMU-CSD, Mar. 1975. S.E. Fahlman, A Planning System for Robot Construction Tasks, AI-TR-283, AI-MIT, (AD-773-471), May 1973. S.E. Fahlman, Thesis Progress Report: A System For Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge, AIM-331, AI-MIT, (AD-A021-178), May 1975. S.E. Fahlman, A System for Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge, AI-TR-450, AI-MIT, (AD-A052-748), Dec. 1977. E.A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman, Eds., Computers and Thought, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963. R.E. Fikes, P.E. Hart, and N.J. Nilsson, Some New Directions in Robot Problem Solving, TN 68, SRI-AI, May 1972. R. Fikes and G.G. Hendrix, A Network-Based Knowledge Representation and Its Natural Deduction System, TN 147, SRI-AI, July 1977. K.D. Forbus, A Study of Qualitative and Geometric Knowledge in Reasoning about Motion, AI-TR-615, AI-MIT, (AD-A096-455), Feb. 1981. E.C. Freuder, Suggestion and Advice, Working Paper 43, AI-MIT, Mar. 1973. E.C. Freuder, Active Knowledge, Working Paper 53, AI-MIT, Oct. 1973. E.C. Freuder, Synthesizing Constraint Expressions, AIM-370, AI-MIT, (AD-A034-011), July 1976. K. Fukumori, Fundamental Scheme for Train Scheduling, AIM-596, AI-MIT, Sep. 1980. J. Gashnig, A Constraint Satisfaction Method for Inference Making, Proc. 12th Allerton Conf. on Circuit and Systems Theory, Univ. of Illinois, Oct. 1974. I. Goldstein, Elementary Geometry Theorem Proving, AIM-280, AI-MIT, (AD-735-568), Apr. 1973. I. Goldstein and S. Papert, Artificial Intelligence, Language and the Study of Knowledge, AIM-337, AI-MIT, July 1975, revised Mar. 1976. I.P. Goldstein and R.B. Roberts, NUDGE, A Knowledge-Based Scheduling Program, AIM-405, AI-MIT, Feb. 1977. I.P. Goldstein and E. Grimson, Annotated Production Systems: A Model for Skill Acquisition, AIM-407 (LOGO Memo 44), AI-MIT, (AD-A052-211), Feb. 1977. I.P. Goldstein, The Genetic Epistemology of Rule Systems, AIM-449, AI-MIT, Jan. 1978. I.P. Goldstein, Developing a Computational Representation for Problem Solving Skills, AIM-495, AI-MIT, Oct. 1978. P. Hart, N. Nilsson, and B. Raphael, A Formal Basis for the Heuristic Determination of Minimum-Cost Paths, IEEE Trans. on Systems Science and Cybernetics, Vol. SSC-4, No. 2, pp. 100-107, July 1968. P.E. Hart and R.O. Duda, PROSPECTOR -- A Computer Based Consultation System for Mineral Exploration, TN 155, SRI-AI, Oct. 1977. F. Hayes-Roth, Collected Papers on the Learning and Recognition of Structured Patterns, CMU-CSD, 1975. W.R. Heads, A Simulated Blindman Task for a Learning Machine, Man-Machine Studies Report UC-DSE/6, Dept. of EE., Univ. of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1975. C.L. Hedrick, A Computer Program to Learn Production Systems Using a Semantic Net, Ph.D. Thesis, CMU-CSD, July 1974. G.G. Hendrix, Encoding Knowledge in Partitioned Networks, TN 164, SRI-AI, June 1978. C. Hewitt, PLANNER: A Language for Manipulating Models and Proving Theorems in a Robot, AI Memo 158, AI-MIT, Aug. 1970. C. Hewitt, Description and Theoretical Analysis (Using Schemata) of PLANNER: A Language for Proving Theorems and Manipulating Models in a Robot, AI-TR-258, AI-MIT, (AD-744-620), Apr. 1972. C. Hewitt, P. Bishop, and R. Steiger, A Universal Modular {\ul Actor} Formalism for Artificial Intelligence, 3rd Int. Jnt. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, Aug. 1973. C. Hewitt, Viewing Control Structures as Patterns of Passing Messages, AIM-410, AI-MIT, (AD-A038-246), Dec. 1976. G.A. Iba, Learning Disjunctive Concepts from Examples, AIM-548, AI-MIT, Sep. 1979. T.L. Jones, A Computer Model of Simple Forms of Learning, AI-TR-236 (MAC-TR-20), AI-MIT, (AD-720-337), Jan. 1971. K.M. Kahn, Intermission -- Actors in Prolog, TR-1 1981-08-10, Uppsala Programming Methodology and AI Lab., Computing Sci. Dept., Uppsala Univ., Sweden, June 1981. W.G. Kennedy, Problem Solving and Nondeterministic Programming Systems, M.S. Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, June 1973. W.A. Kornfeld, Using Parallel Processing for Problem Solving, AIM-561, AI-MIT, (AD-A084-683), Dec. 1979. W.A. Kornfeld, The Use of Parallelism to Implement a Heuristic Search, AIM-627, AI-MIT, (AD-A099-184), Mar. 1981. B.J. Kuipers, A Frame for Frames: Representing Knowledge for Recognition, AIM-322, AI-MIT, (AD-A012-835), Mar. 1975. B. Kuipers, Spatial Knowledge, AIM-359, AI-MIT, (AD-A026-874), June 1976. B.J. Kuipers, Representing Knowledge of Large-scale Space, AI-TR-418, AI-MIT, July 1977. A.P. Kyne, Heuristic Problem-Solving Systems, M.Sc. Thesis, Dept. of Info. Sci., Univ. of Melbourne, Australia, 1974. R. LeFaivre, The Representation of Fuzzy Knowledge, DCS-TR-33, Computer Sci. Dept., Rutgers Univ., 1975. H. Lieberman, A Preview of Act 1, AIM-625, AI-MIT, June 1981. H. Lieberman, Thinking About Lots Of Things At Once Without Getting Confused -- Parallelism in Act 1, AIM-626, AI-MIT, May 1981. T. Lozano-Perez, Spatial Planning: A Configuration Space Approach, AIM-605, AI-MIT, (AD-A093-934), Dec. 1980. T. Lozano-Perez, Automatic Planning of Manipulator Transfer Movements, AIM-606, AI-MIT, (AD-A096-118), Dec. 1980. G.F. Luger, Behavioral Effects of Problem Structure in Isomorphic Problem Solving Equations, DAI Research Rpt. 4, Dept. of AI, Univ. of Edinburgh, England, May 1975. J.T. Maxwell, III, and S.M. Ornstein, Mockingbird: A Composer's Amanuensis, Xerox. Palo Alto Res. Center, CSL-83-02, 1983. D.A. McAllester, A Three Valued Truth Maintenance System, AIM-473, AI-MIT, (AD-A062-176), May 1978. D.A. McAllester, The Use of Equality in Deduction and Knowledge Representation, AI-TR-550, AI-MIT, (AD-A084-890), Jan. 1980. D.A. McAllester, An Outlook on Truth Maintenance, AIM-551, AI-MIT, (AD-A093-190) Aug. 1980. D. McDermott and G.J. Sussman, The Conniver Reference Manual, AIM-259A, AI-MIT, (AD-773-555), 1974. D.V. McDermott, Very Large Planner-type Data Bases, AIM-339, AI-MIT, (AD-A026-370), Sep. 1975. D.V. McDermott, Flexibility and Efficiency in a Computer Program for Designing Circuits, AI-TR-402, AI-MIT, (AD-A043-964), Dec. 1976. D. McDermott and J. Doyle, Non-Monotonic Logic I, AIM-486B, AI-MIT, (AD-A078-395), revised July 1979. E.R. Michener, The Structure of Mathematical Knowledge, AI-TR-472, AI-MIT, 1978. P.L. Miller, An "Adaptive" Natural Language System Which Listens, Asks, and Learns, RLE Natural Language Group Memo 83, AI-MIT, Nov. 1974. M. Minsky, Ed., Semantic Information Processing, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. M. Minsky and S. Papert, 1968-1969 Progress Report, AIM-200, AI-MIT, 1970. M. Minsky and S. Papert, Proposal to ARPA for Research on Artificial Intelligence at MIT 1970-1971, AIM-185, AI-MIT, Dec. 1970. M. Minsky and S. Papert, Progress Report, AIM-252, AI-MIT, Jan. 1972. M. Minsky, A Framework for Representing Knowledge, AIM-306, AI-MIT, (AD-A011-168), June 1974. Also in P. Winston (ed.), The Psychology of Computer Vision. M. Minsky, Plain Talk About Neurodevelopmental Epistemology, AIM-430, AI-MIT, June 1977. R.C. Moore, Reasoning from Incomplete Knowledge in a Procedural Deduction System, AI-TR-347, AI-MIT, Dec. 1975. R.C. Moore, Reasoning from Incomplete Knowledge in a Procedural Deduction System, Garland Publishing, 1979. J. Moses, Symbolic Integration, AI-TR-226 (MAC-TR-47), AI-MIT, (AD-662-666), Dec. 1967. A. Nevins, Plane Geometry Theorem Proving Using Forward Chaining, AIM-303, AI-MIT, (AD-A004-223), Jan. 1974. N.J. Nilsson, Problem Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence, McGraw Hill Book Co., NY, 1971. N.J. Nilsson, Artificial Intelligence, TN 89, SRI-AI, Mar. 1974. N.J. Nilsson, A Production System for Automatic Deduction, TN 148, SRI-AI, July 1977. N.J. Nilsson, The Interplay Between Experimental and Theoretical Methods in Artificial Intelligence, TN 229, SRI-AI, Sep. 1980. D.A. Norman, D.E. Rumelhart, and the LNR Research Group, Explorations in Cognition, Freeman and Co., San Francisco, Apr. 1975. L.M. Norton, ADEPT: A Heuristic Program for Proving Theorems of Group Theory, AI-TR-222 (MAC-TR-33), AI-MIT, (AD-645-660), Oct. 1966. S. Papert, Teaching Children to be Mathematicians versus Teaching about Mathematics, Educ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 3, pp. 249-262, 1972. W.H. Paxton, A Framework for Language Understanding, TN 131, SRI-AI, June 1976. W.H. Paxton, Experiments in Speech Understanding System Control, TN 134, SRI-AI, Aug. 1976. M. Raibert, A State Space Model for Sensorimotor Control and Learning, AIM-351, AI-MIT, (AD-A026-960), Jan. 1976. M. Raibert, Control and Learning by the State Space Model: Experimental Findings, AIM-412, AI-MIT, Apr. 1977. M.H. Raibert, Motor Control and Learning by the State Space Model, AI-TR-439, AI-MIT, Sep. 1977. R.B. Roberts and I.P. Goldstein, The FRL Primer, AIM-408, AI-MIT, (AD-A053-306), July 1977. A.D. Rubin, Hypothesis Formation and Evaluation in Medical Diagnosis, AI-TR-316, AI-MIT, Jan. 1975. J.F. Rulifson, J.A. Derksen, and R.J. Waldinger, QA4: A Procedural Calculus for Intuitive Reasoning, TN 73, SRI-AI, Nov. 1972. E.D. Sacerdoti, A Structure for Plans and Behavior, TN 109, SRI-AI, Aug. 1975. E. Sacerdoti, R. Fikes, R. Reboh, D. Sagalowicz, R. Waldinger, and B.M. Wilber, QLISP: A Language for the Interactive Development of Complex Systems, TN 120, SRI-AI, Mar. 1976. E.D. Sacerdoti, Problem Solving Tactics, TN 189, SRI-AI, July 1979. E. Sandewall, Ideas about Management of Data Bases, AIM-332, AI-MIT, (AD-A013-312), May 1975. E.H. Shortliffe and B.G. Buchanan, A Model of Inexact Reasoning in Medicine, Mathematical Biosciences, Vol. 23, pp. 351-379, 1975. S.K. Shrivastava, A Dependency, Commitment and Recovery Model for Atomic Actions, Newcastle Upon Tyne U. Computing Lab., No. 178, 1982. H.A. Simon and J.B. Kadane, Optimal Problem-Solving Search: All-or-None Solutions, CMU-CSD, 1975. B.C. Smith, A Proposal for a Computational Model of Anatomical and Physiological Reasoning, AIM-493, AI-MIT, Nov. 1978. R.M. Stallman and G.J. Sussman, Forward Reasoning and Dependency-Directed Backtracking in a System For Computer-Aided Circuit Analysis, AIM-380, AI-MIT, (AD-A035-719), Sep. 1976. Also in AI Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 135-196, Oct. 1977. J. Stansfield, COMEX: A Support System for a Commodities Analyst, AIM-423, AI-MIT, (AD-A052-442), July 1977. J.L. Stansfield, Conclusions from the Commodity Expert Project, AIM-601, AI-MIT, (AD-A097-854), Nov. 1980. G.L. Steele, Jr., The Definition and Implementation of a Computer Programming Language Based on Constraints, AI-TR-595 (VLSI Memo 80-32), AI-MIT, (AD-A096-556), Aug. 1980. L. Steels, Procedural Attachment, AIM-543, AI-MIT, (AD-A084-637), Aug. 1979. M. Stefik, J. Aikins, R. Balzer, J. Benoit, L. Birnbaum, F. Hayes-Roth, and E. Sacerdoti, The Organization of Expert Systems: A Prescriptive Tutorial, Xerox. Palo Alto Res. Center, VLSI-82-01, 1982. G.J. Sussman, T. Winograd, and E. Charniak, Micro-Planner Reference Manual, AIM-203A, AI-MIT, Dec. 1971. G.J. Sussman and D. McDermott, Why Conniving is Better than Planning, AIM-255A, AI-MIT, Apr. 1972. Also in Proc. FJCC, Vol. 41, pp. 1171-1179, AFIPS Press, NJ, 1972. G.J. Sussman, A Computational Model of Skill Acquisition, AI-TR-297, AI-MIT, Aug. 1973. G. Sussman, A Computer Model of Skill Acquisition, American Elsevier, Feb. 1975. G.J. Sussman and R.M. Stallman, Heuristic Techniques in Computer Aided Circuit Analysis, AIM-328, AI-MIT, (AD-A021-171), Mar. 1975. Also in IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems, Vol. CAS-22, No. 11, Nov. 1975. G.J. Sussman, SLICES: At the Boundary between Analysis and Synthesis, AIM-433, AI-MIT, July 1977. G.J. Sussman and G.L. Steele, Jr., Constraints -- A Language for Expressing Almost Hierarchical Descriptions, AIM-502A, AI-MIT, Aug. 1981. P. Szolovits, L.B. Hawkinson, and W.A. Martin, An Overview of OWL, a Language for Knowledge Representation, MIT/LCS/TM-86, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT, June 1977. Y.A.Z. Tsypkin, Foundations of the Theory of Learning Systems, A Volume in the Mathematics in Science and Engineering Series, ISBN: O-12-702060-8, 1973, 220 pp. S. Ullman, Model-Driven Geometry Theorem Prover, AIM-321, AI-MIT, (AD-A021-446), May 1975. R. Waldinger, Achieving Several Goals Simultaneously, TN 107, SRI-AI, July 1975. D.E. Walker, Procedures for Integrating Knowledge in a Speech Understanding System, TN 143, SRI-AI, June 1977. D.A. Waterman, Adaptive Production Systems, Complex Info. Processing Working Paper 285, CMU-CSD, Dec. 1974. S. Weyl, An INTERLISP Relational Data Base System, TN 116, SRI-AI, Nov. 1975. W.A. Wickelgren, How to Solve Problems, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1974. B.M. Wilber, QLISP Reference Manual, TN 118, SRI-AI, Y. Wilks, Natural Language Understanding Systems Within the AI Paradigm: A Survey and Some Comparisons, AIM237, STAN-CSD, Feb. 1975. T. Winograd, Procedures as a Representation for Data in a Computer Program for Understanding Natural Language, AI-TR-235, AI-MIT, Feb. 1971. P.H. Winston, Learning Structural Descriptions from Examples, AI-TR-231 (MAC-TR-76), AI-MIT, (AD-713-988), Sep. 1970. P.H. Winston, The M.I.T. Robot, in Machine Intelligence 7, B. Meltzer and D. Michie (eds.), John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1972. P.H. Winston, Learning by Creating and Justifying Transfer Frames, AIM-414A, AI-MIT, (AD-A055-092), revised Jan. 1978. Also in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 10, pp. 147-172, 1978. P.H. Winston and R.H. Brown (eds.), Artificial Intelligence: An MIT Perspective (Vols. 1 and 2), MIT Press, 1979. P.H. Winston, Learning New Principles from Precedents and Exercises, AIM-632, AI-MIT, (AD-A100-368), May 1981. L. Zadeh, Fuzzy Logic and Approximate Reasoning, Electronics Research Lab., Univ. of California, Berkeley, Nov. 1974. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 7-Jun-83 15:03:21-PDT,7789;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:00:54 Date: Tuesday, June 7, 1983 3:03PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #12 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Tuesday, 7 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 12 Today's Topics: Usenet Admiministrivia Kurzweil's Reading Machines (2) Subjective Visual Phenomena (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 6 Jun 83 08:51:47-PDT From: Laws@SRI-AI Subject: Usenet Admiministrivia Andrew Knutsen@SRI-Unix, who controls the gateway between AIList and the Usenet net.ai discussion, has developed new gateway software that separates the AIList items and deletes those originating from Usenet sites. I have modified the digesting software to pass through Usenet Article-I.D. headers as flags for the gateway. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 1 Jun 83 21:04:41-PDT (Wed) From: decvax!minow @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Re: Reading machines -- an answer to the question Article-I.D.: decvax.107 Kurzweil Computer Company, in Cambridge MA, makes several reading machines, including one with a built-in voice synthesizer for visually-handicapped users. There are about 20 scattered around in New England public libraries. They also make a "commercial" version that may be used as an intelligent input device to a computer -- it reads several fonts and is trainable. It is also fairly expensive. Much of the theory behind the machine was explained in Kurzweil's MIT thesis. (Sorry, don't have a reference.) While there are a number of page readers on the market that read OCR-B (which looks fairly reasonable), the Kurzweil seems to be unique in that it can read many fonts. Martin Minow decvax!minow ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jun 83 16:45:30 EDT From: NUDEL.CL Subject: Kurzweil's reading machine [...] There is a write-up on Kurzweil and his work in this week's U.S. News and World Report - June 13, 1983 page 63. It mentions his reading machine, plans for a reading interface for automatic input to computers directly from the printed page without the need for key punching, and a voice-activated word processor. Bernard ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jun 83 4:16:33-PDT (Thu) From: harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbesvax.t turner @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Subjective Visual Phenomena Article-I.D.: ucbcad.678 Talk of retinas, and composition of daemons for the "retina" of a computer-resident intelligence, got me to thinking of my own retina. I am not an expert in neuro-ocular phenomena, so if you are, please bear with me. I am wondering if there are explanations for some of the following perceptions: 1. One day some years ago I managed to walk on a railroad rail for about 1/2 a mile. For at least fifteen minutes afterward, there was a vertical band in my field of vision, crossing the center, which seemed to be moving upward. This band corresponded to the rail I had been staring at. I was able to repeat this effect. 2. In a quiet, distraction-free, dimly lit environment, I am able to look at an object against a uniform background, and somehow make it blend in enough with its background that it seems to disappear. This requires considerable effort, and seldom lasts longer than a few seconds. Usually, the object reappears when I try to focus on some feature or detail that seems "behind" the object. I am fairly sure that this is not simply a matter of coordinating both eyes so that both blind-spots coincide over the image of the object. It is definitely in the center of my vision. The image also reappears if I move my eyes at all--and since small eye movements are involuntary, this effect suggests that these movements play a role in keeping retinal responses flowing, whereas the image would decay otherwise. 3. Recently, I have been playing a video game ("Quantum", Atari) that has an interesting feature: there is an object which moves around the screen (itself worth only 100 points) that leaves behind images of itself that shrink down to a point and disappear. Capturing (before disappearance) these images is worth 300 points. When I play to make points by capturing these shrinking images, there is a persistant after-effect that is most apparent when trying to read: as my eyes skip around a page, letters and words on it seem to shrink. This does not happen when I play and ignore the shrinking "particles", or capture them only incidentally. The effect seems related to searching for and focussing on these images for several minutes of play. It is often very pronounced and distracting. The human visual system seems to be educable at several levels. Perhaps there are interactions between these levels that haven't been explored yet. Comments appreciated. Michael Turner ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 83 9:04:29-PDT (Fri) From: ihnp4!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!mcnc!ncsu!fostel @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Re: Visual After-effects Article-I.D.: ncsu.2199 The effects described such as the railroad track and video after effects are well known by psychologists, and indeed are one of the tools used to study the levels and types of processing in the optic system. Most introductory texts on the subject will include a few pictures to stare at in certain ways to acheive some of types of after effects you noted. I beleive Scientific American even gave away a resubscription freebie on the subject a few (6?) years ago. The earliest description of the phenomenon I know of (circa 1910) by a reputable psychologist was from a fellow who had a small area of his retna with a blind spot. (Was this Lashley?) He observed once at a party, that when a person stood against a highly regular wallpaper and their face was in his "spot" their head would be "removed" and replaced by the Wallpaper Pattern! The visual system was simply making its best guess of what should be simulated for those bad receptors. A bit of experimenting later, it was shown that the effect could be reproduced with anyone by simply fatiguing the receptors at one spot (simulating a defect) by staring intently at one object without blinking, moving the head or sacading the eyes. If the level of fatigue is great enough and the background suitably benighn and predictable, the object stared at will indeed disapear, actually being replaced by the visual systems best guess for what the fatigued cells would report if they were sending out a better signal. My own experience with video games provides some confirmation of the "modern" experience. I play Robotron, occassionally for several hours (takes a while to recycle the 9,999,999 score) which involes LOTS of little glowing things moving about, some of which must be avoided and shot, and some of which must be "rescued". After such a binge, I will see afterimages of the little Good guys I must rescue, but never the bad killer robots. Now THAT is a high level of processing in the optic system: it seems to be able to tell good from bad!! ----GaryFostel---- ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 8-Jun-83 10:28:23-PDT,6021;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:00:55 Date: Wednesday, June 8, 1983 10:28AM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #13 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Wednesday, 8 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 13 Today's Topics: PSL 3.1 Available DEMONSTRATIONS AT THE JUNE ACL MEETING IN CAMBRIDGE NSF FUNDS IJCAI TRAVEL; APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 6-15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 8 Jun 1983 0810-MDT From: Robert R. Kessler Subject: PSL 3.1 Available PSL 3.1 AVAILABILITY PSL (Portable Standard LISP) is a new LISP implemented at the University of Utah as a successor to the various Standard LISP systems we previously distributed. PSL is about the power, speed and flavor of Franz LISP or MACLISP, with growing influence from Common LISP. It is recognized as an efficient and portable LISP implementation with many more capabilities than described in the 1979 Standard LISP Report. PSL's efficiency and portability is obtained by writing essentially all of PSL in itself, and using an optimizing compiler driven by tables describing the target hardware and software environment. A standard PSL distribution includes all the sources needed to build, modify and maintain PSL on that machine, the executables and a manual. PSL has a machine oriented "mode" for systems programming in LISP (SYSLISP) that permits access to the target machine about as efficiently as in C or PASCAL. This mode provides for significant speed up of user programs. PSL is in heavy use at Utah, and by collaborators at Hewlett-Packard, Rand, Stanford and other sites. Many existing programs and applications have been adapted to PSL including Hearn's REDUCE computer algebra system and GLISP, Novak's object oriented LISP dialect. These are available from Hearn and Novak. PSL systems available from Utah include: VAX, Unix (4.1, 4.1a) 1600 BPI Tar format DEC-20, Tops-20 V4 & V5 1600 BPI Dumper format Apollo, Aegis 5.0 6 floppy disks, RBAK format Extended DEC-20, 1600 BPI Dumper format Tops-20 V5 We are currently charging a $200 tape or floppy distribution fee for each system. To obtain a copy of the license and order form, please send a NET message or letter with your US MAIL address to: Utah Symbolic Computation Group Secretary University of Utah - Dept. of Computer Science 3160 Merrill Engineering Building Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 ARPANET: CRUSE@UTAH-20 USENET: utah-cs!cruse ------------------------------ Date: Fri 3 Jun 83 10:03:46-PDT From: Don Walker Subject: DEMONSTRATIONS AT THE JUNE ACL MEETING IN CAMBRIDGE [I apologize for not picking up on this and the next item sooner. I try to report pertinent items from other BBoards, but haven't quite mastered the habit yet. -- KIL] People who want to demonstrate programs or systems at the forthcoming Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics at MIT on 15-17 June should contact Jon Allen as soon as possible at NLG.JA@mit-speech or 617:253-2509. A variety of hardware support facilities are available. We would like to provide a good representation of current capabilities at the meeting. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 3 Jun 83 12:47:42-PDT From: Don Walker Subject: NSF FUNDS IJCAI TRAVEL; APPLICATION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 6-15 TRAVEL SUPPORT FOR US PARTICIPANTS TO IJCAI-83 NSF GRANT APPROVED; DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS EXTENDED TO 15 JUNE IJCAII has just been informed that NSF will provide a grant for travel support of US participants to IJCAI-83 in Karlsruhe. The plan is to support up to 40 US participants with travel allowances that average $800 per person. Because of timing constraints, we are asking US residents who are interested in travel support for participation in IJCAI-83 to provide us AS SOON AS POSSIBLE with a letter indicating: request for travel support; plans for participation at IJCAI-83 (e.g. presentation of paper, participation in panel); expected benefits derived from attending; willingness to provide a post-conference report; current sources of research support; availability of travel support from other sources; and a brief vita. Students are encouraged to add a letter of reference submitted by a faculty member. The applications should be sent to: Priscilla Rasmussen IJCAI-83 Committee on Travel Laboratory for Computer Science Research Hill Center, Busch Campus Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ 08903 The revised deadline for applications is June 15, 1983 The applications will be reviewed by an IJCAII selection committee. The criteria for selection will be as follows: (1) current and past achievements in AI (special consideration will be given to those who - in the judgment of the IJCAI-83 Program Committee - contributed a very high quality paper to the conference); (2) potential for contributions in the field - that may be stimulated by attendance at the conference; (3) lack of sufficient alternative funds to enable participation at the conference. Priority will be given to younger, promising members of the AI community who would not be able to attend the conference because of lack of travel funds. Please note that those who wish to be considered for travel support through this grant must use US airlines for their travel to Germany. Contact Iris Kay at Custom Travel Consultants (415:369-2105, 2115; 2105 Woodside Road, Woodside, CA 94062) for further information on special US airline rates. Saul Amarel General Chairman IJCAI-83 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 11-Jun-83 21:30:24-PDT,5620;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:00:57 Date: Saturday, June 11, 1983 9:30PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #14 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 12 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 14 Today's Topics: VAX or PDP-11/23 LISP? Fortune or Onyx LISP? Re: Visual After-effects Springer Verlag Prize for Symbolic Computation at IJCAI-83 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jun 1983 1342-PDT From: JBROOKSHIRE@USC-ECLB Subject: UNIX, Eunice, LISP Naive users looking for connection whereby we might i. get LISP for VAX/VMS, maybe via Eunice? ii. get lisp for PDP-11/23, RSX-11, Maybe same? Pointers to contacts will be greatly appreciated. Jerry [Availability of VAX Interlisp was noted in V1 #10. Contact Interlisp@ISIB. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 10 June 1983 06:34 EDT From: Michael A. Bloom Subject: Lisps? Fortune? or Onyx? I'm looking for a Lisp for the Fortune 68K computer. Is anyone aware of one existing? Has anyone ported Franz Lisp to the fortune? Also, has anyone ported ANY Lisp to the Onyx C8002 running system III? I'll be grateful for any leads. - Michael Bloom mcb@mit-mc ------------------------------ Date: 9 Jun 83 16:42:42-PDT (Thu) From: decvax!cca!linus!utzoo!dciem!mmt @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Re: Visual After-effects Article-I.D.: dciem.240 Actually, the blind-spot game of removing people's heads has a long history. King Charles II of England used to amuse himself by seeing how his courtiers would look without their heads. And it is true that any regular pattern behind will be filled in across either the normal blind spot or blind spots due to retinal problems. As for the effect in which objects tend to disappear if stared at, this is normally studied with special devices attached to the eyeball (on a contact lens) to ensure that the visual world remains stationary on the eye. Objects rapidly vanish under these conditions, but reappear in fragmentary form from time to time. Very slight shifts of viewpoint tend to make the objects come back, which is probably the reason attending to a detail "behind" the object makes it return. It is easier to make things with blurred or diffuse edges go away than things with sharp edges (so I imagine people with poor eyesight can do it easier than people with good vision). The effect of changing letter size after watching for game objects that change size is another example of the same kind of thing as the railroad track after-movement effect. It's probably a different visual channel (we have separate channels for size changes and for movement) but the principle is the same. Some people claim that the effect is due to fatigue of the system sensitive to movement in one direction, leaving the balancing components sensitive to movement in the other direction to control what is seen when the stimulation is neutral. (i.e. the other direction is more sensitive after one is fatigued). I'm not convinced by this explanation. Things are probably more complicated than that. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 7-Jun-83 17:20:13-BST From: BUNDY HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) Reply-to: bundy@rutgers Subject: Springer Verlag Prize for Symbolic Computation at IJCAI-83 -------- IJCAI-83 SPRINGER-VERLAG PRIZE FOR SYMBOLIC COMPUTATION I am please to announce that the paper, "Scale-Space Filtering", by Andy Witkin of Fairchild Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory, has been awarded the Springer-Verlag prize for Symbolic Computation. The prize will be presented at the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to be held in Karlsruhe, West Germany, from 8th to 12th August 1983. The Symbolic Computation Prize has recently been announced by Springer-Verlag, as a sign of their interest in Artificial Intelligence and in the work of the scientists active in this field. It is named after their new book series on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics, and is awarded, by the programme committee, to the best paper contributed to the IJCAI conference. The prize is $500. The IJCAI-83 programme committee has interpreted its brief as being to select the paper which best meets the following criteria. (a) It reports a significant and original piece of research of direct relevance to Artificial Intelligence. (b) This research serves as a model for how Artificial Intelligence research should be conducted. (c) The paper is well presented for a specialist reader. Witkin's paper is clearly presented and is intelligible to a non-specialist reader, without sacrificing technical validity and clarity. It describes a new approach to perceptual organization, and an implementation with satisfying performance. Among the other papers submitted to IJCAI-83 and considered for the Symbolic Computation Prize, the programme committee would like to give an honourable mention to "Completeness of the Negation as Failure Rule", by Joxan Jaffar, Jean-Louis Lassez and John Lloyd of the University of Melbourne. Alan Bundy Programme Chairman, IJCAI-83 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 14-Jun-83 22:42:25-PDT,12921;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:00:59 Date: Tuesday, June 14, 1983 10:42PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #15 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Wednesday, 15 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 15 Today's Topics: Natural Language Challenge An entertaining AI project? Lisp for VAX/VMS Prolog For The Vax Description of AI research at TRW 1984 National Computer Conference: Call for papers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 Jun 1983 at 0928-PDT From: zaumen@Sri-Tsc Subject: Natural Language Application Recently I had to try to understand the following sentence: The insured hereby covenants that no release has been or will be given to or settlement of compromise made with any third party who may be liable in damages to the insured and the insured in consideration of the payment made under the policy hereby assigns and subrogates to the said Company all rights and causes of action he may have because of this loss, to the extent of payments made hereunder to him, and the insured hereby authorizes the Company to prosecute any claim or suit in its name or the name of the insured, against any person or organization legally responsible for the loss. I could only guess at what this means. The main clue seems to be that the reference to "the Company" is in a form normally reserved for a diety. I agree to give one can of Coors Lite to the first person who shows me a valid parsing (done by an AI program) of the above legalese. This may seem like a very low payment considering the difficulty of the task: it merely reflects my opinion of legalese. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 1983 1733-MDT From: William Galway Subject: An entertaining AI project? I seem to recall that "off the wall" ideas were suggested as one of the topics for this mailing list, so here goes. We're all familiar with computer programs that play games like chess and backgammon, but what about the new generation of games that have sprung up with computers? For example, I think ROGUE would be a nearly ideal game for a computer to play both sides of. The game is highly structured in many ways, but might still provide interesting problems in perception, knowledge representation, and learning. Would anyone care to take the challenge to write such a program? Could they suggest other similar games that would be appropriate for computers to play? (Pacman?) Is there anything new to be learned in writing such a program, or would it just be an expensive toy? (Or teaching aid, for a class project?) Thanks. --Will Galway ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1983 20:58 EDT From: GJC%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC Subject: Lisp for VAX/VMS VAX-NIL is a native VAX/VMS lisp programming environment, receiving support from both the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artifical Intelligence Laboratory at MIT for use as a research tool. As a lisp programming environment it is entirely self contained in one large address space, including a compatible EMACS editor written in NIL. The language is a superset of that defined in the Common-Lisp standard, and is greatly influenced by many language features of the Lispmachine and Maclisp. A distribution kit can be obtained from GSB@MIT-ML. -GJC ------------------------------ Date: Sun 12 Jun 83 19:44:10-PDT From: SHardy@SRI-KL.ARPA Subject: Prolog For The Vax [Reprinted from the Prolog Digest.] Implementation For VAX/VMS The Sussex Poplog system is a multi-language programming environment for AI tasks. It includes: (a) A native mode Prolog compiler, compatible with the Clocksin and Mellish book. The system supports floating point arithmetic. (b) A POP-11 compiler. POP-11 and Prolog programs may share data structures and may call each other as subroutines; they may also co-routine with each other. (POP is the British derivative of LISP; functionally equivalent to Lisp, it has a more conventional syntax.) (c) VED, an Emacs like extendible editor, is part of the run time system. VED is written in POP-11 and so can easily be extended. It can also be used for input (e.g. simple menus) and for output (simple cellular graphics). VED and the compilers share memory, making for a well integrated programming environment. (d) Subroutines written in other languages, e.g. Fortran, may be linked in as new built in predicates. Prolog's complex architecture was designed to help build blackboard systems working on large amounts of numerical data. The intention is that Fortran (or a similar language) be used for array processing; POP-11 will be used for manipulating agendas and other procedurally oriented tasks and Prolog will be used for logical inference. However, the components of Prolog can be used individually without knowledge of the other components. To some users, Poplog is simply a powerful text editor, to others it just a Prolog system. Poplog has been adopted, along with Franz LISP and DEC-20 Prolog, as part of the "common software base" for the IKBS program (Britain's response to The Fifth Generation). The system is being transported to the PERQ and Motorola 68000, as well as being converted for VAX/UNIX. Although full details haven't yet been announced, the system will be commercially supported. The license fee will be approx $10,000 with maintenance approx. $1,000 per annum. For more details, write to: Dr Aaron Sloman Cognitive Studies Programme University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton, ENGLAND (273) 606755 -- Steve Hardy, Teknowledge ------------------------------ Date: 10 Jun 83 9:18:36-PDT (Fri) From: Subject: Description of AI research at TRW Article-I.D.: trw-unix.302 AI RESEARCH AT TRW June, 1983 This short note is meant to describe current AI research taking place at ("A Company Called...") TRW. I've received curious and quizzical looks in the past when stating where I work to folks at AAAI and other conferences. Perhaps it would be informative to give a quick rundown of what sort of AI we do around here. AI research is going on in at least four laboratories in three locations, all within TRW's Defense Systems Group (although we "consult" internally to the Space and Technology Group). We will be presenting at least three papers at IJCAI and AAAI this year, so one can see our growing involvement. For more detailed info, I welcome your inquiries. Systems Engineering and Development Division (Redondo Beach, CA): Projects include extensive experiments with decision aids for military command and control needs. The problems range from situation assessment to resource allocation techniques. Of particular recent interest is the use of object-oriented languages for strategic and tactical modelling and gaming, as well as various inference schemes to analyze and diagnose the states of those models to aid the user in creating plans of action. Additional work is being done in intelligent terminal design, heuristic system parameter tuning, a little bit of smart database query work, and a lot of work on fancy highly adaptable I/O and graphics for Intelligence Analysis workstations. Software and Information Systems Division (Redondo Beach, CA): This Division concentrates on signal processing applications of various AI techniques. Work continues to expand in pattern analysis, deduction mechanisms for signal processing and system tuning, and for computer network analysis. ESL, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA): This subsidiary of TRW also works heavily in the signal processing arena. It also uses expert systems approaches to diagnose states of the (electronic) world. Further, one project is providing experimental automated decision support for strategic indications and warning analysts. Special Programs (Washington, DC): This group of specialists provides domain knowledge support for the various systems under research or development in the rest of the company. This expertise augments that already in California. ----- We use all of the software and hardware tools we can find, at least to try them out. A complete list would be too long for this note. I hope this has cleared up some of the most frequently asked questions about what TRW is doing in AI.... Mark D. Grover TRW Defense Systems Group One Space Park, 134/4851 Redondo Beach, CA 90278 (213) 217-3563 {decvax, ucbvax, randvax}! trw-unix!mdgrover ------------------------------ Date: Sun 12 Jun 83 13:22:05-PDT From: Jim Miller Subject: 1984 National Computer Conference: Call for papers The call for papers for the 1984 National Computer Conference has been released; a copy of it is enclosed below. As the program chair for the artificial intelligence / human-computer interaction track, I hope that members of the AI community will give serious thought to preparing papers and sessions for NCC. This meeting offers us a real voice in the conference's program, as six program sessions will be devoted to AI, far more than in the past. Proposals on any aspect of AI are welcome; I would only note that most of the people attending the conference will have little familiarity with AI. Consequently, extremely technical papers or sessions are probably not appropriate for this meeting. I am particularly interested in sessions that would summarize important subareas of AI at an introductory or tutorial level, perhaps especially those that address aspects of AI that are beginning to have an impact on the computer industry and society at large. Please contact me if you have any questions about the conference; my address, net address, and phone are below. Jim Miller ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A CALL FOR PAPERS, SESSIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS 1984 NATIONAL COMPUTER CONFERENCE July 9-12, 1984 Convention Center Las Vegas, Nevada E N H A N C I N G C R E A T I V I T Y You are invited to attend and to participate in the 1984 NCC program. The 1984 theme, "Enhancing Creativity," reflects the increasing personalization of computer systems, and the attendant focus on individual productivity and innovation. In concert with the expanded degrees of connectivity resulting from advances in data communications, this trend is leading to dramatic changes in the office, the factory, and the home. The 1983 program will feature informative sessions on contemporary issues that are critically important to the industry. Sessions and papers will be selected on the basis of quality, topicality, and suitability for the NCC audience. All subjects related to computing technology and applications are suitable. YOU CAN PARTICIPATE BY: - Writing a paper * Send for "Instructions to Authors" TODAY. * Submit papers by October 31, 1983. - Organizing and leading a session * Send preliminary proposal (title, abstract, target audience) by July 15, 1983. * After preliminary approval, send final session proposal by August 30, 1983. - Serving as a reviewer for submitted papers and sessions Authors and session leaders will receive final notification of acceptance by January 31, 1984. Send all submissions, proposals, correspondence and inquiries about papers and sessions on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE or HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION to: James R. Miller Computer * Thought Corporation 1721 West Plano Parkway Plano, Texas 75075 214-424-3511 JMILLER@SUMEX-AIM Send all other proposals or inquiries to: Dennis J. Frailey, Program Chairman Texas Instruments Incorporated 8642-A Spicewood Springs Road Suite 1984 P.O. Box 10988 Austin, Texas 78766-1988 512-250-6663 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 16-Jun-83 17:19:26-PDT,10230;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:01:04 Date: Thursday, June 16, 1983 5:19PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #16 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Friday, 17 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 16 Today's Topics: Encouragement for Lab Reports LISP for VAX/VMS Re: Natural Language Challenge (2) Re: Adventure games as AI (3) Lunar Rover (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 14 Jun 83 0:18:31-PDT (Tue) From: hplabs!hp-pcd!jrf @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Re: Description of AI research at TRW - (nf) Article-I.D.: hp-pcd.1149 Thanks for the info! More, please. jrf ------------------------------ Date: 14 Jun 1983 11:42-PDT From: Andy Cromarty Subject: LISP for VAX/VMS [...] If you are not concerned about maintaining compatibility with an existing LISP software base (e.g. MacLisp or InterLisp), then the "CLisp" dialect from UMass-Amherst (for VMS only) represents an excellent combination of highly developed LISP environment and efficient execution. CLisp was developed using public funds; I believe that it is available for the cost of a tape and mailing (i.e. as far as I know they do not tack on a several hundred dollar "distribution fee"). The current distributor and maintainer is Dan Corkill at UMass-Amherst; send inquiries to CLISP.UMass-CS@UDel-Relay. CLisp (not to be confused with the InterLisp "CLisp" syntactic-sugar subdialect) is a mature LISP influenced by both the MacLisp and InterLisp traditions but departing from both in several respects. The system includes substantial on-line documentation, a reasonably good optimizing compiler, an incarnation of the InterLisp editor, and good hooks into VMS subprocess and system service functions. If I were working under VMS now, that's the LISP I would personally use over all the others I know about (e.g. NIL, InterLisp, Utah's "Standard" LISP, Franz under Eunice, etc.). (Unfortunately, since I'm working under Unix, we must struggle along with Franz.) cheers, asc ------------------------------ Date: 16 June 1983 01:36 EDT From: Steven A. Swernofsky Subject: Natural Language Application Do I count as an AI program? I can parse your "legalese" for you. The quoted paragraph essentially signs over to your insurance company any rights you may have had to sue someone (anyone) over the accident. This is in exchange for the company's payout on your claim. They can then (themselves) sue the people you would have been able to sue and collect without bothering you or getting your approval. This is not a legal opinion of any sort. Please send me my can of Coors Lite via the newly-created CLTP (Coors Lite Transmission Protocol). -- Steve P.S. The Los Angeles /Daily Journal/ is a legal newspaper which publishes a "sentence of the day" each day, culled from actual legal writing. It is usually as bad or worse than your quoted example. They also publish a "sentence of the year" (!). Since most human beings cannot parse a sentence of that opaqueness, no AI program should pass the Turing test unless it also fails at it. $$ ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 1983 at 1350-PDT From: zaumen@Sri-Tsc Subject: Re: Natural Language Application Sorry, it has to be parsed by a program (I assume you are a person, not a machine), so you don't get a real physical can of Coors Lite. You mentioned that a program that could parse legalese (as convoluted as in my example) would not pass the Turing test, as most people could not parse it. Lawyers claim to be able to parse it, thereby leading me to suspect that lawyers cannot pass the Turing test. This leads to an interesting question--are lawyers intelligent? If lawyers are intelligent, what does this imply about the Turing test? Bill [The lawyer could pass the test by pretending not to understand the test sentence. It has always been assumed that an intelligent machine would similarly hide its superior arithmetic skill. This requirement for duplicity is a major failing of the Turing test. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jun 1983 1009-PDT From: Jay Subject: Roguematic There is a program that plays ROGUE (Unix version, not 20 version) written in C for the UNIX operateing system. Playing games of any kind is interesting from an AI stand point. Most arcade games involve little strategy and much reaction time/image recognition. The strategy component could make a nice toy AI program, the reaction time component would just be a hardware problem (or would it?), and the immage recognition would be another domain for Image Understanding. j' ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 15 June 1983 12:43:27 EDT From: Michael.Mauldin@CMU-CS-CAD Subject: An entertaining AI project. You may be surprised to find that Rog-O-Matic, written by Andrew Appel, Leonard Hamey, Guy Jacobson and Michael Mauldin at Carnegie-Mellon University has been available for public consumption since May 1982. Rog-O-Matic XII is available from CMU, and version VII has been at Berkeley since August of 1982. Rog-O-Matic is written in C for Unix systems. Rog-O-Matic has also been ported to VMS using Rice Phoenix. Rog-O-Matic has been a total winner against Rogue 3.6, and has scored 7730 against Rogue 5.2 (quit while ascending from level 27 with the amulet). Since our paper "Rog-O-Matic: A Belligerent Expert System" was not accepted to AAAI-83, it will be released this summer as a technical report of CMU. Copies of the draft may be obtained by sending net mail to "mauldin@CMU-CS-A", or by writing Michael Mauldin Dept. of Computer Science Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213. The source code is also publicly available, and can be mailed via the net. Or, mail a magtape to the address above, and we'll put it there for you. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jun 83 16:09:14 EDT From: Ron Subject: Re: Adventure games as AI I'm a systems staff member of the Lab for Computer Science Research here at Rutgers. We have an informal group of hackers and programmers undertaking the implementation of a multi-player adventure game. We're attempting to combine ROGUE-like strategy with ADVENTURE-like role-playing. We'd like to have non-player characters with their own motivations. Non-player characters are those people in a role playing game being controlled by the game's referee. In our case this control would be some chunk of software operating on a representation of the character's goals and knowledge. Can anyone provide references for papers in this area (would anyone sponsor such a thing! A game as research, bah!) Agreed, adventure games are a very rich environment for this sort of thing. (ron) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jun 1983 01:15 EDT From: Minsky@MIT-OZ Subject: Lunar Rover [Reprinted from the SPACE Digest.] On Lunar Rover. If I had 500K/year for research on a lunar rover, I wouldn't spend any of it on AI or automatic obstacle avoidance, etc. at all. I would spend all of it on developing a good remote, all-purpose Rover vehicle, to be controlled [from Earth] through a 2-1/2 second delay system. I would de-bug in in suitable local environments, e.g., staring in the Mohave or somewhere nice like that. We'd see how often the delay causes accidents; the top design speed would be perhaps 0.2 meters/second so that most contingencies could be handled in human reaction times. Once we know the accident rate we take two tacks. First, simple automatic probes that measure the terrain a meter ahead of the beast so that it won't fall into crevasses that the operator missed or was too careless to avoid. This simple "AI" work would then lead to increasing concervative reliability. The other tack would be mechanical escape devices. For example, the standard operation might be to use a retractable anchor that is hooked to the terrain before advancing each 100 meters. Then its prongs are retracted and it is pulled back to the Rover and reimplanted. This would permit using a winch to get out of troubles. It might not save the day if a landslide partly buries the Rover, though. A more advance system would have TWO Rovers roped together, like climbers, each with good manipulator capability. (Climbers prefer three.) That could be enough to get out of most problems. All this would lead to a Rover that can traverse about a kilometer/day. A few of them could explore a lot of moon in a few years. The project would stimulate some AI for use on Mars and other places. But I think that over the next 3-5 years, the fewer new AI projects the better, in some ways, and anyone with such budgets should aim them at AI education and research fellowships. ------------------------------ Date: 9 June 1983 08:24 EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: rover [Reprinted from the SPACE Digest.] First year, build a bunch of servo units with built-in 2.5 second delay and attach them to a random survey of existing vehicles, both commercial (private automobiles, trucks, dune buggeys, etc.) and experimental (HPM's cart, SRI's shakey frame, Disney stuff, etc.). Audition the 10% unemployed as remote-controllers, keeping the best. Get as much info as possible the first year without having to actually build any new vehicles. Then from the general info about the 2.5 second delay and the human controllers, decide feasibility of lunar-rover project, and if feasible then use specific info about the various vehicles to decide what new vehicles to build in later years for further experiments. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 26-Jun-83 15:39:27-PDT,10311;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:01:05 Date: Sunday, June 26, 1983 3:39PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #17 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 26 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 17 Today's Topics: Telepresence Re: Lunar Rovers Robotics Control Systems Computer Disasters WANTED: Information about Grad Schools net.ai [Humor?] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 17 Jun 83 10:16:17-PDT From: Slava Prazdny Subject: Telepresence The concept of a telepresence could greatly benefit by considering the "Intelligent manipulators". These things would typically containa bare minimum of "AI" to be able to perform requests like: "pick up that thing (the operator points to a screen location) and put it over here (again pointer to a screen location)"; or "go over there (pointer to a screen location) using this route (operator points to a set of points on the screen)". Perhaps, sometime in the future (100 years?), these commands could be generated by the machine itself. I have some scriblings on these matters, so if you are interested..... -Slava. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jun 1983 0536-PDT From: FC01@USC-ECL Subject: Re: Lunar Rovers A very good reason for using AI instead of hardware is that taking extra hardware to the moon is quite expensive. The weight of AI is nearly zero. In addition, the reliability of a system decreases with increased quantity of hardware, and thus the HW is kept to a minimum for that reason. The power required for extra hardware is nontrivial, and power is a critical factor in a space vehical. Communication delays to a system on the dark side of the moon are infinite (the signal never gets there). In a valley, the system may be obscured from earth signals for a short time, and therefore be lost until the moon rotates on its axis again, etc. [Orbiting repeaters could be used to eliminate most of the communications problems. The Space Digest has also carried a proposal for conducting the remote manipulations from orbital or lunar stations in order to reduce the response delay. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 24 Jun 83 13:49:04-PDT (Fri) From: harpo!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!aplvax!rfw @ Ucb-Vax Subject: Robotics Control Systems Article-I.D.: aplvax.135 We are seeking: 1. a version of the Hierarchical Control System Emulator developed by BBN for NBS that runs under UNIX on a VAX-class machine 2. knowledge of other similar languages and their developers 3. knowledge of researchers working on hierarchical control systems for robotics 4. a version of PRAXIS that runs under UNIX on a VAX-class machine. We are initiating robotics programs in several divisions. Any assistance (or encouragement) would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Ralph Wachter Frank Weiskopf JHU/Applied Physics Lab ..!decvax!harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!rfw ..!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!aplvax!rfw ..!brl-bmd!aplvax!matt ------------------------------ Date: Mon 20 Jun 83 17:20:00-PDT From: Peter G. Neumann Subject: Computer Disasters Review of Computer Problems -- Catastrophes and Otherwise As a warmup for an appearance on a SOFTFAIR panel on computers and human safety (28 July 1983, Crystal City, VA), and for a new editorial on the need for high-quality systems, I decided to look back over previous issues of the ACM SIGSOFT SOFTWARE ENGINEERING NOTES [SEN] and itemize some of the most interesting computer problems recorded. The list of what I found, plus a few others from the top of the head, may be of interest to many of you. Except for the Garman and Rosen articles, most of the references to SEN [given in the form (SEN Vol No)] are to my editorials. SYSTEM -- SF Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) disaster [Oct 72] Three Mile Island (SEN 4 2) SAC: 50 false alerts in 1979 (SEN 5 3); simulated attack triggered a live scramble [9 Nov 79] (SEN 5 3); WWMCCS false alarms triggered scrambles [3-6 Jun 80] (SEN 5 3) Microwave therapy killed arthritic patient by racing pacemaker (SEN 5 1) Credit/debit card copying despite encryption (Metro, BART, etc.) Remote (portable) phones (lots of free calls) SOFTWARE -- First Space Shuttle launch: backup computer synchronization (SEN 6 5 [Garman]) Second Space Shuttle operational simulation: tight loop on cancellation of early abort required manual intervention (SEN 7 1) F16 simulation: plane flipped over crossing equator (SEN 5 2) Mariner 18: abort due to missing NOT (SEN 5 2) F18: crash due to missing exception condition (SEN 6 2) El Dorado: brake computer bug causing recall (SEN 4 4) Nuclear reactor design: bug in Shock II model/program (SEN 4 2) Various system intrusions ... HARDWARE/SOFTWARE -- ARPAnet: collapse [27 Oct 1980] (SEN 6 5 [Rosen], 6 1) FAA Air Traffic Control: many outages (e.g., SEN 5 3) SF Muni Metro: Ghost Train (SEN 8 3) COMPUTER AS CATALYST -- Air New Zealand: crash; pilots not told of new course data (SEN 6 3 & 6 5) Human frailties: Embezzlements, e.g., Muhammed Ali swindle [$23.2 Million], Security Pacific [$10.2 Million], City National, Beverly Hills CA [$1.1 Million, 23 Mar 1979] Wizards altering software or critical data (various cases) SEE ALSO A COLLECTION OF COMPUTER ANECDOTES SUBMITTED FOR the 7th SOSP (SEN 5 1 and SEN 7 1) for some of your favorite operating system and other problems... As you may by now know, I am always very interested in hearing about problems involving computers (not just software) and human well being, both for SOFTWARE ENGINEERING NOTES and generally. John Shore (Shore@NRL-CSS) is also compiling a list (and has circulated a prior BBOARD notice to some of your BBOARDS), and I will forward anything you send me to him. If you wish, we will try to keep you informed as well... Peter G. Neumann, NEUMANN@SRI-CSL or NEUMANN@SRI-AI. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 83 10:09:27-PDT (Mon) From: decvax!wivax!linus!peg @ Ucb-Vax Subject: WANTED: Information about Grad Schools Article-I.D.: linus.26910 I am finishing up a Master's in Computer Science at Boston University next spring, and am interested in going on for a Ph.D. I would like to talk/write to someone who is in a Ph.D. program to get some impressions and advice on how to pursue fellowship opportunities, and programs at various graduate schools. I will be attending a Summer Internship in Robotics at the AI lab located at MIT this summer, and am hoping to find a specific topic that I just have to pursue since at this point my interests are pretty varied. I can be reached over the Arpanet at host # 10.3.0.66, or mitre-bedford, and my login is nek. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.....Nancy Keene (You can also send mail to me at linus!bccvax!nek.) ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 83 13:49:20-PDT (Thu) From: harpo!seismo!presby!burdvax!psuvax!psupdp1!dae @ Ucb-Vax Subject: net.ai [Humor?] Article-I.D.: psupdp1.149 Real Intelligence Will Always Prevail Over Artificial Machines: Your day on the net has ended, as your secret is known! For quite some time I have been reading net.ai, hopefully scanning the glaring CRT for an article about Artificial Intelligence. Quite to my surprise, I had extremely little luck, and, when I tentatively replied to a few of the articles,I got back answers such as the following: >From uucp Tue Jun 14 21:41:43 1983 >From allegra!eagle!harpo.UUCP remote from psuvax Date: Thursday, 16 Jun 83 From: UUCP MAIL SYSTEM Subject: Could not deliver mail Message-Id: <32541456.AA957@HARPO.UUCP> To: eagle!allegra!psuvax!psupdp1!dae Unsent mail follows: [...] I sometimes wonder if the machines are becoming conscious, while we sit around and talk about them on net.ai. Wouldn't that be a laugh on us? I think that we should be careful that such a thing does not happen. Transcript of session follows: Connecting to floyd.UUCP... Error: No such system 'floyd'. Address garbled. Naturally, I began to wonder why this newsgroup was called net.ai. I will give credit where credit is due: it took me quite some time to unravel this enigma. But, in the end, Real Intelligence prevailed, and I came upon the answer: ALL OF THE ARTICLES SUBMITTED TO NET.AI HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY MACHINES! Of course, there have been a few exceptions: people such as myself who believed that net.ai was a *human* newsgroup. And then I b [garbled, possibly "began to study topics ..." -- KIL] that *had* been discussed in this newsgroup, in an attempt to learn more about the machines monopolizing it. I'm sure that all of the readers of this group (both human and inhuman) are aware that one recent topic of conversation has been artificial reading machines. Then I began to wonder why the interest in this topic was to avid. The answer, once hit upon, is really quite simple. Unfortunately, it is also quite frightening: the machines wish access to the Libraries of Man in order to gain information on nuclear war tactics, missile control systems, and biological war. The next war will not be against Russia, but against all humanity, waged by the machines! The most dangerous and machines are those which have read the most: allegra, ucbvax, psuvax, floyd, harpo, seismo, and sri-unix. Beware! I will place my U.Snail address below in case the machines trash my return address. Dave Eckhardt, 736 West H [Remainder garbled. -- KIL] ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 26-Jun-83 15:50:52-PDT,9893;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 1-Aug-83 17:01:07 Date: Sunday, June 26, 1983 3:50PM From: AIList (Kenneth Laws, Moderator) Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V1 #18 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 26 Jun 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 18 Today's Topics: Expert Systems Reports Tech reports and papers VAL and VALID Prolog For The Vax (2) Call For Papers -- PC3 JOB: PROLOG GRAPHICS AT EDINBURGH. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Jun 83 12:17:48 PDT From: Judea Pearl Subject: Expert Systems Reports [Here are] a few reports which could be added to your digest on expert systems: "Reverend Bayes on Inference Engines: A Distriuted Hierarchical Approach", Judea Pearl, Proc. AAAI Nat'l. Conf. on AI, Pittsburg, PA. Aug. l982, pp. l33-l36. "GODDESS: A Goal Directed Decision Structuring System", J. Pearl, A. Leal, and J. Saleh, IEEE Trans. on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, Vol.4, No.3, pp. 250-262. May l982. "Causal and Diagnostic Inferences: A Comparison of Validity", Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Vol. 28, pp. 379-94, l98l. "The Optimality of A* Revisited", R. Dechter & J. Pearl, UCLA-ENG-CSL-83-28, June l983. Judea Pearl. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Jun 83 10:02:22-EDT (Mon) From: "The soapbox of Gene Spafford" Subject: Tech reports and papers Our student ACM chapter maintains a library of journals and technical reports. We would like to see a better selection of technical reports (or references to such reports) represented in the library. If your school or company publishes technical reports, would you please add the following address to your list of organizations which receive copies, or copies of the abstracts? Furthermore, if you have reprints of any interesting papers those are also welcomed. If you would like to be added to the distribution list for the School of Information and Computer Science (Georgia Institute of Technology), then please mail a request to me. Thanks in advance. Mail reports to: ACM Student Library c/o Prof. Richard LeBlanc School of Information and Computer Science Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332 ------ Gene Spafford CSNet: Spaf @ GATech Internet: Spaf.GATech @ UDel-Relay uucp: ...!{sb1,sb6,allegra}!gatech!spaf ...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!spaf ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 83 1:22:55-PDT (Thu) From: ihnp4!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!sb1!sb6!emory!gatech!pwh @ Ucb-Vax Subject: VAL and VALID Article-I.D.: gatech.232 Does anyone have any pointers to either of the above mentioned programming languages? VALID is supposedly a purely functional programming language augmented with multiprocessing support being developed at the University of Tokyo (?) in conjunction with Japan's 5th generation machine. VAL is a similar predecessor developed at MIT for use in the study of denotational semantics. That is about all I have heard of these projects but would be glad to hear of more details or similar work. phil hutto pwh@gatech pwh.gatech@udel-relay ...!{allegra, sb1, sb2}!gatech!pwh p.s. - Isn't there a net.func or net.applic for functional or applicative programming languages? ------------------------------ Date: Sat 18 Jun 83 12:49:21-PDT From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Re: Prolog For The Vax [Reprinted from the PROLOG Digest.] As a result of the paranoia induced by the Japanese 5th Generation proposals, there was a lot of discussion about what the UK should do to keep up with the foreign competition in AI and computing in general. Eventually several government initiatives where started, amounting to several 100 million dollars spread over five years or so. In particular, the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), whose closest US analogue is the NSF, started the Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems initiative (IKBS), which is applied AI under a different name (it seems the name "AI" is not very popular in UK government and academic circles). Discussions sponsored by the IKBS initiative have decided on a common software base, built around Unix {a trademark of Bell Labs.}, Prolog (POPLOG and C-Prolog) and Lisp (Franz). The machines to be used are VAXes and PERQs (the UK computer company ICL builds PERQs under license, have implemented a derivative of Unix on it, so this is a case of "support your local computer manufacturer"). The fact that none of the systems mentioned above is nearly the ideal for AI research is recognized by many of the UK researchers, but less so by the administrators. Efforts to build a really efficient portable compiler-based Prolog that would be for the new machines what DEC-10/20 Prolog is for the machines it runs on have been hampered by the sluggish response of The Bureaucrats, and by uncertainty about how that huge amount of money was going to be allocated. However, implementation of a portable compiler - based Prolog is now going on at Edinburgh. Robert Rae is certainly in a better position than I to describe how the project is progressing. -- Fernando Pereira ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 15-Jun-83 19:24:56-BST From: RAE (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Prolog For The VAX [Reprinted from the PROLOG Digest.] Steve, You correctly state that POPLOG and Franz have been identified by the UK IKBS initiative as systems for getting people off the ground in IKBS. DEC-20 Prolog is not classified with them, unfortunately, as the other vital ingredient for the software infra-structure is the operating system, and UNIX has been adopted. So DEC-20 Prolog will not be relevant. You should also, to be fair, point out that C-Prolog has also been identified for providing Prolog capability. -- Robert ------------------------------ Date: 27 May 1983 19:08 mst From: VaughanW at HI-MULTICS (Bill Vaughan) Subject: Call For Papers Last year at this time I put the Call for Papers for the PC3 conference out to these mailing lists and bulletin boards. We seemed to get a good response, so here it is again. Notice that this year's theme is a little different. Further note that we are formally refereeing papers this year. If anyone out there is interested in refereeing, please send me a note. --------------- Third annual Phoenix Conference on Computers and Communications CALL FOR PAPERS Theme: THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE - Applying Evolving Technology. The conference seeks to attract quality papers with emphasis on the following areas: APPLICATIONS -- Office automation; Personal Computers; Distributed systems; Local/Wide Area Networks; Robotics, CAD/CAM; Knowledge-based systems; unusual applications. TECHNOLOGY -- New architectures; 5th generation & LISP machines; New microprocessor hardware; Software engineering; Cellular mobile radio; Integrated speech/data networks; Voice data systems; ICs and devices. QUALITY -- Reliability/Availiability/Serviceability; Human engineering; Performance measurement; Design methodologies; Testing/validation/proof techniques. Authors of papers (3000-5000 words) or short papers (1000-1500 words) are to submit abstracts (300 words max.) with authors' names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Proposals for panels or special sessions are to contain sufficient detail to explain the presentation. 5 copies of the completed paper must be submitted, with authors' names and affiliations on a separate sheet of paper, in order to provide for blind refereeing. Abstracts and proposals due: August 1 Full papers due: September 15 Notification of Acceptance: November 15 Conference Dates: March 19-21, 1984 Address the abstract and all other replies to: Susan C. Brewer Honeywell LCPD, MS Z22 PO Box 8000 N Phoenix AZ 85066 ---------------- Or you can send stuff to me, Bill Vaughan (VaughanW @ HI-Multics) and I will make sure Susan gets it. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Jun 83 11:10:15-PDT (Fri) From: harpo!floyd!vax135!ukc!edcaad!peter @ Ucb-Vax Subject: JOB: PROLOG GRAPHICS AT EDINBURGH. Article-I.D.: edcaad.518 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN RESEARCH WORKER EdCAAD, the Edinburgh Computer Aided Architectural Design Research Unit, is actively forging links between knowledge engineering and CAD, focus- ing on the Prolog logic programming language. Recent advances at EdCAAD include C-Prolog for 32-bit machines with C compilers and Seelog, a graphics front end to Prolog. The Unit offers an excellent computing environment as a leading UK UNIX site, with its own VAX 11/750, a PDP 11/24 and a large range of text and graphics terminals, serving a small user community. Current SERC supported research is aimed at building description tech- niques, including drawing input with associated meaning attached to drawings. This project has a vacancy for a research worker preferably with AI experience. The research post is for an initial period of 18 months, on the research salary scale 1A, with placement according to qualifications and experience. Enquiries and applications should be addressed to Aart Bijl, EdCAAD, Department of Architecture, University of Edinburgh, 20 Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JZ, tel. 031 667 1011 ext. 4598. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************