From: CSVPI 15-FEB-1985 23:37 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a009032; 15 Feb 85 14:49 EST Date: Fri 15 Feb 1985 11:06-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #20 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Fri, 15 Feb 85 23:33 EST AIList Digest Friday, 15 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 20 Today's Topics: Expert Systems - Logic-Based Systems, AI Tools - PSL and Kurzweil, Literature - Recent Articles & Weizmann Institute Reports & Mathematics: People, Problems, Results & Expert Systems Journal Seminars - Fifth Generation Revisited (SU) & BareSlug Meeting (SU) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu 14 Feb 85 15:14:12-CST From: Charles Petrie Subject: Logic-Based Expert Systems From the what-you-and-everyone-else-would-like-department: I'm looking for non-trivial but (sigh) non-proprietary expert system applications written in a logic-based system such as DUCK, MRS, or PROLOG. Please let me know if you can help. CS.PETRIE@UTEXAS-20 ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 13-Feb-85 12:51:52-GMT From: MACCALLUM QM (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: More on PSL and Kurzweil The network contact for PSL seems to be Jed Krohnfeldt who maintains a psl-forum mailing list. The Kurzweil Optical Character Reader is a product of Kurzweil Computer Products 185 Albany Street Cambridge, Mass. 02139 (617) 864-4700 Telex 951246 KURZWEIL CAM and is sold in Britain by Penta Systems (UK) Ltd 15 Sheet Street Windsor, Berks. (07535) 55513 According to the glossy bumph it can hold 25 different fonts and can be trained to recognise others, each containing up to 400 characters. These can be defined from the first few pages of a document using a "training script".It can handle various paper and print sizes. Output is to floppy, tape, or via a LAN. I have four closely-typed pages of promotion material, but obviously the rest of the details can be obtained direct from the company. I also believe there are machines at Glasgow and Cambridge (UK) which are readily available to users. London is about to buy one (or possibly two) at about 50K pounds each (I think). Malcolm MacCallum ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 85 09:55:37 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Recent Articles International Journal of Man Machine Studies Volume 21, No 3 Sep 1985 An Economical Approach to Modelling Speech Recognition Accuracy 191 An Analysis of Formal Logics as Inference Method in Expert System 213 Users and Experts in the Document Retrieval System Model 245 An Experimental Expert System for Genetics 259 Angewandte Informatik No 11 Nov 84 Design of a Corporate Know-How database 471 Electronics Week Volume 57 no 36 December 1984 AI Transforms CAD/CAM to CIM J. R. Lineback IEEE PAMI Volume 6 no 6 Nov 84 Parallel Branch and Bound Formulations for And/Or Tree search 768 Computer Aided Design Volume 16 No 5 1984 Wirewrap Design Aid written in Prolog 249 Two algorithms for three-layer channel routing 264 Computers and Biomedical Research V 17 1984 An Expert System which critiques Patient Workup: Modelling Conflicting Expertise 554-569 ------------------------------ Date: Sat 9 Feb 85 12:59:51-PST From: Chuck Restivo Subject: List of Weizmann Institute Reports [Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.] [...] Ehud Shapiro also forwarded a list of available publications from the Weizmann Institute. This is available as Weizmann_Abstracts.Doc at SU-SCORE.ARPA. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Feb 85 14:41:07-PST From: C.S./Math Library Subject: Mathematics: People, Problems, Results edited by Douglas Campbell and John Higgins [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Mathematics: People, Problems, Results is a three volume book which is now in the Math/CS Library--QA7.M34466 1984, v.1, v.2, v.3. V.1--Historical Sketches, Some Mathematical Lives,The Development of Mathematics V.2--The Nature of Mathematics, Real Mathematics, Foundations and Philosophy V.3--Computers, Mathematics in Art and Nature, Counting Guessing Using, Sociology and Education The following authors have papers included in the three volumes: D.E.Knuth, N.Wiener,A.L.Samuel,H.A.Simon,M.Kline,M.Minsky,Bertrand Russell,Richard Courant, D.R.Hofstadter,George Polya,John von Neumann,David Hilbert HLlull ------------------------------ Date: Wed 13 Feb 85 00:01:31-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Expert Systems Journal I have received a brochure for a new quarterly: Expert Systems, the international journal of knowledge engineering, from Learned Information, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055, (609) 654-6266 [with offices in Oxford as well]. A subscription is normally $79, but through March 15 they are offering it at $67. They are also throwing in a copy of their "$25" soon-to-be-published report, The Guide to Expert Systems, that will include an introduction, glossary, and directory of companies. Two back issues of the journal are available for $30 (total, I presume). The editors are Ian F. Croall of AERE Harwell in Britain, Donald A. Waterman of The Rand Corporation, and Mitsuru Ishizuka of The University of Tokyo. The editorial board includes Alex Goodall, Tohru Moto-Oka, Douglas Partridge, and J.R. Quinlan. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Tue 12 Feb 85 11:49:29-PST From: Ellie Engelmore Subject: Seminar - Fifth Generation Revisited (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distibution by Laws@SRI-AI.] SPEAKER: Edward Feigenbaum Professor of Computer Science Stanford University TITLE: Fifth Generation Revisited--Some Informal Impressions DATE: Friday, February 15, 1985 LOCATION: BRAUN Lecture Hall - Next to Mudd Chemistry Building Roth Way - Near Campus Drive TIME: 12:05 The Japanese Fifth Generation Project, and its central institute ICOT, held the Second International Conference on Fifth Generation Systems last November. Well over a thousand people attended this impressive gathering and its associated Open House to hear about and see progress on the project and plans for its future. I'll recount my impressions of these events and impressions of industrial activity in the AI area both inside and outside of the Fifth Generation project. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Feb 85 15:44:07-PST From: Joe Karnicky Subject: BareSlug meeting, Fri. Feb. 15 BAY-AREA SLUG PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT- FEBRUARY 1985 MEETING ******** note the time and location changes ************* Date: Friday, February 15, 1985 Time: 3:15-5:15 PM Place: Stanford Campus , Room 041 Jordan Hall (in the basement) See the directions at the end of this notice for additional information contact: Tom Fall, General Chairman 408/289-2373 Ron Antinoja, Program Chairman 415/966-4043 Ken Olum, Program Librarian 415/858-4498 Joe Karnicky, Correspondence Secretary 415/424-5085 PROGRAM Tom Jensen of Evans and Sutherland will give a talk entitled: "Essential Adaptation: Computer Assisted Symbolic Manipulation and Computer Aided Geometric Design". The talk will include, but not be limited to, discussion of MACSYMA. Rich Cohen at U. Texas is interested in organizing a two day national users group meeting, probably in S. F. probably at the end of May. At the business meeting we'll discuss the interest in (and desirable content of) such a meeting. We'll finish with the usual gripe session. SUMMARY OF LAST MEETING (Jan. 11, 1985) Richard Lamson talked on "hacking the window system". He focused on the way the window system handled the mouse. This can be a fairly complex process, in part because the process must appear to run real time while sharing the machine with other processes. (e.g. mouse clicks are time tagged so that when they are handled the response is to the window the cursor was in at the time of the click rather then the time of handling.) The talk gave valuable insight into the inner workings of the Symbolics machine and helped clarify the window system operations. Tom Fall spoke of his experiences using the KEE system (version 1.2, *not* the current release) on Symbolics. Strong points of the system included the ability to rapidly create a prototype, thus quickly providing a focus and device for knowledge acquisition, good graphics, ease of use, and excellent support. Weak points include difficulty in connecting the KEE program to other code, some difficult, opaque bugs, and documentation that could stand improvement. During the business meeting, interest was expressed in hearing about other software systems, such as ART or S1. Especially interesting would be discussion by someone from an installation that used several different systems. =========================================================================== Map to next meeting: -- | quadrangle | | | | X | <-- X=Jordan Hall -- ---------- ---------- Hoover Tower ---------------------------- ____ / \ serra St. @@@ \----------- / \ @@@ | \ --------- Notes: | | | | 1)the map is *not* to scale \ / | | \ / | | 2)look for parking |<-Palm Drive | | in the pay-parking lot shown by | <-- | | the @ characters, -------------------------------------- | or along Serra. ----------------------------------------- | Campus Dr. --> -------------|------------- | Arboretum Rd. | <--to S.J. El Camino Real to S.F.--> ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 17-FEB-1985 04:22 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a015231; 17 Feb 85 1:50 EST Date: Sat 16 Feb 1985 22:09-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #21 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Sun, 17 Feb 85 04:18 EST AIList Digest Sunday, 17 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 21 Today's Topics: Applications - Computer Gods & I Ching, Humor - Word Processing & Stacks & Garbage Collection & Hairstyle Generation & AI Positions & Cryptographic Humor & Mathematical/Linguistic Humor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 11 Feb 85 9:18:51 EST From: Pete Bradford (CSD UK) Subject: Re: Description of Telesophy Project. The idea of a worldwide computer net cannot fail to remind those of you who have read the story, of the SF classic, I think by my compatriot and old friend, Arthur C. Clarke. The story tells of the quest by mankind to establish the ex- istence or otherwise of a God. They built the largest computer the world had ever seen, and asked it whether there was a God. "Insufficient data.", came the reply. So they built an even larger one: "Insufficient data." was still the only answer they got. Finally, somebody came up with the idea that if all the computers in the world were linked together in some way, the resulting `Supercomputer' might be able to do the job. The project was completed, and the burning question was at last put to the machine; "Is there a God?". It was not long before the machine came back with its reply. "Yes, there is a God -- now!". PJB ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Feb 85 10:02:59-PST From: Ken Laws Reply-to: AIList-Request@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Computer Gods Asimov wrote a similar piece about the "AC Computer", which grew in complexity until the entire "physical embodiment" was moved into hyperspace (to permit convienent internal and external communication throughout the universe, I suppose). Various people asked it how entropy could be reversed and the universe rejuvenated, but there was always insufficient data. After Man and the stars had faded out, and no further data could possibly come in, the computer continued to work on the problem. At last it came up with an answer, and said "Let there be light." ------------------------------ Date: 11 Feb 85 2008 PST From: Brian Harvey Subject: Another Computer Application 11 Feb 85 By ROLLANDA COWLES Reporter for the Staten Island (N.Y.) Advance Newhouse News Service (DISTRIBUTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE) NEW YORK - You've had your eye on a new car for some time. Should you buy now or wait? [...] ''Try the computer,'' counsels John C. Lee, president of the Manhattan-based Horizon East, which has come up with a computerized version of the ''I Ching,'' the Chinese book of wisdom. [...] The computerized version of the ''I Ching,'' which Horizon East is presenting for the first time in the West, is based on a numero-astrological reinterpretation of the ''I Ching.'' Keyed to one's date of birth - year, month, day and hour - the ''I Ching'' spells out an analysis of one's life and offers near-inexhaustible wisdom and counsel. [...] The computerized ''I Ching'' provides a lifetime analysis and detailed analyses of the past two years and one year into the future. It took eight people 10 months to program the Horizon East computer, which stores approximately 4 million characters pertaining to the ''I Ching'' in its memory. So far, Lee says, the response has been favorable. ''Because the computer handles the information much more efficiently, we are able to offer ... service by mail at a very reasonable cost,'' he says, noting that where personal analyses often cost about $200, the computerized version costs $20. [...] ------------------------------ Date: 06 Feb 85 1850 PST From: Arthur Keller Subject: Russell Baker on Word Processing [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] [Russel Baker's column last Sunday had some pithy comments about the cognitive effect of our writing tools. Readers who enjoy the excerpt below should look up the full article. -- KIL] OBSERVER: The Processing Process By RUSSELL BAKER c.1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - For a long time after going into the writing business, I wrote. It was hard to do. That was before the word processor was invented. Whenever all the writers got together, it was whine, whine, whine. How hard writing was. How they wished they had gone into dry cleaning, stonecutting, anything less toilsome than writing. Then the word processor was invented, and a few pioneers switched from writing to processing words. They came back from the electronic frontier with glowing reports: ''Have seen the future and it works.'' That sort of thing. [...] It is so easy, not to mention so much fun - listen, folks, I have just switched right here at the start of this very paragraph you are reading - right there I switched from the old typewriter (talk about goose-quill pen days!) to my word processor, which is now clicking away so quietly and causing me so little effort that I don't think I'll ever want to stop this sentence because - well, why should you want to stop a sentence when you're really well launched into the thing - the sentence, I mean - and it's so easy just to keep her rolling right along and never stop since, anyhow, once you do stop, you are going to have to start another sentence, right? - which means coming up with another idea. [...] ------------------------------ Date: Fri 8 Feb 85 22:30:12-PST From: Steven Tepper Subject: AI Humor [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I got the new memory for my brain and now I can read the Russell Baker article and JMC's reply without a stack overflow (although response time seems to be slower (I think that's because the garbage collection takes longer (I should have thought of that first (but I didn't (does anyone have a good on-the-fly garbage collection routine (one that will will run on a normal two-hemisphere brain configuration (i.e. doesn't require any non- standard lisp features (such as depending on the Interlisp spaghetti stack (I think I'm going to recode my brain in Common Lisp (if a good implementation becomes available (that's supposed to happen soon (at least according to what I've heard)))))))))))). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Feb 85 14:02:45 pst From: Vaughan Pratt Subject: Stacks and Garbage Collection [Forwarded from the Stanford BBoard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Pop. Marvin Minsky organized his public lectures that way. The left parens were silent and the right were omitted. Occasionally he would mutter "Where was I? I seem to have overflowed my stack." It was widely speculated that this was just for show and that Marvin didn't even own a stack. Van Wijngaarden, the man who gave Algol 68 its unique flavor, appears to be the first to propose seriously, somewhere around 1964, that computers should exhibit this sort of behavior and never bother to pop their stack. One might assume that this would save the bother of pushing the return address on the stack when calling another routine, but no. That stack had good stuff on it, or rather in it since you were expected to use it more or less like any other chunk of memory, to within the vagaries of how Algol organized access into the nether reaches of the stack. Return addresses were just parameters naming procedures to call when you had an answer. In the old regime you called such a procedure by popping its address off the stack and jumping to it. In Van Wijngaarden's regime the address stayed on the stack and your current PC was pushed on the stack as part of the ordinary procedure call sequence, not only saving the return address for posterity but contributing another. Van Wijngaarden was thus an early right-to-lifer for return addresses and anything else pushed on the stack. His proposal was in the same spirit as more recent proposals not to bother with garbage collection. Users of Lisp machines who simply reboot as needed rather than endure having the garbage collector turned on should have this man enshrined somewhere on their stack (at each reboot, of course). Other advocates of not garbage collecting include Charles Bennett, at IBM Yorktown Heights, and Ed Fredkin, a colleague and friend of Marvin Minsky who does digital physics at MIT. Their interest in clinging to worn-out information is that by so doing you can always reverse the computation back to exactly where it started. This is not because you want to do this, but because the physicists promise that if you don't throw it away you can get by with far less energy, a sort of physicist's bottle bill. One of the rules appears to be that you have to settle for a nonzero probability that the computation will unpredictably run backwards at some moment. The energy you do consume is expended on adjusting the probability that the computation will proceed forwards more often than backwards; more energy improves the odds and hence the speed of computation. I have heard it whispered that DNA unzips itself on this principle; if it were to unzip in such a way that it could not zip itself right back up again it would fry. I may of course be confusing this with a sermon I heard. Another reason for clinging to old... Pop. [...] -v ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Feb 85 11:23:57 est From: Walter Hamscher Subject: Graduate Student Lunch TIME: 12 Noon DATE: Friday, Feb 15 PLACE: 8th Floor Playroom HOSTS: Mark Tuttle and Sathya Narayanan REFRESHMENTS: t PLAUSIBLE HAIRSTYLE GENERATION: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF EURISKO, PART I Blackstone Le Mot As AI programs have been reported more widely in the popular media, they have been called upon to perform tasks that have heretofore gone unnoticed by AI researchers. Proper hair care is one of these tasks. In this talk I will discuss the application of EURISKO to developing healthy hair and attractive styling. Remarkably enough, the program itself has modified itself to represent characteristics of the domain, by developing hair in its control structure and a significant bald spot in its documentation. But it looooks maaaahvelous! ------------------------------ Date: Thu 7 Feb 85 08:55:27-PST From: Jay Ferguson Subject: AI Positions Seems like the most popular of the AI positions today is MISSIONARY! jay ------------------------------ Date: Thu 7 Feb 85 20:51:57-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Cryptographic Humor Gilles Brassard at Stanford mentioned on the bboard an improvement on the one-time pad consisting of enciphering text by taking its exclusive OR with itself. ("We are still working on the decipherment."). ------------------------------ Date: Tue 5 Feb 85 14:33:25-PST From: Tai Jin Subject: Mathematical/Linguistic Humor [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] [Does anyone know the source of this? It's been around for a good many years. -- KIL] From net.jokes... To prove once and for all that math can be fun, we present: Wherein it is related how that paragon of womanly virtue, young Polly Nomial (our heroine) is accosted by that notorious villain Curly Pi, and factored (oh horror!!!). Once upon a time (1/t) pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the boundary of a singularly large matrix. Now Polly was convergent, and her mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the basis that it was insufficient and made her way in amongst the complex elements. Rows and columns closed in on her from all sides. Tangents approached her surface. She became tensor and tensor. Quite suddendly two branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, lost all sense of directrix, and went completely divergent. She tripped over a square root that was protruding from the erf and plunged headlong down a steep gradient. When she rounded off once more, she found herself inverted, apparently alone, in a non-Euclidean space. She was being watched, however. That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was lurking inner product. As his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates, a singular expression crossed his face. He wondered, "Was she still convergent?". He decided to integrate improperly at once. Hearing a common fraction behind her, Polly rotated and saw Curly Pi approaching with his power series extrapolated. She could see at once by his degenerate conic and dissipative terms that he was bent on no good. "Arcsinh," she gasped. "Ho, ho," he said, "What a symmetric little asymptote you have. I can see your angles have lots of secs." "Oh sir," she protested, "keep away from me. I haven't got my brackets on." "Calm yourself, my dear," said our suave operator, "your fears are purely imaginary." "I, I," she thought, "perhaps he's not normal but homogeneous." "What order are you?" the brute demanded. "Seventeen," replied Polly. Curly leered. "I suppose you've never been operated on." "Of course not," Polly replied quite properly, "I'm absolutely convergent." "Come, come," said Curly, "let's off to a decimal place I know and I'll take you to the limit." "Never," gasped Polly. "Abscissa," he swore, using the vilest oath he knew. His patience was gone. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places, and began smoothing out her points of inflection. Poor Polly. The algorithmic method was now her only hope. She felt his hand tending to her asymptotic limit. Her convergence would soon be gone forever. There was no mercy, for Curly was a heavyside operator. Curly's radius squared itself; Polly's loci quivered. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. After he cofactored, he performed Runge-Kutta on her. The complex beast even went all the way around and did a contour integration. What an indignity -- to be multiply connected on her first integration! Curly went on operating until he completely satisfied her hypothesis, then he exponentiated and became completely orthogonal. When Polly got home that night, her mother noticed that she was no longer piecewise continuous, but had been truncated in several places. But it was to late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly's denominator increased monotonically. Finally she went to L'Hopital and generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place and drove Polly to deviation. The moral of our sad story is this: "If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom ... " ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 20-FEB-1985 05:59 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a006642; 19 Feb 85 12:49 EST Date: Sun 17 Feb 1985 11:39-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #22 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Wed, 20 Feb 85 05:50 EST AIList Digest Sunday, 17 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 22 Today's Topics: AI Tools - Lisp Workstation & Expert System Development Tools & XLISP 1.4 Source, Humor - Origin of "Impure Mathematics", Linguistics - Y'all and Youse, Seminars - Parallel Natural Language Processing (BBN) & Modeling Intuition in Problem Solving (UCB) & Partially Compiled Prolog Interpreters (CSLI) & Learning in Modal Logic (CMU) & Beyond Bacon (CMU) Conference - Decision Support Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 15 Feb 85 13:58:45-PST From: Rene Bach Subject: Lisp workstation, request for info We are looking into buying a CHEAP computer to run LISP in a reasonably friendly environment. The constraints are that the machine should be accessible remotely (through modems) and support networking. We would also like the machine to support more than one user (but certainly less than five). It should run a LISP close to Franz, Zeta or Common Lisp (with hooks for remote file access !), EMACS should be available for it. We are looking into micro-vax and tektronix (I still have to check on some of the constraints satisfaction of those). Price range <~ 20,000 $. We are aware of the NIL+micro-vax combination. Is there anything else worth knowing about ??? Thank you for any suggestion Reply to BACH@score. Rene ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 85 18:27:56 est From: gross@dcn9.arpa (Phill Gross) Subject: Expert System Dev. Tools Info Request Several months ago, there was some discussion in the list about expert system development packages. There were also some information requests (eg, ehrler%cod@nosc) but I don't recall any follow-ups posted. I'm now at the point of wanting to purchase one of these packages and have been compiling a survey list of candidate packages. I would like to solicit information/comments about the packages listed below. I will summarize and post the results of any information I get. I'll fertilize the discussion with an initial list of information I've found so far. What I'm really interested in is user comments on ease of use, capabilities, how fast to get "up the curve", etc. Again, I will summarize all information I receive. Phill Gross Note: All comments in quotes below were taken from promotional material, all comments within square brackets represent incomplete info. Large or Special Purpose Machines Vendor Machines/ Package (Contact Info) HW Environment Price Comments ART Inference Corp. [runs on 5300 W.Century Blvd. Symbolics] Los Angeles, CA 90045 213-417-7997 DUCK Smart Systems Tech. "works within Runs under Zetalisp 6870 Elm Street Lisp environ- on Symbolics,Franz on McLean, VA 22101 ment" Vaxen (Unix or VMS), 703-448-8562 T lisp on Appollo, soon Common Lisp K:Base Gold Hill Computers "Symbolics 3600 [Provides networking] 163 Harvard Street family" Cambridge, MA 02139 617-492-2071 KEE IntelliCorp Need AI machine $60K 707 Laurel St. (eg, Symbolics) Menlo Park, CA 94025 415-853-5540 or 415-323-8300 LOOPS [Xerox] [Xerox machines] [unsupported but provided by Xerox for the cost of distribution] OPS5 DEC Vaxen "can call or be called by routines .. in any VAX language" SRL [Carnegie Group] [Symbolics] $70K S1 Teknowledge, Inc. Xerox 1100/1108, $50K Includes 2 week course 525 University Ave. soon VAX/VMS Palo Alto, CA 94301 415-327-6600 TIMM General Research Corp. "Most computers 7655 Old and AI machines" Springhouse Road McLean, VA 22102 703-893-5915 ============================================================================= Personal Computers Vendor Machines/ Package (Contact Info) HW Environment Price Comments Expert- J. Perrone & IBM PC or XT, $2K 2 disks advisable Ease Associates, Inc. some 3685 17th Street "compatibles" San Francisco, CA 94114 415-431-9562 K:Base Gold Hill Computers IBM PC's [<$5K] [Provides networking] 163 Harvard Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617-492-2071 M1 Teknowledge, Inc. IBM PC $12.5 Includes 4 day course, 525 University Ave. Color recomended, Palo Alto, CA 94301 PC-DOS or MS-DOS 415-327-6600 Personal Texas Instruments "Widespread Includes 3 day course, Consultant P.O. Box 809063 personal runs under MS-DOS, Dallas, TX 75380 computers", allows 400 rules 1-800-527-3500 TI Professional ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 85 15:10:33 EST From: winkler@harvard.ARPA (Dan Winkler) Subject: XLISP 1.4 Source Available Source, documentation and compiled Macintosh versions of XLISP 1.4 are available by anonymous ftp login at Harvard. It's all in a subdirectory named pub. The author of xlisp, David Betz, logs in here as betz@harvard. Feel free to send him mail if you have questions or comments. Dan. (winkler@harvard) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Feb 85 11:22:57 EST From: Paul Broome Subject: Origin of "Impure Mathematics" In answer to your query in AIList V3 #21 I'm sending you a note I found on net.jokes.d on USENET. -paul From seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!sun!idi!pesnta!lsuc!msb From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) Subject: Re: "The Adventures of Poly Nomial" Date: 5 Feb 85 07:02:25 GMT Summary: Credit and correct title This little gem previously appeared in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. I don't know what issue; I have it in a Best of the JIR collection. The real title is "Impure Mathematics". No author is given in the normal style, but it is marked as "submitted by" Richard A. Gibbs. Subscriptions to the JIR are now $4.50, $6.50 outside the USA, for 4 issues = 4/5 year, from Box 234, Chicago Heights, IL 60411. { allegra | decvax | duke | ihnp4 | linus | watmath | ... } !utzoo!lsuc!msb Mark Brader also via amd!pesnta!lsuc!msb, uw-beaver!utcsrgv!lsuc!msb (From February 14, utcsrgv will be utcsri) ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 12-Feb-85 12:03:01-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Y'all and Youse In a recent discussion on the plural of `you', I believe that someone said that `youse' was not part of the English language. Yesterday on the bus, I heard a 12-year-old say to her friend ` I'll see youse later'. Nuff said. Gordon Joly gcj@edxa [Edxa is at Edinburgh. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 8 Feb 1985 14:58-EST From: Brad Goodman Subject: Seminar - Parallel Natural Language Processing (BBN) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] BBN Laboratories SDP AI Seminar Series Massively Parallel Natural Language Processing Professor David L. Waltz Thinking Machines and Brandeis University Date: Tuesday, February 19, 1985 Time: 10:00 a.m. Place: Newman Auditorium BBN Laboratories Inc. 70 Fawcett Street Cambridge, Ma. This talk will describe research in developing a natural language processing system with modular knowledge sources but strongly interactive processing. The system offers insights into a variety of linguistic phenomena and allows easy testing of a variety of hypotheses. Language interpretation takes place on an activation network which is dynamically created from input, recent context, and long-term knowledge. Initially ambiguous and unstable, the network settles on a single interpretation, using a parallel, analog relaxation process. The talk will also describe a parallel model for the representation of context and of the priming of concepts. Examples illustrating contextual influence on meaning interpretation and "semantic garden path" sentence processing, along with a discussion of the building and implementation of a large scale system for new generation parallel computers are included. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 85 15:53:16 pst From: hardyck%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Curtis Hardyck) Subject: Seminar - Modeling Intuition in Problem Solving (UCB) Speaker: Paul Smolensky, Institute for Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego Title: A FORMAL FRAMEWORK FOR MODELLING INTITUTION IN PROBLEM SOLVING Thursday, Feb 21 at 1 pm, room 2515 Tolman Hall, Berkeley The following hypotheses will be elaborated and analyzed: Experts' intuitions derive from their specially developed perceptions of the problem domain; The perceptual processor solves the problem's simultaneous constraints literally in parallel; The level at which processing is governed by formal laws involves small units of knowledge, not elaborate "rules" or symbolic structure; These formal laws involve numerical, not symbolic, variables and operations. I will discuss the motivation for these hypotheses, the presumed roles of intutition and rule interpretation in problem solving, and implications for instruction. Then I will describe how the hypotheses lead to a principled formal framework for modelling intuition. This framework is derived from probability theory and exploits a formal isomorphism with statistical (thermal) physics. Three theories will be described that give a formal competence model, a realization in a parallel processor, and a learning procedure through which the processor acquires its knowledge. These theorems are part of an effort to develop a new theory of computation describing massively parallel systems. An application of the framework to simple quantitative problems in electricity will be described. Concepts and techniques from statistical physics guide analysis of the processing. -- Steve Palmer ------------------------------ Date: Wed 13 Feb 85 17:25:56-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - Partially Compiled Prolog Interpreters (CSLI) [Exercpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] SUMMARY OF AREA C MEETING ``The Compilation of Prolog Programs Without the Use of a Prolog Compiler'' Ken Kahn, Xerox PARC An efficient Prolog interpreter written in Lisp was presented. The interpreter was then specialized to run different Prolog predicates. These specializations are generated automatically by a partial evaluator for Lisp programs called Partial Lisp. It transforms Lisp programs to other Lisp programs and knows nothing about Prolog. It was argued that the partial evaluation of interpreters can be a substitute for compilation. The results of partially evaluating the Prolog interpreter for simple Prolog predicates were presented. The speed of the specialized interpreters has been found to be about ten times faster than ordinary interpretation. These speeds compare favorably with an optimizing compiler for the same Prolog dialect and computer system. The advantages of using partial evaluation upon an interpreter include a much smaller and easily modifiable implementation. The major difficulty in generating thousands of small specialized interpreters is that it currently takes about two orders of magnitude more time than compilation. Different approaches to reducing partial evaluation time were presented. The possibilities of specializing the interpreter for different uses of the same Prolog predicate were discussed. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Feb 1985 1044-EST From: Jon Doyle Subject: Seminar - Learning in Modal Logic (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] AI Seminar, Feb. 19, 3:30 PM, WeH 5409 CALM : A Contestative Apprenticeship System in Modal Logic Jean Sallantin and Joel Quinqueton Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Montpellier, France We present a formal approach to Learning as a process in a non-distributive Modal Logic. We illustrate it by considerations about the results of our work on SEQUOIA, a Learning Machine for decoding Genetic Sequences. Contact Jon Doyle (x3739) for appointments or more information. ------------------------------ Date: 15 February 1985 1215-EST From: Cathy Hill@CMU-CS-A Subject: Seminar - Beyond Bacon (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Speaker: Professor Herbert Simon Title: "Beyond Bacon" Date: February 19, 1985 Time: 12:00 noon - 1:30 p.m. Place: Adamson Wing, 1st Floor, Baker Hall Abastract: BACON is a data-driven program for discovering regularities (laws) in data. It attempts to simulate one aspect of scientific discovery. Other aspects include theory-driven discovery, choosing research problems, and designing instruments. The seminar will discuss progress that has been made in characterizing programs to do these latter kinds of tasks. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 12 Feb 1985 08:22:51-PST From: turner%when.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Subject: Conference - Decision Support Systems C O N F E R E N C E A N N O U N C E M E N T The Fifth Annual Conference on Decision Support Systems (DSS) will be held from April 1 through April 4 in San Francisco. The goal of this conference, like its predecessors, is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss their most recent experiences and ideas about decision support systems and their use in making organizations and individuals successful. The conference is sponsored by the Institute for the Advancement of Decision Support Systems in cooperation with the Institute of Management Sciences and its College on Information Systems. The program is a series of six tracks: . Introduction to DSS and DSS Tools (tutorial) . DSS Futures . Expert and Knowledge Based Systems . DSS Methodologies . DSS in Practice . DSS Products and Services Conference Committee Chairman Program Chairman Proceedings Editor Dr. Robert Zmud Dr. Robert Reck Dr. Joyce Elam University of North Carolina Index Systems University of Texas For information, please contact: Ms. Julie Eldridge DSS'85 Third Floor 290 Westminster Street Providence RI 02903 (401) 274-0801 Mark Turner Digital Equipment Corporation ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 21-FEB-1985 01:01 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a007665; 19 Feb 85 15:48 EST Date: Tue 19 Feb 1985 09:37-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #23 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Thu, 21 Feb 85 00:47 EST AIList Digest Tuesday, 19 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 23 Today's Topics: AI Tools - PC LISPs & Flavors, Humor - Polly Nomial, Information Science - Webster & Xerox Notecards, Literature - Recent Articles & University of Rochester Reports, Seminars - Mental Models (UCB) & Natural Concurrent Grammar (Weitzmann), Conference - AI in Engineering, Program Descriptions - Postdocs at NPRDC-UCSD & AI Research at UCLA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 Feb 85 07:39:32 EST (Mon) From: johnson Subject: info request pc lisps I am looking for experiences, comparisons, and evaluations of any lisp available on PC+compatibles. I am particularly interested in: TLC [The Lisp Company] Lisp vs GC Lisp vs IQ Lisp vs muLisp. I am familiar with franz, interlisp, and muLisp - so any comparisons versus these breeds of lisp would be particularly useful to me. I am more concerned with efficiency than adherence to standards, in particular : 1. how long does this take in (X)_lisp: ; use any interation method provided by X ; AVOID recursion if possible (do-2000-times (cond (T))) 2. how long does this take: ; after : (setq z nil) (do-2000-times (setq z (cons T z))) 3. Is there a way to remove objects from the object list? 4. Is there an interface to assembly language modules? (can lisp call machine-lang functions?) 5. How long does it take for (X)Lisp to load and give its first prompt. [please include a hardware description for sake of comparison] (eg: 256k IBMXT, PCDOS 2.00, running (X)lisp from fixed disk) 6. Price of (X)lisp and any licensing charges. please send response directly to me, I will (net-mail) results to anyone who asks [but wait a few days before asking, ok?] -thanks in advance. johnson@udel-ee ... Share a little joke with the World |-> ... ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 19-Feb-85 12:20:12-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Flavors I have come across the term `flavors' several times but still have no idea what it means. Please could someone explain? Thanks, Gordon Joly gcj%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Feb 85 13:27:30 cst From: "Duncan A. Buell" Subject: polly nomial This was printed in a slightly different form (the version from the network has some updates that actually make it a little better in my mind) in Scope: Journal of the Federation of University Astronomical Societies about fifteen years ago. That, at least, is where I got my copy. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Feb 85 20:02:11 est From: davy@purdue-ecn.ARPA (Dave Curry [decvax!pur-ee!davy -or- davy@purdue-ecn]) Subject: Webster Regarding the copy of Webster's dictionary on SRI-NIC. I have written a program for 4.2BSD UNIX which contacts the server on SRI-NIC and enables the user to "converse" with the dictionary. The source for this program is available via anonymous FTP from PURDUE-ECN in the directory "pub/webster". Please note that we have a "part-time" ARPAnet connection, i.e., we run thrugh the computer center, which has rather strange hours: M-F: 8:30am - midnight Sat: noon - 5:00pm Sun: noon - midnight or something like that. All times are Eastern. The source is also available in WEB:WEBSTER.C from SRI-NIC, however, this is an old copy of the source (with a couple of minor bugs), so don't grab it unless you can't get to us (it should be updated soon). Also, for you TOPS-20/Tenex folks, there's a Midas source in the file WEB:WEBSTER.MID (executable is WEB:WEBSTER.EXE) on SRI-NIC (I know nothing about this one, I just mention it to be complete). As far as I know from conversing with the folks in charge of this thing, these are the only two programs available for dealing with Webster. If you have one for another operating system, send a note to IAN@SRI-NIC. He is collecting the sources. --Dave Curry davy@purdue-ecn ------------------------------ Date: 17 Feb 85 15:54 PST From: fisher.pasa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Xerox Notecards The Xerox notecards system is presently being licenced to Xerox 1100/1108/1132 customers as a part of special Xerox applications development programs. The Xerox notecards system is not a supported product at this time although discussions are proceeding within the Corporation regarding that possibility. Further information can be obtained by messaging me. Pete Fisher (fisher.pasa@Xerox) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Feb 85 04:52:03 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Recent Articles IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence January 1985 Volume PAMI-7 Number 1 Parallel Algorithms for Syllable Recognition in Continuous Speech page 56-69 An Evaluation Based Theorem Prover page 70-79 A mechanical theorem prover applied to proving theorems about programs. A New Heuristic Search Technique - Algorithm SA page 103-107 A Search Technique based on a statistical sampling technique Inforworld February 11, 1985 page 13 Lotus Edges into AI Lotus signed a 1 million dollar venture financing agreement with Arity computer. The software, promised for late 1985, will be an integrated business productivity tool for IBM PC's. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 85 16:01:59 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: University of Rochester Reports The University of Rochester Technical Report List TR132 Gacs, P "Reliable computation with cellular automata" $2.25 Construction of one-dimensional array of cellular automata which is self-repairing TR133 Ballard, D. H. "Cortical connections: Structure and Function" $1.50 TR141 Allen, J. F and D. J. Litman "A plan recognition model for subdialogues in conversations" $1.50 TR143 D. C. Plaut "Visual recognition of simple objects by a connection network" $1.25 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 85 09:11:35 pst From: kuhn%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Elisabeth Kuhn) Subject: Seminar - Mental Models (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Spring 1985 Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B TIME: Tuesday, February 19, 11:30 - 12:30 (Please note that the talk starts at 11:30 this week) PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 2 in 200 Building T-4 Philip Johnson-Laird, Visiting Professor at Stanford - from MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge ``Mental Models'' The aim of this talk is to explore the hypothesis that a major class of mental representations take the form of models of the world. Such models contrast with propositional representations, i.e. syntactically structured strings of symbols in a mental language, because models are assumed to make explicit the perceived or conceived relations between things in the world. The explanatory value of models will be illustrated in three areas: reasoning, comprehension, and the representation of discourse. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 85 11:42:19 -0200 From: scheff%wisdom.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (scheff chaim) Subject: Seminar - Natural Concurrent Grammar (Weitzmann) The Weitzmann Institute of Science - Rehovot, Israel Seminar in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Chaim-Meyer Scheff will speak on "Alternatives in Artificial Intelligence: Natural Concurrent Grammar". The talk will take place on Wednesday, February 27, 1985 in the Feinberg Building, Room C, at 9:00. Natural grammer, based on the independent work of Vygotsky and Bitner, suggest the feasibility of flow through parsing schemes for natural language; and further suggest applications for seemingly ambiguous natural language in the programming environment. Vygotsky grammar removes the structural constraints of transformational grammar. While Bitner grammar gives formal structure to the otherwise nondeterministic ambiguity problem. Further analysis, based on the grammar of American Sign Language, would replace Bitner's sequential based ambiguity marker set with a set of vector space markers of generalized function; thereby allowing for viable models of concurrent cognitive processes; such as those which minimize transaction flux in Mapless Networks. ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 18 February 1985 05:49:16 EST From: Duvvuru.Sriram@cmu-ri-cive.arpa Subject: Conference - AI in Engineering CALL FOR PAPERS FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ENGINEERING PROBLEMS (AIEP) The purpose of this conference is to provide a forum for engineers all over the world to present their work on the applications of artificial intelligence to engineering problems. The conference will be held from April 15-18 1986 at Southampton University, England and will be preceeded by tutorials in Expert systems and Robotics. CONFERENCE THEMES The following topics are suggested and other related areas will be considered. - Computer-aided design - Computer-based training - Planning and Scheduling - Constraint Management - Intelligent Tutors - Expert systems - Knowledge representation - Learning - Natural language applications - Cognitive modelling of engineering problems - Robotics - Database interfaces - Graphical interfaces - Knowledge-based simulation - Design Modelling CALL FOR PAPERS Authors are invited to submit three copies of a 500 word abstract. The abstract should have enough details to permit careful evaluation by a committee consisting of renowed experts in the field. The abstracts should be accompained with the following details: - Authors' address, name, affliation. Indicate the person to address all correspondence. - The branch of engineering. If the paper addresses engineering in general, then should be categorized under GENERAL DESIGN. - The topic area. TIME TABLE Submission of Abstracts: June 1st 1985 Notification of acceptance: August 1st 1985 Submission of Full Paper: November 1st 1985 INFORMATION All abstracts should be sent to: Dr. R. Adey, General Chairman, AIEP Computational Mechanics Centre Ashurst Lodge Southampton S04 2AA England Inquires about exhibits, registration should be addressed to: Ms Elaine Taylor Computational Mechanics Centre Ashurst Lodge Southampton S04 2AA England For more information in US contact: D. Sriram, Technical Chairman AIEP Civil Engineering and Construction Robotics Laboratories Department of Civil Engineering Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 sriram@cmu-ri-cive.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 13 February 1985, 10:07-PST From: Jim Hollan Subject: Postdocs This note is to announce the formation of a new collaborative research group: the NPRDC-UCSD Intelligent Systems Group (ISG). ISG is concerned with addressing basic research questions involving intelligent graphical interfaces, computational accounts of cognition, knowledge representation, human machine interaction, and elicitation of expert knowledge. The group has excellent computational facilities. Currently this includes four Symbolics lisp machines, two Xerox Dandy-Tigers, a Xerox Dorado, and arpanet access via central Vax computers. The Institute for Cognitive Science, of which ISG is a member, has a network of 15 SUN workstations and a Vax. A number of post-doctoral fellowships are available for recent cognitive science or artificial intelligence PhDs. Fellowships are for two-years with an option of a third year. Stipend is approximately 30K/year with an additional allowance of 6K for relocation and professional travel. The postdoctoral fellowships come from ONR (Office of Naval Research). Fellows will work in ISG on the UCSD campus. Interested applicants should communicate with James D. Hollan or Donald A. Norman, Intelligent Systems Group; Institute for Cognitive Science C-015; University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, CA 92093. Arpanet addresses: hollan@nprdc or norman@nprdc. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 85 06:28:35 PST From: Judea Pearl Subject: AI Research at UCLA [Edited by Laws@SRI-AI.] The UCLA Computer Science Department is actively researching in all areas of Artificial Intelligence, with increasing interest in: robotics & vision, learning & memory, qualitative reasoning & expert systems, planning and automatic programming. Current AI research at UCLA is most focussed in the areas of natural language processing, cognitive modeling, the analysis of heuristics and evidential reasoning. Projects include editorial comprehension, story invention, legal reasoning, intelligent tutoring, learning through planning, discovery of heuristics, and distributed inferencing. Facilities for AI research at UCLA consist of a ring network of Apollo workstations, which comprises one of the largest Apollo installation sites in Southern California. Each Apollo workstation consists of 1.5-4 Mbyte main memory, multi-processing operating system with multi-windowing, font editing, and SIGGRAPH Core graphics primitives. Networking is built into each workstation. Our AI tools environment, called GATE (Graphical AI Tools Environment), is built on top of T, a lexically-scoped, Scheme-based dialect of Lisp developed at Yale University. T, designed for efficient implementation and execution, incorporates object-oriented programing with message-passing semantics as its most fundamental language construct. GATE includes a number of interacting packages: Flavors, DELON -- a language for specifying demons and traps, WEBs -- a slot-filler system for specifying semantic memories represented by graphical icons connected by rubberband links, and TLOG -- a logic programming system which allows both Prolog and T style syntax. In addition to the Apollos, the CS department maintains a network of 20 Vaxes, which communicate with the Apollo ring via an ethernet gateway. For more information contact: Prof. Judea Pearl, 4731E Boelter hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (judea@UCLA-CS.arpa) Prof. Michael Dyer, 3532 Boelter Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (dyer@UCLA-CS.ARPA). Prof. Margot Flowers 3532 Boelter Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (flowers@UCLA-CS.ARPA) ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 22-FEB-1985 05:22 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a022204; 21 Feb 85 15:18 EST Date: Thu 21 Feb 1985 10:47-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #24 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Fri, 22 Feb 85 05:15 EST AIList Digest Thursday, 21 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 24 Today's Topics: Request - Seminar Tapes, Functional and Logic Programming, Correction - Bertrand Constraint Language, Seminars - Inductive Theorem Proving in Prolog (GE) & Knowledge-Based Software Development (SU) & Cooperation Among Intelligent Agents (SU) & Programming in Concurrent Prolog (CMU) & Self-Organizing Retrieval for Graphs (UT) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 85 20:46:40 cst From: Raj Doshi Subject: Slightly Depressed.... I always see notices on the AIList digest about fantastic seminars all over the country (especially at BBN, Stanford, etc.) and get depressed because : (1) I can't attend them, (2) The transcript/recording is never published, nor accessible (3) So there is no way for an interested person to learn. I was wondering if somebody/anybody/any organization {BBN/or any university libraries (Stanford libraries)} would keep recordings on tape/cassette ??. (1) Either record any & all public seminars advertised over the net (Tapes/Video ?). (2) Or, if some number of people show interest (say 50) within a specified period of time (2 weeks?) of the first (or last) time of announcement (on AIList Digest?) then, record the requested seminar. (3) Charge some reasonable fee for it (please keep the poor grad-student in mind; Tapes for grads; Videotapes for industry folks). I think I should probably be writing this to the respective ad- mintrative departments and/or to the Librarians. But, I think : [1] I don't have the time to write to these administrative departments. [2] I don't even have the names of the persons who might be able to make these (expensive) decisions. [3] I don't have any clout; It will take more than one person to voice the need. Do the Stanford or BBN librarians read this AIList digest?? Can somebody send this messsage over to a net where this message will be read by administrators and/or librarians ?? Does anybody else feel so deprived ?? Any other Issues or Ideas or Pros or Cons or Problems ?? --Raj Doshi Graduate Student, University of Minnesota csnet: doshi.umn-cs@csnet-relay [While seminars are rarely recorded, they usually spring from or lead to a conference paper or dissertation. Sending a message to the author (perhaps via the seminar host) will often get you some interesting pre/reprints or literature citations. I don't know whether administrators respond to net messages, but you can often get a lead on the proper address for an administrative request by writing to "postmaster" at any site. The various postmasters have been a great help to me in distributing the AIList. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thu 7 Feb 85 11:09:03-PST From: Joseph A. Goguen Subject: Functional and Logic Programming (long message) [Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.] Here's a little more for those who have been eagerly following recent discussions in the Digest about the relationship between logic and functional programming. This appears to be a very exciting field just now, with a rapidly expanding literature, much of it not yet even published. First, I want to add some bits of information to the very helpful classification that Reddy recently sketched for the Digest. Barbutti, Belia, Levi and their gang in Pisa, Italy may have been the first workers in this field, with papers going back to the late 70s; their latest work is on embedding logic programming into functional programming. Drosten and Ehrich from Braunschweig, Germany have recently given a fully rigorous translation from algebraic specifications to logic programs. There are several functional languages that use unification or narrowing. Qute by Sato (of Tokyo, Japan) really is cute, and is notable for its higher order functions. Fribourg in France has done some really elegant work; and so has Kanamori in Japan; and Dershowitz and Plaisted are thinking along similar lines at Illinois; all of these have some interesting ideas about how to make things more efficient. I also like the work of Haridi and Tarnlund (Uppsala, Sweden), Lindstrom at Utah (in the latest POPL), and of course the LOGLISP system of Alan Robinson at Syracuse. Uday Reddy was kind enough to send me copies of the unpublished papers that he mentioned in a recent Digest. I enjoyed reading them, especially his ideas on how to control control. Reddy's approach views logic programs as functional programs by viewing predicates as functions. Unfortunately, his approach is constructor-based, so you can't give Append an associative syntax (with which you could write things like [1,2] [3,4] [5,6] to append three lists (using an "empty" infix syntax). Also, as Reddy notes, his approach cannot treat all logic programs as functional programs without somehow extending the basic framework, for example with ad hoc mechanisms to support set-valued functions. This seems an interesting area for further research. Our Eqlog system (see vol.1, No.2, Logic Programming Jnl.) is misleadingly characterized in Reddy's papers and Prolog Digest note, and also in Lindstrom's paper and Malachi's Digest note on Tablog. Eqlog has an equational sublanguage with logical variables, and uses narrowing to solve equations for values of the logical variables (this sublanguage has the syntax of OBJ2, for which see POPL85). However, Eqlog is not purely functional, or even "equational"; it is a logic programming language, whose logic is first order Horn clause logic *with equality*. Since this equality is real *semantic* equality (as opposed to Prolog's syntactic equality), i.e., it is interpreted as *identity* in models, and the logic of this equality is the usual equational logic; this is what gives the semantics of the equational sublanguage. However, Eqlog also allows real predicates; its Horn clauses can have both predicates and equations in their heads and tails. The operational semantics of Eqlog integrates unification with term rewriting; the result is that Prolog-like clauses (without real equality) are solved in the usual way with standard unification, while terms are automatically simplified by term rewriting, and narrowing is used to solve equations for the values of logical variables, which can yield "partially resolved expressions". A fair-interleaving version of the usual Prolog-like backtracking not only takes care of predicates, but also handles conditional equations correctly, both forsimplification and for solving; thus, a number of computational methods appear as special cases. Also, it avoids the infinite descents that can cause non-termination in Prolog. This is not just universal unification. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that these features are not just hacked together, but are the natural outcome of taking Horn clause logic with equality as the semantic basis: interleaved unification and rewriting then give the right operational semantics. Termination plus confluence of the equations viewed as rewrite rules is a sufficient conditition for completeness of narrowing. Since equational goals can contain logical variables, this gives a powerful "constraint language like" facility for solving over user defined data abstractions. Our operational semantics (fair interleaving of unification and rewriting) seems to work reasonably even without the termination condition; but we no longer have a *theorem* that guarantees completeness. It would be nice to have a formal semantics for the non-terminating case, including infinite (lazy) data structures, but of course equality (in the theory) of terms won't generally be decidable in such a scheme. Moreover, some pretty hard math is needed to do it right. So it is very comforting that we understand the case where the rewrite rules terminate, even though it's not the end of the story. My objection to Tablog is just that it is not complete. Without a completeness theorem, the programmer has no idea which programs are going to terminate and which are not. This seems like another interesting area for further research. By the way, it's worth mentioning that when you program for a parallel machine, you should probably give preference to straight term rewriting over unification and narrowing, since no general implementation of unification can really exploit the parallelism (by a theorem of Dwork, Kanellakis & Mitchell, and also Yasuura). Finally, I would like to mention that if anyone out there is really turned on by this sort of thing [...], we would really like to hear from you. ------------------------------ Date: Tuesday, 19 Feb 85 14:31:30 PST From: wm@tekchips Subject: Correction - Bertrand Constraint Language The seminar on the Bertrand constraint language at the Oregon Graduate Center will begin at 3:00 pm, not 3:30 as announced in the AIList digest. Wm Leler ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Feb 85 09:12:08 EST From: coopercc@GE-CRD Subject: Seminar - Inductive Theorem Proving in Prolog (GE) Computer Science Seminar General Electric R & D Center Schenectady, N. Y. Inductive Theorem Proving in Prolog Prof. Jieh Hsiang SUNY at Stoney Brook Tuesday, February 26 1:30 PM, Building K1, Conf. Rm. 3 (Refreshments at 1:15) ABSTRACT: Prolog is a logic programming language based on theorem proving techniques such as unification and resolution. It has gained considerable popularity in recent years as an alternative approach to programming. In this talk we introduce the use of Prolog as a deduc- tive theorem prover for the first order inductive theory. In addition to the backward chaining and back- tracking facilities of Prolog, we introduce three new mechanisms -- Skolemization by need, suspended evalua- tion, and limited forward chaining. The features of the method include the ability to automatically parti- tion the domain of variables according to the manner in which the predicate symbols are defined, and automatic generation of lemmas (or inductive hypothesis) under which the proposition is true. The method also does not explicitly employ any inductive inference rule. These new mechanisms are simple enough to be imple- mented in Prolog without too much difficulty. The theorem prover has been used in the verification phase of a Prolog environment for developing data types currently being developed at Stony Brook. Notice to Non-GE attendees: It is necessary that we ask you to notify Marion White (518-385-8370 or WHITEMM@GE-CRD) at least two days in advance of the seminar. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 20 Feb 85 00:05:00-PST From: Gio Wiederhold Subject: Seminar - Knowledge-Based Software Development (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford BBoard by Laws@SRI-AI.] CS 300 -- Computer Science Department Colloquium -- Winter 1984-1985. Our eigth meeting will be on Februray 26th, 4:15 in Terman Auditorium: KNOWLEDGE BASED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IN FSD by Dr. Robert BALZER USC Information Sciences Institute Our group is pursuing the goal of an automation based software development paradigm. While this goal is still distant, we have embedded our current perceptions and capabilities in a prototype (FSD) of such a software development environment. Although this prototype was built primarily as a testbed for our ideas, we decided to gain insight by using it, and have added some administrative services to expand it from a programming system to a computing environment currently being used by a few ISI researchers for all their computing activities. This "AI operating System" provides specification capabilities for Search, Coordination, Automation, Evolution, and Inter-User Interaction. Particularly important is evolution, as we recognize that useful systems can only arise, and remain viable, through continued evolution. Much of our research is focused on this issue and several examples will be used to characterize where we are today and where we are headed. Naturally, we have started to use these facilities to evolve our system itself. ( After the presentation Bob will show a Video tape in ) ( the Auditorium to show all that, and how it works. ) ------------------------------ Date: Wed 20 Feb 85 11:19:46-PST From: Carol Wright Subject: Seminar - Cooperation Among Intelligent Agents (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] DATE: Friday, February 22, 1985 LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical & Organic Chemistry TIME: 12:05 SPEAKER: Jeffrey S. Rosenschein Stanford University TITLE: Rational Interaction: Cooperation among Intelligent Agents The development of intelligent agents presents opportunities to exploit intelligent cooperation. Before this can occur, however, a framework must be built for reasoning about interactions. This work describes such a framework, and explores strategies of interaction among intelligent agents. The formalism that has been developed removes some serious restrictions that underlie previous research in distributed artificial intelligence, particularly the assumption that the interacting agents have identical or non-conflicting goals. The formalism allows each agent to make various assumptions about both the goals and the rationality of other agents. In addition, it allows the modeling of restrictions on communication and the modeling of binding promises among agents. This talk describes work done in conjunction with Matthew L. Ginsberg and Michael R. Genesereth. ------------------------------ Date: 19 February 1985 1134-EST From: Staci Quackenbush@CMU-CS-A Subject: Seminar - Programming in Concurrent Prolog (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Name: Vijay Saraswat Date: Friday, February 22 Time: 3:30 - 4:30 Place: WeH 4605 Title: "Programming in Concurrent Prolog" The talk will briefly introduce Horn logic programming and will then examine Concurrent Prolog as a concurrent and as a logic programming language. I will compare CP to CSP and highlight various semantic and operational difficulties with CP-like `concurrent' languages based on Horn logic. My thesis is that CP is best thought of as a set of control features designed to select a very few of the many possible execution paths for programs in a non-deterministic language. It is perhaps not a coherent set of control and data-structures for the ideal concurrent programming language. It is certainly even less a logic programing language than Prolog. Some of these languages have been proposed as systems programming languages. In the second half of the talk, I will focus on the difficulty in efficiently programming such data-structures as arrays, dequeues, heaps etc and propose the use of associative, commutative and idempotent logic functions (data structures) as a partial remedy. This also naturally leads to (a slightly generalised form of) a synchronous WRAM model of computation. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Feb 85 09:41:20 cst From: briggs@ut-sally.ARPA (Ted Briggs) Subject: Seminar - Self-Organizing Retrieval for Graphs (UT) [Forwarded from the UTexas-20 bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Graduate Brown Bag Seminar A Self-Organizing Retrieval System for Graphs by Bob Levinson noon Friday Feb. 22 PAI 5.60 We present the theory, design, and application of a self-organizing intelligent knowledge base in which all concepts are represented as graphs. The system is designed to support the expert problem solving tasks of recall, design, and discovery. It is being applied successfully in organic chemistry to store and retrieve molecular structures and to reason with organic reactions. We believe that the system will also be useful in oth- er domains. At the basis of the system's design is the production and mainte- nance of a partial ordering of graphs by the relation "subgraph-of". We will discuss how this relation can be considered to be equivalent to "more-general-than", and we will present a simple, yet powerful retrieval algorithm for data ordered in this way. The system exploits a set of concepts that are common sub- graphs of previously stored concepts (graphs). We will show how these concepts serve multiple purposes that improve the effi- ciency and flexibility of the system. Since these concepts can be "discovered" by the system itself, we say that it is "self-organizing". ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 23-FEB-1985 21:53 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a005243; 23 Feb 85 19:12 EST Date: Fri 22 Feb 1985 09:32-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #25 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Sat, 23 Feb 85 21:49 EST AIList Digest Friday, 22 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 25 Today's Topics: AI Tools - Cheap Lisp Workstations & LISPM Tape Formats, Literature - OPS4 Book, Policy - Dubious Humor, Linguistics - 2nd Person Plural, Humor - Amirsardarism, Seminars - The Epistle Project (CLSI) & Use of Sound to Present Data (SU) & A Logic of Knowledge and Belief (BBN) & Computing Conversational Implicature (BBN), Project Description - Cognitive Complexity (IBMSJ) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Feb 85 16:46:45 est From: fischer@ru-opal (Ron Fischer) Subject: Cheap Lisp workstations Has anyone heard of an under $10,000 Lisp workstation with an environment comparable to Interlisp? If you reply with a mention of a diskless workstation, please make it obvious that the machine needs a network. (ron) ------------------------------ Date: 21 February 1985 11:13-EST From: George J. Carrette Subject: LISPM Tape Formats It seems this question comes up a lot. We don't have any set policy on tape formats but LMI customers have been provided with the following support when the need came up: (+ means comes with the system already). Machine Format Supported LMI-Backup TOPS-20-DUMPER ANSI-LABELED TAR FIXED-EBCD(IBM) LMI-LAMBDA + * * * * VAX/VMS * + * UNIX * * + + (dd) The LMI-Backup is similar to ANSI-LABELED in use of file and tape marks, except lisp-like in its use of LABELS (disembodied plists, parsed by READ). As I recall JIM at Tycho was able to read it easily on his 3600. On the other hand the various Symbolics formats looked considerably hairier and are probably covered by their trade-secret policy, which is why we didnt try to reverse engineer it and provide support for it on the LAMBDA, even though people are always asking us to move code from 3600's to LAMBDAs. But either they usually have some kind of VAX or Unix handy to make a tape or they have a non-industry-standard 1/4-inch tape, in which case the easiest thing is to find somebody with a 3600<->VAX settup to make a copy for you. -gjc ------------------------------ Date: 18 February 1985 1131-EST From: Lee Brownston@CMU-CS-A Subject: book on OPS4 programming [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] "Programming Expert Systems With OPS5," by Lee Brownston, Elaine Kant, Robert Farrell, and Nancy Martin, is scheduled to be published by Addison-Wesley on April 15th. It is about 400 pages long, and contains an introduction to production systems, a tutorial on the OPS5 language, an extended example of program development, treatment of control, data representation, and programming style, the RETE pattern-match algorithm and how to exploit it for efficiency, a general discussion of production system architectures, a survey of applications, a comparison of related production-system languages, solved exercises, and much, much more. The authors are now correcting page proofs and making an index. Things seem to be on schedule. For those who can't wait until publication, copies of the page proofs are available from Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading, MA, 01867. ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 20 Feb 1985 08:45-EST From: mcc@Mitre-Bedford Subject: Polly Nomial I was both surprised and dismayed to find "The Adventures of Polly Nomial," which is a story about a rape, in AIList. It saddens me to realize that there are people who think there is something "humorous" about rape, no matter how clever the description. That this "gem" is still around proves that misogyny still is, too. mcc@MITRE-BEDFORD ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 85 12:35 MST From: May%pco@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: Polly Nomial is Offensive I am offended at the insensitivity of stories like this and ask the chairman to deny publication in the future. Whether it is talked about directly or disguised in a "cute" story, rape is a violent and cruel act by one human being against another. When it happens to someone you know, you begin to appreciate the horror of it all. Sexual fantasies can be fun (and healthy) but not when they are at the expense of another. Bob May ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 21 February 1985 13:18:22 EST From: Purvis.Jackson@cmu-cs-cad.arpa Subject: 2nd person plural I have noticed several posts on the AI-list bboard recently that address the use of alternative plural forms of the pronoun "you" in various socio-geographical segments of America. Specifically, I recall references to "y'all" and "youse". Growing up in South Carolina, I frequently heard the former; while living for the past 5 years in Pittsburgh, I have frequently heard the latter. For both of these forms, however, I have noticed 2 pronunciations. "Y'all" is often pronounced "yaw-ul" through the proper application of the South Carolina low country diphthong. "Youse" is sometimes pronounced "yooze" around Pittsburgh. None of these forms, however, seems to me to be as interesting as a form I often heard used in South Carolina low country "geechie" English, a mix of low country standard and gullah. In this strain, "you" becomes "yennuh" and is oftentimes barely distinguishable as a single word because it can be imbedded in phrases that are delivered with a rapidly rythmic tongue movement. Hence, the phrase sounds somewhat like one long word. An example, one that I recall quite clearly, was delivered by Mum Tweedie DeLee, a noted root doctor of Dorchester County whose practice of midwivery yielded me and three of my siblings. On the day of the particular utterance, I and several of Mum Tweedie's great-grand children were in the back dooryard of her shanty, poking sticks through a chicken wire fence at a goose, which would peck at the sticks, flap its wings, and hiss angrily, all of which provided for us a somewhat frightening source of squeeling glee. Several times, Mum Tweedie came out onto the stomp and warned us to stop picking at the goose. Each time we dropped our sticks and pretended to take up a new form of intertainment. On what must have been the fourth or fifth time on the stomp, Mum Tweedie charged down the steps and grabbed Yockey, one of the older boys, by the ear and damned near lifted him clear of the ground. With his attention focused fully on her, she bent over and placed her mouth close to his firmly pulled ear and shouted into it "Yennuhadduhbedduhmine" and then let loose his ear. She then proceeded to use our goose sticks on our backsides to ensure we had understood her point. After we had received our just punishment, cried for a spell, and were standing around sniffling, Mum Tweedie called us into the shanty. Once inside she gathered us around her where she could stroke our heads and soothe us with whispered words of love laced into further warning. "Yennuhadduhbedduhmine," she whispered, "Yennuhbedduh." Mum Tweedie lived to be 117 years old, by all estimates, and I have tried to follow her advice. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 18 Feb 85 10:06:46-PST From: Shawn Amirsardary Subject: amirsardarism [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Wow! Thanks Evan for making my contribution to the English language possible. Actually the amirsardarism phenomenon comes from having a sufficiently different set of 'cognitive' rules. Forward amirsardarism is the application of these rules in a forward chaining paradigm--and hence the necessary blurting out of irrelevent conclusions. While reverse-amirsardarism is the application in a reverse or backwards chaining paradigm. I do believe that reverse-amirsardarism is the worst of the two since the aforementioned rule set forms logically consistant conclusions in the reverse mode, which makes it hard to spot. While in the forward mode, the conclusions are sufficiently illogical to make for good sarcasm. --Shawn Forward-Amirsardary (Another application of forward-amirsardarism: All tykes on bikes should be offered 5 Dollars, then shot ) ------------------------------ Date: Wed 20 Feb 85 09:57:11-PST From: Dikran Karagueuzian Subject: Seminar - The Epistle Project (CLSI) [Forwarded from the Stanford CSLI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] THE EPISTLE PROJECT Martin Chodorow Yael Ravin IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Date: Friday, February 22 Time: 2 p.m. Place: Reading Room, Ventura Hall. This talk will be an overview of the EPISTLE natural language processing system, especially as applied to text-critiquing. The system has four major components: a text pre-processor, a dictionary, a parser and a set of style rules. We will describe two implementations that represent different approaches to parsing and will discuss the style component in detail. In the second part of the talk we will describe semi-automatic techniques for enhancing the semantic information contained in the dictionary. The results of this work will provide the foundation for additional applications in other areas, such as document abstracting or machine translation. ------------------------------ Date: 19 Feb 85 2133 PST From: EJS@SU-AI.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Use of Sound to Present Data (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] User System Ergonomics A human interface journal club and discussion group On Wednesday February 27th, 12:00 - 1:00 in Margaret Jacks Hall room 352 Stanford University Dr. Sara Bly from Xerox will speak: "Beyond Vision: Using Sounds in the Interface" This talk will focus on the use of sound to present data information. Multivariate, logarithmic, and time-varying data provide examples for aural representation. Experiments have shown that sound does convey information accurately and that sound can enhance graphic presentations. Methods will be discussed and examples given. Contact Ted Selker ejs@su-ai.arpa for information on USE. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 1985 16:25-EST From: Brad Goodman Subject: Seminar - A Logic of Knowledge and Belief (BBN) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] BBN Laboratories Artificial Intelligence Seminar Series Speaker: Dr. David Israel BBN Laboratories SRI International & CSLI Title: "A LOGIC OF KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF For Logically Omniscient Yuppies (and other extroverts)" Date: Friday, March 1, 1985, 10:30 a.m. Location: 3rd Floor Large Conference Room BBN Laboratories Inc. 10 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA Having done extensive research on the subject--to wit, having read the Newsweek cover story "The Year of the Yuppie"--I discovered that orthodox epistemic/doxastic logics had it all wrong. (I assume, of course, that such logics were meant to apply, inter alia, to Yuppies.) But the crucial problems lie not in the ascription of logical omniscience. Nay; it is in the attributions of (pale and sickly) introspection. Yuppies who worry too much about about inner states, their own or others', don't get to own BMW's. I shall offer this key demographic cohort an epistemic/doxastic logic smartly tailored to suit their needs. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 1985 09:50-EST From: Brad Goodman Subject: Seminar - Computing Conversational Implicature (BBN) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] BBN Laboratories Artificial Intelligence Seminar Series Speaker: Julia Hirschberg University of Pennsylvania Title: "Computing Conversational Implicature" Date: Tuesday, February 26, 1985, 10:30 a.m. Location: 3rd Floor Large Conference Room BBN Laboratories Inc. 10 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA Determining what an utterance conveys, beyond its semantic import, is an important issue in Natural Language Processing. Such research seeks to provide a principled basis for computational models of human behavior -- and so to support more natural computer-human interaction. To date, however, results have been limited by the lack of formal representations of nonconventional inferences and the consequent difficulty of constructing algorithms for their calculation. The work discussed examines one class of such inferences, scalar implicature, a type of Gricean generalized conversational implicature. It proposes a theory of scalar implicature based upon an analysis of naturally occurring data. A formal representation of scalar implicature is described as well as procedures for calculating licensed implicatures. An application to computer-human question-answering - now being implemented in Prolog - is discussed, as are other potential uses in Natural Language generation and understanding. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 85 1348 PST From: Terry Winograd Subject: Project Description - Cognitive Complexity (IBMSJ) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The Computer Science Department at IBM Research, San Jose, has a project which is developing the "cognitive complexity" theory of D. Kieras (formerly at U. of Arizona, now at U. of Michigan) and P. Polson (U. of Colorado). The theory is being applied to representation of the user "how to do it" knowledge implied by the particular design of, for example, an interactive text formatter. The technology K & P have developed is directed to representing user "how to do it" knowledge in production rules, representing the surface design of the application (with respect to what is seen by the user) as a generalized transition network, and then deriving some measures of complexity (related to the Card, Moran, and Newell work) for the design with respect to typical tasks. The idea is to be able to compare design proposals (with respect to the ease of learning and ease of use measures indicated by the theory) at early stages of the design process. [...] Anyone interested should contact John Bennett, bennett%ibm-sj@csnet-relay ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 27-FEB-1985 05:07 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a020307; 26 Feb 85 12:07 EST Date: Mon 25 Feb 1985 15:27-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #26 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Wed, 27 Feb 85 05:04 EST AIList Digest Tuesday, 26 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 26 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Wally, Bindings - General Research Corp., Publications - Request for Sources & TARGET AI Newsletter, AI Tools - YLISP & KayPro AI Languages, News - Recent Articles, Humor - EURISKO & Programming the User-Friendly Dog, Seminar - Motion Planning with Uncertainty (MIT) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sunday, 24-Feb-85 18:24:20-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Wally. There was some discussion recently in the Guardian newspaper here in the U.K. about the word `wally'. Does the word exist on the other side of the Atlantic (or elsewhere) and if so what meaning does it have? Gordon Joly gcj%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary College, Mile End Road, LONDON E1 4NS, UK. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 22 Feb 85 15:41:04-PST From: Rene Bach Subject: General Research Corp. pointer request Does someone know the address/phone number of the company ? They apparently have developed an expert system to tune a VAX VMS operating system we might be interested in using. It is build on TIMM and is called TUNER. Thanks for any info. Rene Bach, Varian Associates Bach@score ------------------------------ Date: 22 Feb 85 08:42:26 GMT (Friday) From: Martin Cooper Subject: Re: Slightly Depressed.... I certainly feel the same sense of deprivation, since as far as I'm concerned, all the seminars are on the wrong side of the Atlantic, and a very long way from the UK. I wonder if it would be possible for the existence of related papers and/or recordings to be mentioned along with the seminar announcements, or in a related message on this list. Martin. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 22 Feb 85 10:36:44-PST From: Ted Markowitz Subject: AI newsletter and request for recommendations I just received a flier from another AI newsletter called 'TARGET The AI Business Newletter'. In 1985 it promises Analysis of installed base of AI and standard machines used for symbolic processing. The market for natural language. AI in the micro marketplace. AAAI/IJCAI coverage. Outlook on venture capital and corporate funding. Price: $190/year Where: Target Technologies, 3000 Sand Hill Rd., Bldg 1, Suite 255 Menlo Park, CA 94025. --ted PS: Is there a consensus in the group for which of these 'digests' is really worth the several hundred bucks/yr.? I'd like to get my folks to order one, but I want to make sure it's worth something. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 85 13:23:02 -0200 From: jaakov%wisdom.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (Jacob Levy) Subject: YLISP available for FTP Hi! I am pleased to announce that YLISP is finally available for FTP from 'maryland.arpa' using user id 'ftp' and password 'anonymous'. The stuff is in directory YLISP (note capitals); There are 20 files in all to copy - 16 files containing the system, named FTP_Y.[1-16], a makefile a recursive copying program named 'copy' and 2 READ.ME files. Make sure that the receiving system has ~4500 K disk space on the file system you copy it to. Before trying to install the system, please read 'READ.ME.FTP' carefully. All bugs, complaints, requests and suggestions please mail to BITNET: jaakov@wisdom CSNET and ARPA: jaakov%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA UUCP: (if all else fails..) ..!decvax!humus!wisdom!jaakov POSTAL: Jacob Levy Dept of Applied Math, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 71600, ISRAEL PS - The system will be available on BITNET pretty soon also. Separate anouncement to BITNET users will follow. ------------------------------ Date: 22 Feb 1985 17:09:06 EST From: BASKEYFIELDM@USC-ISI.ARPA Subject: AI Info. I would like to know if anyone out there has an AI language that can be run on a KAYPRO 4/84 using the CP/M operating system? Recent articles: There is an interesting and introductory article article in the March 1985 issue of COMPUTERS AND ELECTRONICS, pp. 69-73, entitled "Expert Systems on Microcomputers." The article describes the very basics of decision-support systems and how AI fits in. The systems covered in the article are M.1 and M.1a (Teknolledge), Expert Ease (Expert Systems), and MVP-Forth (Mountain View Press). These three systems all run on the IBM PC/XT. In addition, there is an article "AI On A Chip" and another, "FORTH and AI" which prove interestign reading for new people in the AI field. Mark Baskeyfield Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA 93943 baskeyfieldm@usc-isia.arpa Thanks!! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 85 09:27:34 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Recent Articles Infoworld February 25, 1985 Page 5 Editorial 'The next big lemminglike rush will be to artificial intelligence. AI will be the most despised and abused [software concept] of the next year. So in a perverse way, AI is an exciting opportunity for people who recognize what it can do for customers.' Mitch Kapor, Chairman of Lotus Development Some people are avoiding the AI label due to AI-hype and Rube Goldberg overdesign. Microsoft's Bill Gates has used the term "softer software" instead of AI. This is for systems that will learn the user's work patterns and help execute them. For example, if a person dials up his mainframe, gets some data, does some spread sheet processing and generates some graphics pasting it into a report, the system should figure out that is his pattern and start doing it automatically. Furthermore it should handle a request on Friday like "generate the usual sales report but give me a separate graph on what is happening in Europe" Also software should determine which configuration a user has so he does not have to enter information as to what graphics card and printer he is using. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 25 Feb 85 10:48:43-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Recent Articles IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, February 1985: From Paper Drawings to Computer-Aided Design, by M. Karima, K. Sadhal, and T. McNeil of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, pp. 27-39: A survey of techniques and difficulties in automated optical entry of complex schematics and wiring diagrams. Thirty papers are referenced. An Overview of Analytic Solid Modeling, by M. Casale and E. Stanton of PDA Engineering, pp. 45-56: Describes a way of modeling complex shapes as composites of parametric curves and solids (e.g., swept or deformed regular solids). This seems to combine the volumetric simplicity of CSG representations with the flexibility of B-rep. Derivation of mass properties is very simple, although the "inverse problem" of determining whether a point is inside or outside a volume is a little complex. The ASM approach maintains a parametric coordinate system so that physical properties (e.g., temperature, stress, curvature, color) can be attached to each point on or in a solid. This makes the technique ideal for finite element analysis. Braintrain Seeks Educational Software from Independent Authors, p. 82: An example is shown of this company's iconic programming language for the ChipWits computer-graphics robots. Apparently it's a high-level flowchart language. The simulated robots can be pitted against various simulated environments. The game software is available for the Macintosh and Apple II. Badler Becomes Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE CG&A, p. 86: Norman Badler is interested in artificial intelligence, particularly as applied to simulation of human motion, so the magazine will no doubt continue its coverage of AI-related topics. High Technology, March 1985: Software Tools Speed Expert System Development, by P. Kinnucan, pp. 16-20: Describes commercially-available expert system shells, particularly KEE. Mentions KEE for frame-based representation and for forward chaining (as well as the usual backward chaining), ART for hypothetical and multiworld reasoning, and Insight for database access and low price ($95, but without the ability to use variables in rules). Also mentions M.1, LOOPS, TI's Personal Consultant, Arbie, IN-ATE, and REVEAL. Expert System Shells Boost A.I. Market, by M. Foley, p. 21: Further discussion of the same material. IntelliCorp: The Selling of Artificial Intelligence, by E. Linden, pp. 22-25: A two-page history and description of the company making KEE. Prospecting from the Skies, by G. Graff, pp. 49-56: Interesting discussion of the advances that can be expected soon in remote sensing >>without<< the use of AI (but with high-resolution multispectral data and sophisticated location- and time-specific analysis). Personal Robots Face Software Challenge, by M. Higgins, pp. 71-73: Describes the primitive state of personal-robot software. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 85 19:51:37 est From: Walter Hamscher Subject: EURISKO Seminar, Continued [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] TIME: 12 Noon DATE: Friday, February 22 PLACE: 8th Floor Playroom HOSTS: Michael Caine, Neil Singer, and Kenneth Pasch. REFRESHMENTS: t PLAUSIBLE POSITION GENERATION: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF EURISKO, PART II Blackstone Le Mot This talk was to be the second in a series describing the application of EURISKO, a discovery program, to non-traditional domains. In this case the domain was position generation, in which the program is given some knowledge of geometry, anatomy, and the first 37 pages of the Kama Sutra. The talk is canceled, however, because the slides have not yet been cleared with Dean McBay and the Ad Hoc Committee. Hence we instead skip to the third and final talk in this series: TARGET SELECTION: THE LAST ADVENTURE OF EURISKO, PART III Traditional strategic thinking, i.e. from Clausewitz to the present day, emphasises the need to bring maximum destructive force to bear on the enemy's armed forces and industrial centers to ensure a swift end to hostilities. Present day weapons systems have been characterized as "eggshells armed with hammers," suggesting that in the event of hostilities, targets must be swiftly chosen, in time-frames requiring automated response, to avoid the loss of precious megatonnage. In this experiment we used EURISKO to choose targets in simulated nuclear exchanges, with extremely exciting results. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 85 19:42:32 est From: Gary Cottrell Subject: Seminar - Programming the User-Friendly Dog SEMINAR Saturday, 23 February 1985 55 Cottage St. 9:00 p.m. Speaker Garrison W. Cottrell University of Cottage Street Department of Dog Science "Programming the User-Friendly Dog" A current hot research topic is building user-friendly interfaces to computer systems. One of the techniques of this work is to design so-called "habitable subsets" of natural language that in many cases allow the naive user to begin productively using the system with little instruction. In this work, we will show that these techniques, combined with results from connectionist dog modelling, can be transferred to the ever growing field of building user-friendly dogs. While the hardware in this case is an example of a VRISC (Very Reduced Instruction Set) computer, we will show that it is still possible to program easily-learned high level commands. Since it has been shown that in working with such machines, the user has to do much of the computation of appropriate command contexts (New Directions in Connectionist Dog Modelling, Cottrell 84), it is important to use English commands that make sense with respect to the intended effect. For example, many previous researchers have advocated the use of such commands as "Go on" (How to Live with Three Dobermans, Kester 84) or "Go play" (Being Mellow with Your Dog, Ose 73) to mean "Go lie down and quit bothering me." The obvious mismatch here between the intent and the usual meaning of "Go on" (i.e., continue) makes it difficult for new users of the system to adapt to the command language. A more ergonomically-designed command is "Scram." The command matches the intent, and "go" is saved for more appropriate contexts. The reasons for the present sad state of affairs in most dog programming systems can be traced to the use of outmoded command languages and archaic beliefs about the capacities of the dog. On the first point, many so called "experts" still advocate the use of "heel" to mean "walk beside me." In this case, there is a double mismatch: First with the hardware, which as everyone knows, has no heel; and second with the semantics of the English word "heel", which might better be used with respect to the male dog's behavior towards female dogs. The New Age dog programmer uses the much more natural command "Walk with Me." Addressing the second point, many dog programmers believe that they have accomplished much more than is possible with these crude machines. It has long been known to those on the forefront of this field (Larson, 84) that such baroque commands strings as: "Now, JellyBean, you stay here, I have to go to a party and you can't come. Be a good boy, JellyBean!" are actually interpreted by the machine as: "blah JellyBean blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah JellyBean," which is certainly not what the user intended. We will have a demonstration system at the talk employing our interface, including such useful commands as "Call the Elevator", "Wag your tail", and "Eat that dog food." ------------------------------ Date: 22 Feb 1985 16:10 EST (Fri) From: "Daniel S. Weld" Subject: Seminar - Motion Planning with Uncertainty (MIT) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] On Motion Planning with Uncertainty Michael Erdmann Robots must successfully plan and execute tasks in the presence of control and sensing uncertainty. Said differently, a robot must know both how to get to a goal and how to recognize success once it has gotten to the goal. I will present a backprojection algorithm that computes regions from which motions along particular commanded directions are guaranteed to successfully reach a goal. I will also discuss the issue of goal recognizability and the power of the backprojection approach in terms of the termination predicates required to recognize success. Tuesday, Feb. 26, 4 PM, 8th Floor Playroom ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 1-MAR-1985 05:10 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a016718; 1 Mar 85 2:02 EST Date: Thu 28 Feb 1985 21:58-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #27 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Fri, 1 Mar 85 05:05 EST AIList Digest Friday, 1 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 27 Today's Topics: AI Tools - XLISP & Unification & Rete Networks & DUCK, Applications - CAI & Commonsense Reasoning & Paradox, Representation - Analytic Solid Modeling, Bindings - General Research Corp., Correction - Webster service, Linguistics - Wally & Y'alls, Business - R&D Opportunity & Medicomp AI/DB System, Seminars - Direct Manipulation Interfaces (CMU) & Counterfactuals (SU) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 85 15:56:24 EST From: David_Michael_Fobare%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: XLISP Questions I am working on a version of LISP called XLISP and am wondering if anyone else has worked with it. In particular I am having trouble with the 'Object', 'Class', and 'Keymap' primitives. What are instance variables? Class variables? Thanks. David Fobare ------------------------------ Date: Tue 26 Feb 85 10:20:30-MST From: Pete Tinker Subject: Production Systems/Unification Are there any production systems (backward- or forward-chaining) which use unification rather than simple pattern matches to bind variables? -Pete Tinker (TINKER@UTAH-20) ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 85 12:49:42 PST (Wed) From: Don Rose Subject: rete networks Hello everyone - I am currently familiarizing myself with the subject of rete networks (esp. with regards to a possible synthesis with current data-dependency frameworks for truth maintenance); if anyone can point the way to relevant/interesting articles along these lines (or just on rete networks alone), I would appreciate your help. Thanks --Donald Rose drose@uci-icse ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 17:57:23 PST From: Koenraad Lecot Subject: DUCK Can anybody provide me with references to the DUCK language? I know Smart Systems Technologies is selling DUCK but I imagine they'll charge for manuals (smart). Thanks in advance, -- Koenraad Lecot ARPA: koen@ucla-cs.arpa UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,randvax,sdcrdcf,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!koen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 15:09:44 est From: Deepak Kumar Subject: Info wanted - Expert Systems for CAI I'm taking a course on AI in Medicine where in I have decided to present a seminar on Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction for Medical Diagnosis. I want to emphasize use of already- existing Expert Systems for CAI applications. After all, when the knowledge is there, it can be utilized for purposes other than advising and decision making. If there are any references or materials on the above domain I'd like to have it. It need not be specifically to the area of Medicine. So, if anyone has made any attempts on using Expert Systems in Education, I'd like to get some experiences that I can share with my audience. Thanx. Deepak Kumar (Dept. of CS, SUNY at Buffalo) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 17:16:42 est From: arora@buffalo (Kulbir S. Arora) Subject: Request for bibliography Is there a bibliography available on Common-sense reasoning systems (qualitative reasoning, mental models) ? Kulbir Arora ------------------------------ Date: 27 Feb 1985 1559-PST (Wednesday) From: Eugene Miya Subject: info requested -- paradox Newsgroups: net.ai Distribution: net This is for someone else. Send replies to me. Does anybody have pointers to structures and techniques for dealing with paradox or apparent contradiction [e.g., light is a wave, light is a particle]? one suggestion made was to use analogy, but we have a copy of the "analogy considered harmful" paper by some people at parc. thanks in advance. --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,vortex}!ames!aurora!eugene emiya@ames-vmsb.ARPA p.s. usenet responses turned up one ref to work at mit on contradiction. ------------------------------ Date: 26 February 1985 23:16-EST From: John G. Aspinall Subject: Recent Article - representation of solids In a recent AI digest, I noticed this summary of a paper from IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, February 1985: From: Ken Laws An Overview of Analytic Solid Modeling, by M. Casale and E. Stanton of PDA Engineering, pp. 45-56: Describes a way of modeling complex shapes as ... I'm very interested by these sorts of systems, and have been working with splines for some time now, so I was quite interested in the paper. If any reader has deeper knowledge of the system described I would appreciate some enlightenment about a query of mine. I have read the paper thoroughly, and I don't think it answers this. One thing I did not understand was the following: They made a big deal out of the necessity to represent circles (surfaces of rotation, holes, cylinders, etc.) which I agree with -- a round object is easily produced in many ways in the real world (lathes, drills, etc.). But there is no way to exactly represent a circle as a polynomial of a parametric variable. That is if x = P(u) and y = Q(u), where P and Q are polynomials, there is no way to let x^2 + y^2 = r^2 (a constant, independent of u) except the trivial point solution x = constant, y = constant. So how do they represent circles? Possibility 1: they represent them approximately with splines. Problem: suppose you want to model another cylinder rotating in that hole. It's quite conceivable that the clearances involved might be 10^-3 or less of the diameter. That implies an awful lot of spline-knots. Possibility 2: Circles (and by extension, cylinders etc.) exist as exact entities in their system. Problem: how do you join that to a spline solid, for instance when you put a hole in something? If you have any ideas about this, I'd be very interested in hearing them. Many thanks for any light you might shed. Oh yes, please reply to me directly. John Aspinall. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 27 Feb 85 14:36:52-CST From: CMP.BARC@UTEXAS-20.ARPA Subject: General Research Corp. Query General Research has two locations: P.O. Box 6770 7655 Old Springhouse Road Santa Barbara, CA 93160-6770 McLean, VA 22102 (805) 964-7724 (703) 893-5915 TWX-TELEX 910-334-1193 Dallas Webster ------------------------------ Date: Thu 28 Feb 85 15:22:16-PST From: David Roode Subject: Webster service In Volume 3 issues 17 and 23 of this digest, mention was made of an experimental service being developed here at SRI-NIC. The articles gave the false impression that this was a generally available, production service. This is in fact not the case. We have to iron out several issues before the service can be made public, and an announcement will be made when and if the online dictionary is available. [My apologies for picking up the Rutgers bboard announcement and help file for the WEBSTER program without checking into the program's availability. It seems there may be copyright or related issues in addition to software-related ones. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 13:16:03 EST From: Pete Bradford (CSD UK) Subject: Re: Wally As a `Brit', now resident in the US for some 3 years, and an avid fan of the `Grauniad' newspaper, let me try to answer Gordon Joly's question. To the best of my knowledge the word `wally' does NOT exist in the United States. It app- ears in Websters Dictionary as a Scottish word meaning `fine, splendid, or sturdy', a long way from its modern day British use! There is also a word `wallydraigle', or `wallydrag'(!), also Scottish, which means `a feeble, undergrown or slovenly creature', perhaps a lot closer to the `wally' we all know -- at least, ONE of the meanings we know! The nearest equivalents to `wally' over here, in the sense of a stupid or foolish person, are `jerk',or `nerd'. As for the other meanings, well, the one meaning that which you would buy in a Fish and Chip shop is a `dill pickle', or just plain `pickle'. The other meaning, ie an organ which I, along with approximately half the human race, possess, is covered by as many terms in the US as it is in the UK - but NOT wally. Hope this helps! PJB ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 85 13:43:58 est From: "Thomas E. Schutz" Subject: Y'alls Some people in Richmond, Virginia have evolved their own forms for the singular and plural "you" : Singular - "y'all" Plural - "y'alls" I discovered this while visiting Richmond over summer vacation. A native of the town addressed me as "y'all"; perplexed, I turned around but did not see anyone else standing there. Later on I overheard the word "y'alls," and then everything fell into place. - Tom Schutz ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 85 16:04 EST From: White@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: R&D Opportunity An announcement will soon appear (estimated 7 - 14 March 85) in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD) advertizing a research and development (R&D) program to be undertaken by the Rome Air Development Center (RADC). This advertisement will be in the form of a Program Research and Development Announcement (PRDA) which is a notice which provides information about RADC's interest in R&D in a specific area where the method for achieving the goal is not evident. This particular PRDA will contain many different areas of interest. Some will be of interest to the AI community such as the application of AI technology in software development environments. The notice you are now reading is not a solicitation and is merely a "heads up" to encourage participation. Responses and/or communications are not to be directed to the address appearing on this notice and should be made in accordance with directions contained in the CBD announcement. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 85 05:50:10 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Medicomp AI/DB System Electronics Week February 18, 1985 Page 59 Medicomp of Virginia Inc. is now selling a combination medical records /artificial intelligence system. The system runs on an IBM Series/1 minicomputer with a dabase covering 3000 diseases, 1000 symptoms and 1000 medical tests. The system had its first sale to Cleveland Clinic. They purchased it when it solved a baffling case of infectious endocarditis. It costs $55,000. They have been maintaining a free telephone hookup to the system for demonstration purposes. ------------------------------ Date: 25 February 1985 1351-EST From: Jeff Shrager@CMU-CS-A Subject: Seminar - Direct Manipulation Interfaces (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Artificial Intelligence Lecture Series COGNITIVE ENGINEERING of DIRECT MANIPULATION INTERFACES Don Norman Institute for Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego La Jolla CA 92093 2:00 PM, Friday, March 1 Westinghouse R & D Center Auditorium - Bldg 401 Abstract To program by Direct Manipulation is to program by connecting together data streams, drawing the interconnections on the screen and letting the resulting diagram be the program. Direct Manipulation is made possible by the combination of object-oriented programming languages (as available on Lisp machines), high-resolution bit-mapped graphics, and pointing devices. It promises superior performance for that class of problems that can be characterized in this manner. It allows concentration upon the semantics of the task rather than the structure of the programming language. At least, so goes the rhetoric. Examination of the nature of Direct Manipulation leads naturally to an examination of the major issues in interface design. It turns out that one of the major virtues of Direct Manipulation is the feeling of control that it produces, the feeling of directly manipulating the computational objects one cares about. This feeling depends as much upon the skill of the user as the nature of the interface. We meet the Gulfs of Execution and of Evaluation, gulfs that Direct Manipulation interfaces promise to bridge more readily than conventional interfaces. Will Direct manipulation Interfaces live up to their promise? Yes and no. Directions Head east on the parkway, I-376, to the Churchill exit (13). As you come off, keep bearing right for a few hundred yards to the first traffic light. Proceed straight through it, across Beulah Road, and up the R&D entrance road where the guard will point out visitors parking and reception. You don't need to call in advance; there will be a few technicians to escort visitors to the auditorium. In addition to the Westinghouse talk, Don Norman will be speaking in the Psychology Colloquium Series this Thursday, Feb 28, at 4:00 in the Adamson Wing (BH). The talk is entitled: "From slips and mistakes to a theory of action". ------------------------------ Date: Tue 26 Feb 85 09:39:50-PST From: Paula Edmisten Subject: Seminar - Counterfactuals (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] DATE: Friday, March 1, 1985 LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical and Organic Chemistry TIME: 12:05 SPEAKER: Matthew Ginsberg, Computer Science Department and Heuristic Programming Project, Stanford University ABSTRACT: COUNTERFACTUALS Counterfactuals are a form of commonsense non-montonic inference that has been of long-term interest to philosophers. In this paper, we begin by describing some of the impact counterfactuals can be expected to have in artificial intelligence, and by reviewing briefly some of the philosophical conclusions which have been drawn about them. Philosophers have noted that the content of any particular counterfactual is in part context-dependent; we present a formal description of counterfactuals that allows us to encode this context-dependent information clearly in the choice of a sublanguage of the logical language in which we are working. Having made this choice, we show that our description of counterfactuals is formally identical to the accepted "possible worlds" interpretation due to David Lewis. Finally, we examine the application of our ideas in the domain of automated diagnosis of hardware faults. Paula ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 4-MAR-1985 22:54 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a005933; 4 Mar 85 2:58 EST Date: Sun 3 Mar 1985 22:34-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #28 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Mon, 4 Mar 85 22:41 EST AIList Digest Monday, 4 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 28 Today's Topics: Knowledge Representation - Attribution of Characteristics & RETE Algorithm & Commonsense and Qualitative Reasoning, AI Tools - KEE Unification & XLISP, Seminar Summary - Representational Cognitive Modeling (CSLI), Seminars - Varieties of Phenomenology (UCB) & Prolog, Databases, and Natural Language Access (SU) & Connectionist Inference Architecture (CMU) & Animating Programs Using Smalltalk (GE) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1 Mar 85 07:50:00 EST From: bogner@ari-hq1 Reply-to: Subject: ATTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERISTICS I AM COLLECTING DATA FOR A KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION MODEL, ON THE ATTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERISTICS TO INDIVIDUALS USING A MODIFICATION OF GEORGE KELLY'S REP GRID. I AM DEVELOPING AN ARGUMENT AGAINST ATTRIBUTION ALONG BIPOLAR DIMENSIONS (BOUNDED BY ANTONYMS). IS ANYONE ELSE ADDRESSING THAT OR A SIMILAR QUESTION??? I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE LISTINGS OF ANY RELATED CONFERENCES, MEETINGS, TUTORIALS, . . . SUE ------------------------------ Date: 1 Mar 1985 9:08:28 EST (Friday) From: Karl Schwamb Subject: RETE Algorithm This is in replay to Don Rose's message to the AIList (V 3, N 27). The two references below are an excellent place to start learning about the RETE algorithm: C. L. Forgy, "Rete: A Fast Algorithm for the Many Pattern/Many Object Pattern Match Problem," in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (V 19, N 1). C. L. Forgy, On the efficient implementation of production systems, Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie-Mellon Univ., 1979. Hope this helps! ...Karl ------------------------------ Date: 1 Mar 85 08:20 PST From: Bobrow.pa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Commonsense Reasoning From: arora@buffalo (Kulbir S. Arora) Subject: Request for bibliography Is there a bibliography available on Common-sense reasoning systems (qualitative reasoning, mental models) ? Kulbir Arora Volume 24 of the AI Journal was devoted to Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems, and is now avalailable as a book from MIT Press. danny bobrow ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 85 17:12 EST From: Paul Fishwick Subject: Qualitative Reasoning As to the request for a bibiliography for qualitative reasoning, I suggest reviewing the following 2 references: 1) "Mental Models", edited by Gentner, Dedre and Stevens, Albert, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey 1983. 2) Special Issue of the Artificial Intelligence Journal: Volume 24, numbers 1-3, December 1984. They contain a number of very good papers in addition to further references for more specific topics within QR. -paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun 3 Mar 85 08:49:32-PST From: Richard Fikes Subject: Rule Systems Using Unification Regarding your query about production rule systems and unification -- The rule system in IntelliCorp's KEE system (Release 2.0) uses full unification to match rules to goals, subgoals, and items retrieved from the knowledge base. It has both a forward chainer and a backward chainer. richard fikes (FIKES@USC-ECL) ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 1 Mar 1985 06:37:27-PST From: minow%rex.DEC@decwrl.ARPA Subject: XLISP Re: XLISP question in AIList V3.27 There is an article on XLISP in the March 85 Byte magazine. Also, the recent USENET distribution of XLISP mentioned that the author, Dave Betz, can be reached as "harvard!betz". I don't know the USENET path to harvard, nor do I know if betz@harvard.arpa would work. Dave's a good guy, please don't bother him with questions if you haven't read the article (and the code/documentation/examples). Martin Minow minow%rex.dec@decwrl.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 1 Mar 1985 1656 PST From: Larry Carroll Reply-to: LARRY@JPL-VLSI.ARPA Subject: XLISP The latest Byte (March '85) has an article by the author of XLISP, David Betz. It includes a fairly clear explanation of the concepts you're having trouble with and some examples. Larry @ jpl-vlsi ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 85 18:28:31 PST From: Richard K. Jennings Subject: XLISP 1.4 The current issue of Byte (March 85) has an excellent article on XLISP by its creator David Betz. In it he mentions version 1.4 which is supposed to be similar to Common Lisp. Anybody know where a copy can be obtained? Rich. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Mar 85 16:00:23 PST From: Richard K. Jennings Subject: XLISP I am in the process of getting the newest version of XLISP to run on an IBM-PC-AT/DOS 3.0/Computer Innovations ver 2.1/ big-dos2-soft model. The source is available at HARVARD, which accepts an anonymous login. In order to get the thing to recompile (almost 1 hr), some changes had to be made, described below. Although I have just started to test it out, any obvious mistakes I may have made I would appreciate hearing about from an observant reader. [XLISP ver 1.4 is a public domain version of a COMMON LISP, new with version 1.4, which was authored and maintained by David Betz] [The source is 170K, .EXE is 70K, and the manual is 30p] [Also see March 85 BYTE for an article by Betz on XLISP] Changes: 1) NIL => 0 from (NODE *) 0 2) deleted references to xlintern() 3) used standard unix "setjmp.h" (bsd 4.1) 4) used a dummy "ctype.h" The file available on HARVARD is a shell file. Since I am not running under unix, I had to kludge my own decommutator which I can send upon request. Richard K Jennings AF Sat Cntl Fac 408 744-6427 av: 799-6427 arpa: jennings@aerospace afscf.xrp@hq-afsc ------------------------------ Date: Thu 21 Feb 85 14:50:16-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar Summary - Representational Cognitive Modeling (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] SUMMARY OF F4 MEETING At the meeting of project F4 on February 11, Bob Moore presented arguments for the representational approach to designing AI systems and modelling mental activities in humans. Moore first noted the relative ease with which a human can acquire individual beliefs without disturbing very much of the rest of his mental state. This supports the idea that distinct beliefs ought to be embodied more-or-less individually, since acquiring a new belief does not seem to require wholesale reorganization of one's mental state. Moore went on to argue that the combinatorial structure of what can be believed suggests a similar combinatorial structure to how it is believed. The idea is that the combinatorial structure of the sentences used to characterize belief states does not serve merely to distinguish one belief state from another; there are regularities in behavior that depend on that structure. For instance, having a belief of the form ``if not P, then Q'' is associated with behavior appropriate to Q's being true when evidence of P's being false is presented, but not necessarily with behavior appropriate to P's being true when evidence of Q's being false is presented, even though ``if not P, then Q'' and ``if not Q, then P'' are equivalent under most interpretations of the conditional. The fact that this and many other structural distinctions in sentences used to classify belief states correspond to systematic distinctions in behavior presents a prima facie case that the belief states themselves are similarly structured. But, Moore argued, under a conception of representation sufficiently abstract to cover the kinds of ``representation'' actually used in computational models of mental states, the claim that mental states involve ``syntactic'' representations--a language of thought--probably comes to no more than this. Moore concluded by noting that none of these arguments bear on the question of whether the language of thought is distinct from natural language, but that empirical considerations, such as the indexicality of natural language and the difficulty of stating principles of reasoning that apply directly to natural language, suggest that the two are distinct. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Feb 85 16:15:29 pst From: chertok%ucbkim@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Varieties of Phenomenology (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Spring 1985 Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B TIME: Tuesday, March 5, 11 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center (followed by) DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 2 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: Hubert Dreyfus, Department of Philosophy, UC Berkeley TITLE: ``Varieties of Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty'' A tutorial review of the three most important accounts of intentionality in recent continental philosophy, with emphasis on their relevance to current theories of mental representation. Edmund Husserl begins the phenomenological concern with inten- tionality. In his earlier work, The LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS, he holds a view similar to Searle's that intentional content type individuates mental acts. Later, in IDEAS, he changes to a posi- tion, which he calls ``cognitive science,'' in which mental representations are held to be hierarchies of strict rules, involved in all intelligent activity. I take this to be an early version of the computational view of the mind. Husserl's account leads to two important counter-views. Martin Heidegger in BEING AND TIME argues that intentional states do not play the central role in intelligent behavior Husserl sup- posed, and that even in those cases where intentional states are involved their intentional content can not be treated as abstract structures. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, like Heidegger, argues for a primitive form of intentionality which does not involve mental representation, but whereas Heidegger is primarily interested in an account of action and its social setting, Merleau-Ponty bases his critique on a phenomenology of perception and bodily skills. Together, Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's work constitutes the most powerful critique of cognitivism so far offered. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 28 Feb 85 09:51:18-PST From: Gio Wiederhold Subject: Seminar - PROLOG, DATABASES, AND NATURAL LANGUAGE ACCESS (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] CS 300 -- Computer Science Department Colloquium -- Winter 1984-1985. Tuesday, March 5, 1985 at 4:15 in Terman Auditorium PROLOG, DATABASES, AND NATURAL LANGUAGE ACCESS David H.D. WARREN Quintus Computer Systems, Inc. PROLOG is a general purpose programming language based on logic. It can be viewed either as an extension of pure LISP, or as an extension of a relational database query language. It was first conceived in 1972, by Alain Colmerauer at the University of Marseille. Since then, it has been used in a wide variety of applications, including natural language processing, algebraic symbol manipulation, compiler writing, architectural design, VLSI circuit design, and expert systems. PROLOG was chosen as the initial kernel language for Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Systems project, and the project's prototype Prolog machine, PSI, has recently been unveiled in Tokyo. In this talk, I will give an overview of the language, and then focus on one particular application, a domain-independent system for natural language question answering, called "CHAT". I will compare the way Chat plans and executes a query with the query optimization strategies of relational database systems such as SYSTEM-R. Finally I will discuss the future prospects for PROLOG in the light of Japan's Fifth Generation project, and describe the high-performance PROLOG systems for the SUN and VAX available from Quintus. ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 1 March 1985 15:56:29 EST From: Steven.Shafer@cmu-cs-ius.arpa Subject: Seminar - Connectionist Inference Architecture (CMU) AI SEMINAR Symbols Among the Neurons: Details of a Connectionist Inference Architecture Dave Touretzky, CMU Tuesday, March 5, 3:00 pm in WeH 5409 Pattern matching and variable binding are easily implemented in conventional computer architectures, but not necessarily in all architectures. In a distributed neural network architecture each symbol is represented by activity in many units and each unit contributes to the representation of many symbols. Manipulating symbols using this type of representation is not as easy as with a local representation where each unit denotes one symbol, but there is evidence that the distributed approach is the one chosen by nature. In this talk I will describe work I am doing with Geoff Hinton on production system interpreters implemented in neural networks using distributed representations for both symbols and rules. The research provides an account of two important symbolic reasoning operations, pattern matching and variable binding, as emergent properties of collections of neuron-like elements. The success of our production system implementations goes some way towards answering a common criticism of connectionist theories: that they aren't powerful enough to do symbolic reasoning. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 85 15:13:02 EST From: coopercc@GE-CRD Subject: Seminar - Animating Programs Using Smalltalk (GE) Computer Science Seminar General Electric R & D Center Schenectady, N.Y. Animating Programs Using Smalltalk Ralph L. London Tektronix, Inc. Friday, March 15 1:30 PM, Bldg. K1, Conf. Rm. 2 (Refreshments at 1:15) ABSTRACT: We discuss our work in program animation using the Smalltalk programming environment. We strive to isolate the graphical viewing structure from the code of the algorithm being animated. In addition to "procedure calls" this is achieved through a refinement of the Smalltalk Model-View-Controller construct and view dependency mechanism, which allows the algorithm code to broadcast interesting events and supports the insertion of probes into active values. Multiple, dif- ferent views of a single object are easily achieved. There are connections between interesting events and invariant assertions. Further efforts were made to ensure smoothness of motion and transitions between states. A number of particular animations, the evolu- tion of an animation, and directions for further research are included. We plan to show a videotape. Notice to Non-GE attendees: It is necessary that we ask you to notify Marion White (518-385-8370 or WHITEMM@GE-CRD) at least two days in advance of the seminar. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 4-MAR-1985 05:42 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a006525; 4 Mar 85 4:36 EST Date: Sun 3 Mar 1985 23:06-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #29 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Mon, 4 Mar 85 05:37 EST AIList Digest Monday, 4 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 29 Today's Topics: News - Recent Articles and Rutgers Reports, Information Science - Xerox NoteCards, Humor - Kurzweill Reader & Analysis of AIList Contents, Conferences - AI in Engineering & Theoretical Issues in Conceptual Information Processing & Southern California AI Society ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1 Mar 1985 13:32-EST From: Leff@laurence, 300C%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa, Subject: Articles in the Applied Intelligence Reporter Applied Intelligence Reporter Volume 2 No 3/4 (some material omitted as it is a repeat of stuff I reported earlier) Robots in the Workplace: Summary of material from James S. Albus work on robotics. An ad from Scientific Data Link 850 Third Avenue, New York NY 10022 (212) 838-7200 for various microfiche copies of technical reports on artificial intelligence from MIT 1-513 450 fiche $2100.00 Rutgers 230 reports 264 fiche $1395 SRI 285 reports $1800 Carnegie Mellon 600 papers Part I $2050, Part II $2150 Parts I and II $4000 Stanford 500 fiche $2425 Purdue (Pattern Recognition and Image Processing) 145 reports $1365 Maryland (Computer Vision) 313 reports $1750 Overview of Computer Vision Tutorial on Lisp Iterative structures Expert Systems for Executives AI entering world of art (talks about computer graphics applications to art) Russel H. Petersen is vice-president of marketing for Synthetic Vision Systems Kurzweill announced a chip to recognize human speech. This is part of an effort to build a voice-typewriter. FMC established an artificial intelligence center in Santa Clara California. Synthetic Vision Systems was formed to sell technology to inspect and validate the manufacture of semiconductor products. AI companies are forming in the following states in descending order by employment level: California, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey and Texas Technical Reports from Rutgers University CBM-TR-139 Localization Problems and Expert Systems Allen Ginsberg (discusses expert systems that handle localization problems as opposed to classification systems such as disease diagnosis) CBM-TR-145 "Shift of Bias for Inductive Concept Learning" Paul E. Utgoff. $15.00 LCSR-TR-60 "Artificial Intellligence and The Social Sciences: A Preliminary Report" Saul Amarel LCSR-TR-61 "Knowledge Representation as the Basis for Requirements" A. Borgida, S. Greenspan and J. Mylopoulous LCSR-TR-62 "Introduction to the Comtex Microfiche Edition of the Rutgers University Artificial Intelligence Research Reports" S. Amarel LCSR-TR-64 "Leap: A Learning Apprentice for VLSI Design" T. M. Mitchell, S. Mahadevan and L. I. Sternberg LCSR-TR-65 "A Knowledge-Base Approach to Design", T. M. Mitchell, L. I. Steinberg and J. S. Shulman (primarily concerned with VLSI design issues) LCSR-TR-66 "Verification-Based Learning: A Generalization Strategy for Inferring Problem-Decomposition methods" S. Mahadaven. Artificial Intelligence Reporter December-January 1985 Conference Announcements The International Federation of Automatic Control conference on Artificial Intelligence in Economics and Management Robotics International of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Second Annual Robotic End Effector: Design and Applications Seminar on March 19, 1985 at the Holiday Inn Livonia (detroit) IEEE Computer Society on Robotics and Automation on March 25-28 1985 in ST. Louis, Missouri AT&T Bell Laboratories: Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Statistics AT&T Conference Center in Princeton NJ on Apr 15-16, 1985 Association Francaise d'Intelligence Artificielle et Systems de Simulation in association with the Society of Manufactuirng Engineers will present Intelligencia 85 at the Parc des Expositions, Porte de Versailles, Paris May 21-24 1985 Robotics International of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Robots 9 at Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan on June 3-6 1985 IEEE Comptuter Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, San Francisco June 9-13 1985 Robotics International of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers will sponsor the 34d Canadian CAD/CAM and Robotics Exposition and Conference at the International Society IEEE Computer Society seminar on Logic Programming in Boston, Massachusetts The Institute for Computer Engineering Research in cooperation with the Intelligent Computer Systems Research Institute of the University of Miami is presenting ARTELL 85 at the Philadelphia Civic Center on November 4-7 1985 The Computer and Automated Systems Asssociation of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (CASA/SME) are holding Mechatronics/Autofact Japan 85 at the New Osaka Fairgrounds in Osaka, Japan November 25-28 1985 Also an article urging cooperation between OR and AI. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Mar 85 17:41 PST From: Halasz.pa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Information on Xerox NoteCards This description of the Xerox NoteCards system is a response to inquiries that have recently appeared on several Arpanet discussion lists. A. Background: NoteCards is part of an ongoing research project in the Intelligent Systems Lab at Xerox PARC investigating "idea processing" tasks, such as interpreting textual information, structuring ideas, formulating arguments, and authoring complex documents. The NoteCards system provides an on-line environment for carrying out this research. The principal reasearchers involved in this project are Frank Halasz, Tom Moran, and Randy Trigg. NoteCards is implemented in Interlisp-D and runs on the Xerox 1108 family of Lisp processors. B. The System: NoteCards is intended primarily as an idea structuring tool, but it can also be used as a fairly general database system for loosely structured information. The basic object in NoteCards is an electronic note card containing an idea-sized unit of text, graphics, images, or whatever. Different kinds of note cards are defined in an inheritance hierarchy of note card types (e.g., text cards, sketch cards, query cards, etc.). On the screen, multiple cards can be simultaneously displayed, each one in a separate window having an underlying editor appropriate to the card type. Individual note cards can be connected to other note cards by arbitrarily typed links, forming networks of related cards. At present, link types are simply labels attached to each link. It is up to each user to utilize the link types to organize the note card network. Within a note card, a link is represented by a small, active icon. Clicking with the mouse in the icon, retrieves the target card and displays it on the screen. NoteCards includes a filing mechanism built around a special type of card called a FileBox. In each FileBox are filed (i.e., linked by a Filing link) zero or more note cards as well as zero or more other FileBoxes. FileBoxes serve as a kind of categorization hierarchy for filing note cards by "topics". Browser cards contain node-link diagrams (i.e., maps) of arbitrary pieces of the note card network. Each node in a Browser's node-link diagram is an active icon that can be used to retrieve the indicated card. Spatially organized information is also available in the form of Sketch cards that allow the user to lay out line drawings, text, and link icons in an arbitrary, zoomable 2-D space. NoteCards is an environment that integrates several packages already available in the Interlisp-D system, e.g., TEdit, Grapher, and Sketch. NoteCards has a full programmer's interface. All of the functionality in NoteCards is accessible through a set of well-documented Lisp functions, allowing the user to create new types of note cards, develop programs that monitor or process the note card network, and/or integrate new Interlisp packages into the NoteCards environment. C. Research directions: NoteCards was designed primarily as a research vehicle. The following are some of the research topics that we are pursuing using the NoteCards system. 1) User tailorability -- a system description language that a non-programming user could edit in order to tailor the system to his or her task and/or interaction style. 2) Argumentation -- use of a "truth-maintenance" mechanism to help users develop and manipulate alternative argument structures. 3) Psychological issues -- investigations of the ways in which NoteCards does or does not support real-world tasks. 4) Visual summaries of large networks -- investigations of other ways to display network maps, including fish-eye graphs, trimmed graphs, 3D graphs, indented outline, etc. 5) Multi-window management -- investigations of various abstractions for building general multi-window management tools that take advantage of inter-card dependencies. 6) Querying networks of cards -- design of a querying interfaces that allow users to ask questions about the contents and structure of a network. 7) Multiple user, interlinked NoteFiles -- providing distributed/shared NoteFiles with links between different NoteFiles. 8) Alternative documents -- explore alternative document concepts, such as guided tours (i.e., suggested paths through a network of cards). 9) Text retrieval -- investigate several methods for doing text retrieval based on full-text search and statistical matching. 10) Object-oriented implementation -- we are investigating the possibility of rewriting NoteCards in Loops. D. How to get more info: A technical paper on Notecards is in progress. For information about the research issues surrounding NoteCards contact Halasz.pa@Xerox or Trigg.pa@Xerox. NoteCards is not at this time a Xerox product. However, Xerox Special Information System's Vista Laboratories offers a limited licensing agreement aimed at distributing NoteCards to groups doing related research (Contact: NoteCardsInfo.pasa@Xerox) ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 27-Feb-85 10:22:14-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Humour Re: Kurzweil Data Entry Machine (Vol 3 # 10 and others) Can this machine read bewteen the lines ? Gordon Joly gcj%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Fri 1 Mar 85 08:58:01-MST From: Stan Shebs Subject: Analysis(?) of AIList Contents Yesterday I culled through 1 1/2 years worth of saved and printed AIList digests (about 3 inches thick). The result was about 1/2 inch of individual articles that are still of interest (mostly seminar notices with abstracts) - about 16% of the original saved stuff. Since I only printed out about 30% of the digests that actually came by (the ones that were interesting when I read them), this works out to approximately 5% of the total volume. This is in accordance with the general rule that "9x% of everything is b*llsh*t". So AIList is really not so bad, and the experimental technique has been corroborated :-) stan shebs ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 18 February 1985 05:53:59 EST From: Duvvuru.Sriram@cmu-ri-cive.arpa Subject: Conference on AI in Engg. CALL FOR PAPERS FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ENGINEERING PROBLEMS (AIEP) The purpose of this conference is to provide a forum for engineers all over the world to present their work on the applications of artificial intelligence to engineering problems. The conference will be held from April 15-18 1986 at Southampton University, England and will be preceeded by tutorials in Expert systems and Robotics. CONFERENCE THEMES The following topics are suggested and other related areas will be considered. - Computer-aided design - Computer-based training - Planning and Scheduling - Constraint Management - Intelligent Tutors - Expert systems - Knowledge representation - Learning - Natural language applications - Cognitive modelling of engineering problems - Robotics - Database interfaces - Graphical interfaces - Knowledge-based simulation - Design Modelling CALL FOR PAPERS Authors are invited to submit three copies of a 500 word abstract. The abstract should have enough details to permit careful evaluation by a committee consisting of renowed experts in the field. The abstracts should be accompained with the following details: - Authors' address, name, affliation. Indicate the person to address all correspondence. - The branch of engineering. If the paper addresses engineering in general, then should be categorized under GENERAL DESIGN. - The topic area. TIME TABLE Submission of Abstracts: June 1st 1985 Notification of acceptance: August 1st 1985 Submission of Full Paper: November 1st 1985 INFORMATION All abstracts should be sent to: Dr. R. Adey, General Chairman, AIEP Computational Mechanics Centre Ashurst Lodge Southampton S04 2AA England Inquires about exhibits, registration should be addressed to: Ms Elaine Taylor Computational Mechanics Centre Ashurst Lodge Southampton S04 2AA England For more information in US contact: D. Sriram, Technical Chairman AIEP Civil Engineering and Construction Robotics Laboratories Department of Civil Engineering Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 sriram@cmu-ri-cive.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Feb 85 13:13:12 EST From: Chris Riesbeck Subject: Workshop - Theoretical Issues in Conceptual Information Processing *** Call for participants *** The Second Annual Workshop on Theoretical Issues in Conceptual Information Processing May 2-3, 1985 The Peabody Museum of Natural History Yale University New Haven, CT This year's workshop will focus on new research into memory-based models of planning, reasoning, natural language processing, learning, and other issues in conceptual information processing. The format will mix panels and papers, with ample time for discussion and debate. We hope to foster inter-laboratory interaction, with a session devoted to "What we're going to do, we think," including research plans from as many centers as possible. Prospective speakers and panel leaders should contact Chris Riesbeck immediately, and also submit, via mail or netmail, a 2 - 10 page write-up, for distribution at the workshop, addressing the following questions, if appropriate: What specific domains, tasks, and examples will your laboratory be investigating in the next few years? What theoretical questions are involved? How does this research fit in the overall picture? How does it follow from previous research? What related topics are you NOT addressing? Submission deadline: March 29. Notification: April 8th. Note: submit earlier for an earlier response. Rooms are being blocked at the Park Plaza hotel in downtown New Haven. Information available from Donna Mauri. SUBMISSIONS: LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS: Christopher K. Riesbeck Donna Mauri PO Box 2158, Yale Station PO Box 2158, Yale Station Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science New Haven, CT 06520 New Haven, CT 06520 Phone: (203) 436-0606 Phone: (203) 436-0606 ArpaNet address: RIESBECK@YALE ArpaNet address: MAURI@YALE ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Feb 85 00:55:16 pst From: Yigal Arens Subject: Southern California AI Society Announcement of the Second General Meeting of SCAIS =================================================== and Call for Abstracts ================== The second general meeting of the Southern California AI Society will be held on Monday, April 15 1985, at the University of Southern California. The meeting will be devoted to the presentation of talks by members of the local AI community. The talks should discuss recent new research results, as opposed to being general project descriptions. Everyone interested in giving a talk (graduate students greatly encouraged), or organizing a panel discussion, should send a note containing: 1. Title of the talk, or subject of panel 2. General area of AI talk relates to (e.g. vision, natural lang.) 3. Name, institution, phone number, net or USmail address 4. Any audio-visual aids (besides transparency and slide projector) needed during presentation. 5. Estimate of number of participants from your site. to one of the following addresses: ARPANET: scais2%usc-cse@csnet-relay CSNET: scais2@usc-cse USMAIL: SCAIS-2 c/o Yigal Arens Computer Science Department SAL 200 University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-0782 This information should be sent as soon as possible, and should arrive no later than March 25, 1985. The abstracts themselves will be accepted until April 8. While there will be no refereeing of the submissions, time constraints will probably require us to limit the number of presentations. Chances are we will not be able to accommodate requests to speak that arrive late. We will try to provide at least 15-20 minutes per talk. We anticipate there being some minor costs associated with the meeting, to cover the "proceedings", lunch, snacks, etc. These should amount to no more than $15, exclusive of parking. The number of parking spaces reserved for the meeting will be 120. This should be enough, but carpooling is encouraged nevertheless. The next mailing will be sent on April 1, and will include precise location, cost, parking arrangements, and schedule. Yigal Arens University of Southern California arens%usc-cse@csnet-relay.arpa arens@usc-cse.csnet (213) 743-7848 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 7-MAR-1985 05:45 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a023153; 6 Mar 85 15:59 EST Date: Wed 6 Mar 1985 09:03-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #30 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Thu, 7 Mar 85 05:39 EST AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 30 Today's Topics: Network Lists - New Software Engineering List, Seminars - Automated Ada Programming using Icons and Prolog (SU) & INTERNIST Scoring Schemes (SU) & Modelling Discourse Structure (UCB) & Semantic Prototyping System (Boston SICPLAN) & Language Comprehension (UCF) & A Reductionist Semantics (UCB) & Motivation Analysis (UCF) & Intuitionistic Logic (CMU) & Domains and Intuitionistic Logic (CMU), Conference - Evolution, Games, and Learning ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue 26 Feb 85 10:40:42-EST From: Mark S. Day Subject: New Soft-Eng List SOFT-ENG@MIT-XX Soft-Eng is a list for discussion of software engineering and related topics, covering such areas as: Requirements Specification Design Testing Maintenance Enhancement Languages Methodologies Tools Verification Validation Reliability Debugging Testing Testing Tools Error handling Recovery Programming Environments Modelling Documentation Extensibility Practices Standards Protection mechanisms Portability Complexity Performance Software science Management Cost estimation Productivity Rapid prototyping Reusable software Professional ethics Configuration mgmt. Quality assurance Staffing Systems analysis Training & education Human factors Software: legal issues Real-time systems Hardware/software tradeoffs Software fault-tolerance Any and all contributions are welcome (e.g. questions, ideas, "war stories", proposals, humor, abstracts, conference reports, bibliographies, problems, reviews, tutorials, solutions, planned or completed projects). The list is currently unmoderated, but may become a digest if the volume of mail warrants it. All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems, questions, etc., should be sent to Soft-Eng-Request@MIT-XX. [Rather than compete with this list, I shall no longer forward items about programming languages, environments, man-machine interfaces, etc., unless they relate specifically to AI and information science. LISP and PROLOG articles will still be carried in AIList, of course. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 22 Feb 85 0933 PST From: Rosemary Brock Subject: Seminar - Automated Ada Programming using Icons and Prolog (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] TITLE: "CAEDE - Carleton Embedded System Design Environment - An Experimental Design Environment for Ada Using Icons and Prolog" SPEAKER: Professor Ray Buhr Department of Systems and Computer Engineering Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. PLACE: ERL 401, Monday Feb. 25th, 2:30 pm. This informal talk will provide an overview of CAEDE's approach, status and capabilities. With CAEDE, multitasking design structures are entered iconically on the screen of a SUN workstation, using a notation described in the speaker's "System Design With Ada" book (PH, 1984). The structures are automatically converted into Prolog facts. Prolog programs process these facts to generate skeleton Ada programs and to perform structural and temporal analysis of the designs represented by the facts. Temporal analysis is based on Prolog descriptions of the temporal properties of the Ada rendezvous and of the temporal behaviour of tasks. The talk will describe the iconic interface and the nature of the Prolog representations and tools. CAEDE is part of a research program at Carleton into environments and tools for embedded real time systems, with particular emphasis on communication protocol systems. ------------------------------ Date: Fri 1 Mar 85 11:46:00-PST From: Alison Grant Subject: Seminar - INTERNIST Scoring Schemes (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Medical Information Sciences Colloquium Tuesday, March 5, 1985 Stanford University Medical Center Room M-106 1:15 - 1:45 P.M. Speaker: David Heckerman Title: Probabilistic Interpretation of Two Ad Hoc Scoring Schemes I will present a new formulation of Bayes' theorem with the usual assumptions that evidence is conditionally independent and that hypotheses are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Within this formulation, I define a quantity called the Measure of Confirmation (MC). I will show that MC's satisfy all the axioms of MYCIN's certainty factors. I will also show that a quantity closely related to MC behaves similarly to the weighting factors in the INTERNIST-1 scoring scheme. Thus, a probabilistic interpretation will be provided for these two evidence combination schemes that have been labeled ad hoc. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Mar 85 16:03:04 pst From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Modelling Discourse Structure (UCB) BERKELEY LINGUISTICS LUNCHBAG COLLOQUIUM DAY: Thursday March 7, 1985 TIME: 11 - 12:30 PLACE: 200 Bldg. T-4 SPEAKER: Dr. Livia Polanyi, English Department, University of Amsterdam; BBN Laboratories TITLE: ``Modelling Discourse Syntactic and Semantic Structure'' ABSTRACT: The ultimate goal of the research to be discussed is to characterize the structural and semantic relationships obtaining among individual clauses in natural discourse. In this talk,a formal linguistic model of discourse structure will be sketched which is designed to account for the ability of language users to assign proper semantic interpretations to clauses in naturally occurring interactively constructed talk despite the interruptions, resumptions, repairs, and other disfluencies which characterize performance. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 1985 00:08:40-EST From: psm@Mitre-Bedford Subject: Seminar - Semantic Prototyping System (Boston SICPLAN) Boston SICPLAN (Special Interest Committee on Programming Languages) is a local affiliate of the ACM SIGPLAN group and vaguely associated with and chartered by the Greater Boston area chapter of the ACM. It normally meets once a month, usually on the first Thursday, almost always at 8 p.m., and normally at either BBN or Intermetrics. Its talks are often of interest to people working in the fields of programming languages and compilers, environments, artificial intelligence, and data/knowledge base management. [...] ACM GREATER BOSTON CHAPTER SICPLAN Thursday, March 7, 1985 8 P.M. Intermetrics Atrium 733 Concord Ave., Cambridge A Semantic Prototyping System Mitchell Wand Indiana University and Brandeis University Denotational semantics seems to be a useful language for specifying the behavior of programming languages. The talk will describe a set of computer programs that Dr. Wand developed for testing and exercising programming language specifications given in this style. It will also give an introduction to the method of denotational semantics and an overview of how these tools can be used to construct rapid prototypes of programming languages. Our March speaker, Mitch Wand, is one of the leading innovators in applying formal methods to language design and the analysis of programs and language systems. He is spending the year at Brandeis University, on leave from the University of Indiana, where he is a professor. [...] Our group customarily meets for dinner at Joyce Chen's restaurant, 390 Rindge Ave., Cambridge at 6:00 P.M. (just before the meeting). If you wish to come, please call Carolyn Elson at Intermetrics 661-1840 as early as possible so we can make the appropriate dinner reservation. Peter Mager chairperson, Boston SICPLAN ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 18:31:45 est From: "Robert C. Bethel" Subject: Seminar - Language Comprehension (UCF) Date & Time: Tuesday - April 9, 1985 at 6pm. Location : Computer Center II, Rm #103 University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida. Speaker : Eugene Charniak Subject : Language Comprehension from an Artificial Intelligence Perspective In the first half of this talk will review the work which has been done on language comprehension within the Artificial Intelligence Community. Despite the often heated controversy surrounding the area, there is, in fact, agreement on what the basic model must look like. Furthermore this model is not, except in retrospect, a completely obvious one. Unfortunately, in retrospect the model is rather obvious, and offers little real guidance for someone trying to build such a system. In the second part of the lecture will suggest how the model should be extended to answer some of the problems left open in the consensus version. This will include issues such as the relative importance of syntax and semantics, limits on inference, and the role of logic. Robert C. Bethel University of Central Florida uucp: {duke,decvax,akgua}!ucf-cs!bethel ARPA: bethel.ucf-cs@csnet.relay.CSNET csnet: bethel@ucf.CSNET ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 17:54:05 pst From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - A Reductionist Semantics (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Spring 1985 Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B TIME: Tuesday, March 12, 11:00 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center (followed by) DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: Ned Block, CSLI and MIT TITLE: ``A Reductionist Semantics'' There are two quite different families of approaches to seman- tics: REDUCTIONIST approaches attempt to characterize the semantic in non-semantic terms NON-REDUCTIONIST approaches are more concerned with relations among meaningS than with the nature of meaning itself. The non-reductionist approaches are the more familiar ones (eg, Montague, the model- theoretic aspect of situation semantics, Davidson, Katz). The reduction- ist approaches come in 4 major categories: 1. Theories that reduce meaning to the mental (This is what is common to Grice and Searle). 2. Causal semantics--theories that see semantic values as derived from causal chains leading from the world to our words. (Field's combination of Kripke and Tarski) 3. Indicator semantics--theories that see natural and non-natural meaning as importantly similar. Their paradigm of meaning is the way the rings on the tree stump represent the age of the tree when cut down. (Dretske/Stampe) 4. Functional role semantics--theories that see meaning in terms of the func- tional role of linguistic expressions in thought, reasoning, and planning, and in general in the way they mediate between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. After sketching the difference between the reductionist and non-reductionist approaches, I will focus on functional role semantics, a view that has independently arisen in philosophy (where its sources are Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use, and pragmatism) and cognitive science (where it is known as procedural semantics). Instead of devoting the talk to trying to answer certain well known criticisms of functionalist views, I will concentrate on what one particular version of the doctrine can DO (if the cri- ticisms can be answered): viz., illuminate acquisition of and knowledge of meaning, principles of charity, how meaning is relevant to explanation of behavior, the intrinsic/observer- relative distinction, the relation between meaning and the brain, and the relativity of meaning to representational sys- tem. The point is to give a sense of the fertility and power of the view, and so to provide a rationale for working on solu- tions to its problems. Finally, I will sketch some reasons to prefer functional role semantics to the other reductionist theories. A copy of a paper which the talk draws on will be in the cogni- tive science library. UPCOMING ELSEWHERE ON CAMPUS Andy diSessa (Computer Science Lab at MIT) will be speaking on ``Knowledge in Pieces: Intuitive Knowledge in Physics and Other Things'' at 4pm on Friday, March 8, in the Beach Room, third floor, Tolman Hall. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 85 18:31:45 est From: "Robert C. Bethel" Subject: Seminar - Motivation Analysis (UCF) Date & Time: Wednesday - April 10, 1985 (time - to be announced on tuesday) Location : Computer Center II, Rm #103 University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida. Speaker : Eugene Charniak Subject : Motivation Analysis, Abductive Unification, and Non-monotonic Equality Motivation analysis in story comprehension requires matching an action mentioned in the story against actions which might be predicted by possible explanitory motivations. This matching requires matching constants from the story against skolem functions in the possible motivations (assuming a normal first order representation of stories, plans, etc.). We will show that extending unification to allow for unifying two things if they are non-monotonically equal does exactly what is needed in such cases. We also show that such a procedure allows for a clean method of noun-phrase reference determination. Robert C. Bethel University of Central Florida uucp: {duke,decvax,akgua}!ucf-cs!bethel ARPA: bethel.ucf-cs@csnet.relay.CSNET csnet: bethel@ucf.CSNET ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 1985 0903-EST From: Lydia Defilippo Subject: Seminar - Intuitionistic Logic (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Speaker: Dana Scott Date: Wednesday, March 6 Time: 2:00 Place: 2105 DH Topic: Intuitionistic logic and some models Abstract: The lambda calculus as usually presented is an equational theory, but it is also supposed to be a theory of functions. One way to understand its scope is to discuss models for lambda calculus in intuitionistic logic and to relate it to the notion of function appropriate within that framework. However, this first talk will be just about intuitionistic logic and some of its interpretations. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 1985 0904-EST From: Lydia Defilippo Subject: Seminar - Domains and Intuitionistic Logic (CMU) [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Speaker: Dana Scott Date: Monday, March 11 Time: 2:00 Place: 324 Scaife Hall Topic: Domains and intuitionistic logic (I) Abstract: Kleene's realizability interpretation in one very explicit approach to intuitionistic logic. The basics of the interpretation will be discussed, and it will be explained how computability theory gets a logical form. In particular, the effectively given domains become just sets (of a special kind). Some results from McCarty and others on realizability will be explained. The way domain models for lambda calculus behave from this point of view will also be discussed. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Mar 85 09:27:39 mst From: bbw@LANL.ARPA (Burton Wendroff) Subject: Conference - Evolution, Games, and Learning [Forwarded by Golub@SU-SCORE and Buchanan@SUMEX-AIM.] CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT Title - EVOLUTION, GAMES, AND LEARNING: Adaptation in Machines and Nature Date - May 20 - 24, 1985 Place - Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico Topics include - biological evolution, deterministic and random automata, learning algorithms, neural networks, computer game programs, game theory, allocation mechanisms, and brain function. Speakers include - J. ANDERSON, H. BERLINER, M. CONRAD, J. H. CONWAY, J. D. COWAN, M. DAVIS, J. L. DENEUBOURG, M. W. FELDMAN, P. FREY, I. J. GOOD, J. H. HOLLAND, J. HOPFIELD, B. HUBERMAN, S. KAUFFMAN, S. KIRKPATRICK, N. PACKARD, S. REITER, G.-C. ROTA, A. SAMUEL, P. SCHUSTER, T. J. SEJNOWSKI, J. MAYNARD SMITH, J. W. VALENTINE, L. G. VALIANT, S. WOLFRAM Registration fee - $50 Contact - For registration information and forms write or call Evolution, Games ,and Learning Los Alamos National Laboratory P. O. Box 1663, MS-B258 Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA Tel. 505-667-1444 ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 8-MAR-1985 23:53 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a018639; 8 Mar 85 20:11 EST Date: Fri 8 Mar 1985 10:22-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #31 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Fri, 8 Mar 85 23:51 EST AIList Digest Friday, 8 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 31 Today's Topics: AI Tools - OPS5 Systems & XLISP and Betz & Prolog in Dr. Dobb's Journal, Literature - Dreyfus and Commonsense Reasoning & History of Ideas in Computer Science, Linguistics - Wally & Y'all & Youse, AI Literature - The Artificial Intelligence Report, Seminar - Structural Change Through Experience (Rutgers), Course -- Cognitive Architecture (SU) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 6 Mar 85 15:07:34 pst From: susan@aids-unix (Susan Rosenbaum) Subject: OPS5 Systems I am looking for pointers to any public domain systems written in OPS5. Please reply directly to me. Thanks! Susan Rosenbaum (susan@aids) ------------------------------ Date: Mon 4 Mar 85 14:04:15-CST From: CMP.BARC@UTEXAS-20.ARPA Subject: XLISP and Betz XLISP 1.4 is available via FTP at sumex-aim (login anonymous) on the directory. Documentation is also available there. The source code will soon (and may already) be available there, too. I think all of this is also on net.sources as well. David Betz is eager to get XLISP distributed and can be contacted via Betz@Havard or cornell!packard!havard!betz@uw-beaver Dallas Webster Burroughs Austin Research Center ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27-Feb-85 07:34:37 PST From: decvax!mcnc!BTS@Berkeley Subject: Prolog in Dr. Dobb's Journal [Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.] Dr. Dobb's Journal for March is a "Special Prolog Issue". Only three articles on Prolog, but there are lots of ads about Prologs for small systems. -- Bruce T. Smith ------------------------------ Date: 5 Mar 1985 0853-EST (Tuesday) From: dndobrin@mit-aphrodite (David N Dobrin) Subject: Common-sense reasoning About the request from arora@buffalo. Don't forget about Bert Dreyfus's discussion of common-sense reasoning and the problems it poses in principle for AI. Still the best. Hubert L. Dreyfus. What Computers Can't Do. 2nd ed., 1979. Harper&Row David Dobrin ------------------------------ Date: Mon 4 Mar 85 09:09:57-PST From: C.S./Math Library Subject: History of Ideas in Computer Science [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI. This was in response to a query about the history of ideas in computer science.] If you are interested in doing research in the history of ideas in computer science, you are going to not only want to search the computer science literature but the history of science literature and the sociology of science literature. History of science is a growing field. Berkeley is strong in this area. An example of the type of articles and journals you might be interested in is the journal Sociology of the Sciences (this is in the Green Library) which in 1982 has an article titled "Development and Establishment in Artificial Intelligence". Harry Llull ------------------------------ Date: Mon 4 Mar 85 10:19:28-PST From: Henry E. Lowood Subject: History of ideas in computer science [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] It sounds to me like what you want is a general overview of the history of computer science. If that's the case, I would recommend: Herman Goldstine, The computer from Pascal to Von Neumann TK7885.A564 in the Math Library and elsewhere on campus. Or, for a far less technical approach: Joel Shurkin, Engines of the mind. QA7617.S49 in Math, Green, etc. It may interest you to know that the Stanford Libraries are starting up a historical project to document specifically the history of science and technology at Stanford and in the Silicon Valley since World War II. This will take many years, of course. In fact, I'd appreciate online mail from anyone who might be interested in contributing in some way to this project. Henry Lowood Bibliographer for History of Science and Technology Collections, SU ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 4-Mar-85 20:53:48-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Re :Wally For all potential wallies, there is a manual for your edification ! `How to be Wally' by Paul Manning, published in the U.K. by Futura Books. But what about the song `La Wally' in the French film, `Diva' ? Gordon Joly gcj%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Mar 85 13:08:26 mst From: crs@LANL.ARPA (Charlie Sorsby) Subject: Y'alls Actually, I think you will find, if you pursue it, that the "y'alls" that you overheard is actually the possesive form of y'all (i.e. y'all's). As in "Is that y'all's car?" Charlie Sorsby ...!lanl!crs crs@lanl.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Mar 85 09:18 EST From: D E Stevenson Subject: More on y'all. Just to add more fuel to the fire. In the mountain regions of the Piedmont (SC-NC), the locals use "y'all" for singular and "all y'all" for the plural. Really - I kid you not. steve ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 6-Mar-85 15:53:15-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Youse - The Last Word It seems that the term `youse' is not the plural of `you', it is a form of address. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 7 Mar 85 08:44:14-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: The Artificial Intelligence Report Ted Markowitz recently asked about newsletters. I have never seen most of them. I have seen a copy of The Artificial Intelligence Report, however, and I've decided to pass along, with permission, its description of previous issues. This may be compared to the contents of some issues of the Artificial Intelligence Reporter that Laurence Leff described in AIList V3 N29. The Artificial Intelligence Report that I have seen contains 10 pages of text (set in 9-inch by 3-inch columns of 12-point type) along with several pages of publisher's messages and administrative notes. (This issue may have contained more self-advertising than most since it was distributed in a mass mailing to potential subscribers.) The news portion described past and current research at SRI International. The following are the topics covered in back issues of The Artificial Intelligence Report. I'm told that back issues are still available, but I don't know the price. Premier Issue The U.S. Pavilion at Tsukuba Japan -- it's theme: AI; The Companies: Carnegie Group, Syntelligence; a list of new AI companies; Foreign AI R&D. Vol. 1, No. 1, January, 1984 Digital Equipment Corporation's new Artificial Intelligence Technology Center plus a definition of two classic working expert systems developed for DEC at Carnegie-Mellon University: EXCON and EXSEL; An examination of GE's DELTA/CATS-1 locomotive maintenance system now being field tested; Artificial Intelligence research at Edinburgh University; An identification of four AI companies: Thinking Machines Corp., Inference, Corp., Data Base Informatica (Italy) and Intelligenetics; A list of inexpensive AI titles. Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1984 The U.S.Department of Defense's AI goals: The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency's objectives; AI activity in the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy. Vol. 1, No. 3, March, 1984 AI and the Personal Computer: Expert systems, natural language, LISP; A look at Perceptronics, an AI company; AI and the CIA. Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1984 Reviews of the U.S. National Science Foundation's supercomputer report, the System Development Foundation and the Alvey Report: Great Britain's strategy for meeting the Fifth Generation Computing Challenge; AI at Arthur D. Little and at Sussex University. Vol. 1, No. 5, May, 1984 Artificial Intelligence at the University of California at Los Angeles; an update on the European Economic Community's ESPRIT project; a look at two companies now commercializing natural language understanding systems: Artificial Intelligence Corporation and Frey Associates; AI Titles; an evaluation of a number of robotics periodicals. Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1984 The AI Machines: LISP Machines/AI Workstations: The Xerox 1100, LISP Machine Inc.'s LAMBDA, the PERQ Machine, the Symbolics 3600; AI Titles. Vol. 1, No. 7, July, 1984 The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation; The Robotics/Artificial Intelligence Database; Syntelligence; AI as an Investment; AI at FMC; AI Titles. Vol. 1, No. 8, August, 1984 AI Companies: Teknowledge, The Carnegie Group; An Established Company's New AI Center: FMC; a new PROLOG company: QUINTUS; AI at the University of Texas; Robotics Titles. Vol. 1, No. 9, September, 1984 AI at AT&T Bell Labs; French AI Companies including Cap Gemini Sogeti; Expert Systems Reviews; Robotics Reviews; AAAI-84: A Summary. Vol. 1, No. 10, October, 1984 Carnegie-Mellon University's Intelligent Systems Laboratory; The Companies: Symantec, an update, the Tektronix 4404 Machine, Infologics of Sweden; Machine Translation: Where is it? Where can it go? AI Titles; Review of a new Expert Systems Directory. Vol. 1, No. 11, November, 1984 The Fifth Generation Computer: Japan's FGCS Project, The Fifth Generation Challenge: ACM-84, Fifth Generation Titles; Japanese AI Companies: CSK and NEXSYS, AI at Boeing. Vol. 1, No. 12, December, 1984 AI at Texas Instruments; the MIT AI Lab; Commercializing Speech Recognition: Kurzweil, Inc.; Japan's ICOT Conference; Alvey and ICOT: A Cooperative Relationship. Vol. 2, No. 1, January, 1985 SRI International: The AI Center, The Robotics Laboratory, The Advanced Information Technology Applications Center, The Advanced Computer Systems Department, The Financial Expert Systems Program, SRI's Expert System for the PC, The SRI AI Consultants, SRI's AI Reports. Vol. 2, No. 2, February, 1985 AI and the Personal Computer: the Word from Esther Dyson; The New U.S. Air Force AI Consortium; The Companies: Cognitive Systems, Inc., the Knowledge Systems Center at Sperry, Inference joins Lockheed; The Reports; Titles: an AI and Robotics Series, a review of books on Expert Systems. Vol. 2, No. 3, March, 1985 AI in Outer Space: NASA's AI Program; LISP on the PC: TLC LISP, GCLISP; Expert Systems: the Number One Topic; Aboard Japanese Ships; New Affiliations: at DEC, at Sumitomo. This newsletter was the first one mentioned in AIList. Since that time, it has moved from Los Altos to: Artificial Intelligence Publications Suite Three 3600 West Bayshore Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 - 4229 U. S. A. (415) 424-1447 -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: 7 Mar 85 18:34:06 EST From: John Subject: Seminar - Structural Change Through Experience (Rutgers) MACHINE LEARNING COLLOQUIUM Date: March 8th, Friday Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm Place: Hill 423 Speaker: Robert W. Lawler Affliation: GTE Laboratories, Inc. Title: STRUCTURAL CHANGE THROUGH EXPERIENCE Drawing on data from an empirical study and computer based simulations, I will explore some problems and tentative solutions arising from the issue of how specific knowledge structures can change through interactions based on particular experience. The domain is Tictactoe. A knowledge structure is here represented as having three parts: a Goal, a sequence of actions for achieving the goal, and a set of constraints upon execution of those actions (GAC). Simulations played with such structures lead to winning and losing games, which in turn leads to the generation of new structures as modifications of the current GACs. Learning varies with the flexibility of the opponent's play. Subject to certain limitations, I explore completely certain classes of strategic play. The most interesting result is a characterization of play against a moderately flexible opponent, through which the sequences of derivation of individual GACs can be seen in overview as folding together into a richly connected network of generability. The network, summarizing the learnability of strategies, varies with the flexability of the opponent. Current work on experience motivated analogy and the inception of multi-role and interiorized play will be discussed. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 5 Mar 85 13:46:39-PST From: Paul Rosenbloom Subject: New cs/psych course -- Cognitive Architecture [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The following new spring course was inadvertantly omitted from the spring time schedule. The course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in both psychology and computer science. COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE An examination of the issues involved in designing a cognitive architecture. Topics include the role of the architecture in the construction of a general artificially-intelligent system, the role of the architecture as a large-scale psychological model, existing (and proposed) cognitive architectures, and the evaluation of architectures. Prerequisites: Advanced undergraduate standing and either Psychology 106, Computer Science 223, or equivalent experience. Course Number: Psych 223/CS 325 Times: MW 10:00 - 11:15, Jordan 100 Units: 3 Instructor: Paul Rosenbloom ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 13-MAR-1985 11:16 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a002082; 11 Mar 85 16:11 EST Date: Mon 11 Mar 1985 10:39-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #32 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Wed, 13 Mar 85 11:10 EST AIList Digest Monday, 11 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 32 Today's Topics: Bindings - Australasia, Conference - IJCAI-87 Election and Site Selection & Proposals Solicited for Sites for IJCAI-89, Lab Description - Research on ICAI at ARI, AI Literature - Stanford Library Acquisitions & Recent Articles, Opinion - AI Aims, Seminars - Japanese Research Environment (MIT) & Synthesis In Design (CMU) & Storing LISP Structures in a Database (IBM-SJ) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sunday, 10 Mar 85 21:40:24 EST From: stacey (martin stacey) @ cmu-psy-a Subject: Australasia I'd like to find out who is doing what sorts of AI and cognitive science in Australia and New Zealand. If you are working in Australia or New Zealand, or know of people doing AI there, please send me pointers (names and departments). Thanks in advance, Martin Stacey stacey@cmu-psy-a.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 85 17:59:00 est From: bellcore!walker@Berkeley (Don Walker) Subject: IJCAI-87 Election and Site Selection IJCAI-87 Officer Election and Site Selection The Trustees of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, Inc. are pleased to announce that Alan Bundy, University of Edinburgh, will be Conference Chair for IJCAI-87; John McDermott, Carnegie-Mellon University, will be Program Chair; and Milan will be the site, with Marco Somalvico of the University of Milan being responsible for Local Arrangements. The conference will be held 23-29 August 1987 (Sunday through Saturday). ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 85 18:01:38 est From: bellcore!walker@Berkeley (Don Walker) Subject: Proposals solicited for sites for IJCAI-89 The site for IJCAI-89 will be selected at the IJCAI-85 in Los Angeles this summer (18-24 August). Proposals--for North American locations only (in accordance with the IJCAI practice of alternating between North America and other parts of the world; IJCAI-87 will be held in Milan, Italy)--should be sent by 1 August 1985 to Don Walker, IJCAII Secretary-Treasurer, Bell Communications Research, 435 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960. Note that AAAI will cosponsor the conference and that the AAAI Office will coordinate local arrangements activities and support the local committee. Proposals should respond to the following criteria, which were developed by the IJCAII Trustees to govern site selection: 1. Local AI Group Support: strength of local AI activity; quality and breadth of the proposed local arrangements group; potential beneficial impact of an IJCAI on local activity. 2. Site Accessibility: ease of access for the international AI community via air and train transportation; convenient access to social centers. 3. Conference Facilities: ability to accommodate 5,000-10,000 people, with a hall for plenary sessions that can hold the full number and 5-6 rooms for 1,000-2,000 each. 4. Residences and Catering: a range of accommodations from dormitories to good quality hotels in sufficient quantities and proximity to the conference site; catering services for meals, breaks, banquets, and receptions are required. 5. Site Attractiveness: pleasantness of surrounding environment; local social and cultural attractions for attendees and families. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Mar 85 16:13:00 EST From: psotka@ari-hq1 Reply-to: Subject: Research on ICAI at ARI The Army Research Institute has begun a program of research on intelligent tutoring systems for application to Army training and instruction in schools and in the field. The Army has an enormous need for high quality training in diverse technical fields -- electronics, vehicle mechanics, radar, aviation -- as well as basic cognitive skills and decision support systems. The initial research focus is on Intelligent Computer Aided Instruction and related topics (such as learning, knowledge representation, explanation systems, mental models, natural language, and direct manipulation interfaces, reactive environments, inspectable simulations, etc.). The computational environment is well supported with a variety of micros (Macs & PC_ATs) as well as 3 Xerox 1108s, 1 1100, and 2 Vaxes. Currently four professionals (cognitive science, computer science, and psychology) have sole access to the 4 Lisp machines. A significant proportion of time is also spent on developing and monitoring research contracts, making presentations to Army groups, and discussing needs and the possibility of applying artificial intelligence techniques and tools to the various problems Army schools and institutions have defined. Anyone interested in obtaining more information about these activities is encouraged to call, or send mail or Arpanet to: Joseph Psotka, Army Research Institute 5001 Eisenhower Avenue Alexandria, Va. 22333-5600 (202)274-5540/5565 Psotka@ARI-HQ1 ------------------------------ Date: Fri 8 Mar 85 21:27:33-PST From: C.S./Math Library Subject: Latest Math & CS Library "New Reports List" posted on-line. [Forwarded from the Stanford BBoard by Laws@SRI-AI. This is a reminder that the online new reports list is a gold mine of computer science citations -- you just have to apply your own screening criteria to separate the gold from the dross. -- KIL] The latest Math & Computer Science Library "New Reports List" has been posted on-line. The file is: NEWTRS at SCORE NEWTRS at SIERRA NEWTRS[LIB,DOC] at SAIL NEWTRS at SUMEX NEWTRS at TURING. In case you miss a reports list, the old lists are being copied to OLDTRS at SCORE OLDTRS at SIERRA OLDTRS at TURING where they will be saved for about six months. [...] The library receives technical reports from over a hundred universities and other institutions. The current batch includes - among others - reports from: Carnegie-Mellon University. Department of Computer Science. General Motors Corporation. Research Laboratories. Computer Science Department. Mathematisch Centrum. Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica. Rutgers. Department of Computer Science. Rutgers. Laboratory for Computer Science Research. Universitaet Hamburg. Fachbereich Informatik. U.K. National Physical Laboratory. Division of Information Technology and Computing. University of Arizona. Department of Computer Science. University of California, Berkeley. Operations Research Center. University of Edinburgh. Department of Artificial Intelligence. University of Edinburgh. Department of Computer Science. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Department of Computer Science. University of Saskatchewan. Department of Computational Science. University of Waterloo. Department of Computer Science. University of Wisconsin, Madison. Computer Sciences Department. - Richard Manuck Math & Computer Science Library Building 380 - 4th Floor LIBRARY at SCORE ------------------------------ Date: 6 Mar 1985 08:36-CST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles Electronics Week, February 25, 1985 Hewlett Packard will be donating $50,000,000 worth of hardware and software to various universities. These systems will be HP 9000 series systems running HPRL. HPRL - rule based reasoning systems and representational languages - can call C, Fortran and Pascal - runs on HP's portable, the Integral Personal Computer - applications have been written in this system for semiconductor fabrication, troubleshooting, office autoamtion, and natural language understanding - runs under UNIX Electronic News, March 4, 1985 Volume 31 No. 1539 Page 1 As you may know, Texas Instruments's Explorer was based on the NuMachine bus and machine design. They were selling a 68010 based version of this as a high-end engineering workstation. They are not pursuiing that market. This does not effect its operations in selling the TI Explorer which is based on the same bus. They are also negotiating to sell nonexclusive rights to the workstation to Lisp Machine. IEEE Software March 1985 Page 101 Reprint of an article printed in the New York Times on efforts to use Aymara, an ancient Peruvian Indian language, as an aid in natural language translation efforts. EDN Career News January 1985, page 1 Artificial Intelligence and the Military ComputerWorld Page 47 February 18, 1985 "Semantics Muddling AI Issues" International Journal of Man Machine Studies Volume 21 No 3 Sept 1984 An Economical Approach to Modeling Speech Recognition Accuracy 191 An Analysis of Formal Logic as Inference Method in Expert System 213 Users and Experts in the Document Retrieval System Model 245 An Experimental Expert System for Genetics 249 Angewandte Informatik No 11 Nov 84 Design of a Corporate Know-how Database 471 Electronics Week Volume 57 No 36 AI Transforms CAD/CAM to CIM J. R. Lineback IEEE PAMI Volume 6, Number 6 November 84 Parallel Branch and Bound Formulations for AND/OR Tree Search 768 Computer Aided Design Volume 16 no 5 1985 Wirewrap Design Aid written in Prolog 249 Two algorithms for three-layer channel routing 264 Robotics and Artificial Intelligence NATO Advanced SND/ES INSTITUTES, Series F Computer and System Sciences Volume 11 Springer-Verlag 693 pages $62.50 Advances in Computer Vision and Image Processing Volume 1 Image Reconstruction from Incomplete Observations T. S. Huang JAI Press $52.50 Technology Review Volume 88 No 1 January 85 Automated Factory-Vision and Reality J. Blumenthal, J. Dray pp 28 The Automated Factory-View from Shop Floor H. Shaiken pp 16 Research and Development Volume 26 No 10 October 1984 Artificial Perception gives super vision 142 Nauchno-Tekhinicheskaya Informatsiya Seriya II - Informatsionnye Protsessy I Sistemy Volume 11 1984 Importance of the Expert Information System Developing in Informatics R. S. Gilyarevskii 1 Some Semantic and Syntax Problems of the PSM Method of Automatic Hypothesis Outcome O. M. Anshakov, D. P. Skvortsov, J. K. Finn 5 Nonheritibility of Empirical Contradicitons in DSM-methods and Non-Monotonic Logic M. I. Zabezhailo 14 Program Realization of Automatic Hypothesis Outcomes of DSM Methods with Non-Single Element Criterion Sites M. A. Mikheenkova, V. V. Avidon, S. A. Sukhanova J. Computer System Science 29 (1984) no 1 8-35 Plaisted, David "Complete Problems in the first-order predicate calculus" ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 6-Mar-85 12:18:03-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: AI-Aims The goal of AI research seems, to me, to be to produce a `machine' that will satisfy the Turing criterion. This is a total waste of time and effort. We are going through the second industrial revolution. (Wo)man's (ie the human race's) muscle power was extended and (s)he is now extending the mind by the use of computer as a tool (cf expert systems). But the power of this revolution lies in the extension of the thinking process and not its paltrey imitation of the mind (cf my "chalk and cheese" entry on parallel thought processes). Gordon Joly (with acknowledgment to Richard Winter). gcj%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 1985 14:04 EST (Sun) From: "Daniel S. Weld" Subject: Seminar - Japanese Research Environment (MIT) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] Revolving Seminar March 12, 1985 4:00pm 8th floor playroom Monica Strauss Basic Research in Computer Science: a perspective on the Japanese environment This talk considers the structure of the computer science community in Japan. I focus on a central case: the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL), a government research lab under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). I contrast the apparent rigidity of the research environment imposed by the formal structure with the flexibility of informal practices. In particular, I consider (1) the importance of personal contacts in interactions with outside organizations, (2) informal solutions to budgeting problems, (3) research interactions with industry. My master's thesis in the Japan Science and Technology Program at MIT is a comparative case study of MIT and ETL. As an AI researcher, my purpose is to gain a clear understanding of the conditions, supports, and pitfalls of research interactions bridging the Japanese and American research communities. ------------------------------ Date: 7 Mar 85 12:21:50 EST From: Daniel.Rehak@CMU-RI-CIVE Subject: Seminar - Synthesis In Design (CMU) DESIGN RESEARCH CENTER PANEL DISCUSSION SYNTHESIS IN DESIGN: CHALLENGES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING MODERATOR: Ignacio Grossmann, Chemical Engineering SPEAKERS: Mary Lou Maher, Civil Engineering Gary Powers, Chemical Engineering Sarosh Talukdar, Intelligent Design Lab, DRC Donald Thomas, Electrical and Computer Engineering DATE: Monday, March 11, 1985 TIME: 1:30 - 3:00 PM PLACE: Porter Hall 123B Synthesis is one of the most important steps in design since it deals with the problem on how to select and interconnect the components for integrating a large scale system in an optimal or near optimal manner. The major challenge for research in this area lies in the development of systematic strategies and tools that can not only cope effectively with large combinatorial problems, but that can also produce solutions that are both innovative and of high quality. This seminar will present an overview on the type of synthesis problems that arise in several engineering disciplines and the approaches that have been used to tackle these problems. The main objective in holding this seminar will be to examine the question as to what extent common methodologies and tools can be shared among the various engineering fields for the systematic synthesis of systems. Another important objective will be to examine the scope and limitations that knowlege based systems and algorithmic optimization methods have in solving these type of problems. Specific examples on several synthesis applications will be given. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Mar 85 14:49:36 PST From: IBM San Jose Research Laboratory Calendar Reply-to: IBM-SJ Calendar Subject: Seminar - Storing LISP Structures in a Database (IBM-SJ) [Forwarded from the SRI-AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] IBM San Jose Research Lab 5600 Cottle Road San Jose, CA 95193 [...] Tues., Mar. 12 Computer Science Seminar 10:00 A.M. STORING LISP STRUCTURES IN A DATABASE 2C-012 The paging problems that LISP programs with large knowledge bases incur together with the features databases provide, such as concurrency control and crash recovery, make extending LISP to allow persistent data desirable. Rather than building a special purpose filing system, an interface to commercial INGRES was constructed. Polymnia is a package that has been designed, partially implemented, and tested on a sizable LISP program (PHRAN). The speed with which PHRAN executes is faster with a persistent knowledge base than with a virtual memory knowledge base when the manner of knowledge base storage is the only differing factor. M. Butler, University of California at Berkeley Host: W. Plouffe (PLOUFFE@IBM-SJ) Visitors, please arrive 15 minutes early. IBM is located on U.S. 101, about 7 miles south of Interstate 280. Exit at Monterey Road (82) and turn right if you took 101 south (left for 101 north.) Continue straight, ignoring the sign for 82, then follow signs for Cottle Road. The Research Laboratory is IBM Building 028. For more detailed directions, please phone the Research Lab receptionist at (408) 256-3028. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 13-MAR-1985 23:13 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a015137; 13 Mar 85 14:32 EST Date: Wed 13 Mar 1985 10:35-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #33 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Wed, 13 Mar 85 23:10 EST AIList Digest Wednesday, 13 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 33 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Hungal, Expert Systems - Programming Styles, Surveys - AI in Australasia, Literature - History of Ideas in Computer Science, Opinion - AI Aims, News - AAAI Member Statistics & FMC and Teknowledge & Recent Articles, Policy - Jokes on Rape, Seminars - Cheating Husbands and Other Stories (SU) & The Limits of Calculative Rationality (CSLI) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 13 Mar 85 10:20:29-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Hungal Gordon Cook of Delta Data Systems would like some information about the Hungal dialect of Korea. In particular, he would like to know whether any form of automated translation system has ever been written for this dialect. Please reply to 200%NJIT-EIES.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS, or call Gordon at (215) 322-5400 x258 if you have any leads. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 09:41:16 pst From: Curtis L. Goodhart Subject: Expert Systems vs "Conventional" Programming I have been involved for two years in a project to apply an existing expert system development tool to a particular problem that we have to solve. In this time, starting from scratch, as far as AI and expert systems are considered, I have developed opinions about the advantages (and disadvantages) of expert systems, as opposed to traditional programming methods. I would like to hear from people who feel they have qualified comments regarding this issue. In preface to a discussion I'd like to provide a few comments based on my observations and experience. Often people outside the field of AI see expert systems as some new kind of magic. In fact it's not new magic or old magic but rather an area of computer science that one might say provides styles or methods of programming that prove useful in tackling certain types of problems. The most valid two claims of advantages of expert systems that I see are: 1) Expert systems provide cost efficient development for software develop- ments that will undergo an intensely iterative, or test/modify cycle (ie the exact procedure for problem solution, the algorithm, cannot be stated in detail and with confidence prior to initiating software development). The main basis of this is held to be a structured framework consisting of partitioned control, domain knowledge (procedural), and global data base (which includes domain factual or declarative knowledge). It is the resulting uniformity and modularity that provide the foundation for an iterative development cycle. 2) Expert systems, by way of recorded production rule firings, which are often used, provide for explanation of the "reasoning process" used to generate the solution. This will be of value only if the end user will benefit from explanation, or if system development is speeded by expla- nation as opposed to the sole use of debug tools or methods that are used in non-expert-system developments. Again, the degree of benefit would vary according to the characteristics of the particular application, and the benefit increases for those problems that will require an intensive iterative type of development. Note that point 1 above points to expert systems as a development tool for the right kinds of problems. Some of the other claimed benefits of expert systems seem less supported to me. For example, I don't see that reasoning with uncertainty must be unique to an expert system approach. Another point, if "symbolic computation" (as opposed to number crunching) is a valid claim it appears to me that its basis must be in the dynamic memory allocation and list processing capabilities of Lisp and not neccessarily in an expert system approach. Finally, since the question of advantages of expert systems always comes up, are there any good studies with hard numbers that can be referred to? For example, are there any papers that report on a case where conventional and expert systems approaches were both used on an actual problem and comparisons made in order to substantiate the advantages (eg show that "rapid proto- typing" saves development time)? Are there any papers that provide a sound, and convincing basis for the virtues of expert systems, that could be given to non-AI persons? To summarize the question, what advantages (or disadvantages) do expert systems provide over conventional software approaches. And note, I want to limit the discussion to expert systems and not address the whole field of AI. Responses can go to the net, AILIST, and/or to myself. Curt Goodhart (goodhart@nosc -- on the ARPANET) ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 1985 1159-PST From: PRICE@USC-ECLC.ARPA Subject: AI in Australasia For a 30 page report on AI in Australasia contact: DEBENHAM - AIIA Computing Sciences N S W I T Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia AIIA (Artificial Intelligence in Australia) publishes a report annually. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Mar 85 10:47:27 PST (Monday) From: "Bruce Hamilton.OsbuSouth"@XEROX.ARPA Reply-to: Hamilton.OsbuSouth@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Re: History of Ideas in Computer Science I haven't been on the list for a while, but I saw V3 #31 and wondered if anyone had mentioned the collection Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfield, Eds., "The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages", Wiley, 1983, in particular Section 3, "Intellectual Issues in the History of Artificial Intelligence", by Allen Newell, with responses by Margaret A. Boden, Avron Barr, Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Allen Newell. --Bruce [Nope. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Mar 85 0:05:24 EST From: Frank Ritter Subject: response to gJolly From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: AI-Aims The goal of AI research seems, to me, to be to produce a `machine' that will satisfy the Turing criterion. This is a total waste of time and effort. ... [old zen motto: "if you want to get someplace, you've got to give up wanting to get to that place"] Gordon is right in his statement that the power of this revolution lies in the extension of the thinking process. There are obviously new ways to think, and new ways to add leverage to man's current cognitive powers. Whether this intelligence is best done in a brute force manner, or modelled after human thinking processes is still an open question. The basics of thought are still very much a research issue. Which is better is a silly question until we are able to even define such terms. Just as man had to study birds, and was able to derive the underlying mechanism of flight, and then adapt it to the tools and materials at hand, man must currently study the only animal that thinks in order to derive the underlying principles there also. The best way to study the mind is to hypothesis a theory and test it. And in the process of doing that, insight just might emerge on what powers we have, how they work, and how to best augment them, and thus give Gordon the answers he seeks. Frank Ritter (ritter@bbn-labs-b) ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Mar 85 11:44:13-CST From: Gordon Novak Jr. Subject: AAAI Member Statistics [Forwarded from the UTexas-20 bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The membership statistics of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence provide an interesting picture of where the AI people are: Calif. 1431 Canada 200 Mass. 709 U. K. 146 Texas 668 Japan 84 New York 451 W. Germany 70 Virginia 317 Australia 34 Penn. 293 France 29 Maryland 278 New Jersey 258 Foreign total: 765 Illinois 173 Total Membership: 7094 [of which 4145 are listed in the directory. -- KIL] Texas is a strong third, and nearly as big as all foreign countries combined. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 1985 01:04:38 EST From: Perry W. Thorndyke Subject: News - FMC and Teknowledge [Edited by Laws@SRI-AI.] FMC ANNOUNCES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VENTURE WITH TEKNOWLEDGE SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, March 12, 1985 -- FMC Corporation today announced that it has entered into a joint venture with Teknowledge, Inc. in the area of artificial intelligence software development. FMC has acquired approximately 11% of Teknowledge, Inc. In addition, the companies have entered into a "strategic affiliation". [...] Peter E. Weber, Director of Corporate Research and Development at FMC, said the investment was a key element in FMC's plan to build a premier corporate capability in artificial intelligence. [...] Teknowledge will collaborate with FMC's Artificial Intelligence Center, part of the company's corporate R&D laboratory in Santa Clara, California, to develop generic software tools. [...] One of the initial joint projects will develop a tool for use in building expert systems for real-time process control. This tool could be used to control such diverse systems as autonomous military vehicles or mineral refining plants. Another project will develop a tool for use in designing complex configurations of parts into a final product. This tool could be used in applications such as product configuration (as in R1/XCON), knowledge-based CAD/CAM, or planning the steps in a manufacturing process for a metal part. The Artificial Intelligence Center at FMC, the focal point for the company's AI activities, conducts basic research in the areas of knowledge systems, real-time heuristic control, human-machine interfaces, computer-based instruction, intelligent robotics, and vision. The Center also undertakes leading-edge applied research focused on the development of software products for internal use or incorporation into FMC product lines. [...] Perry W. Thorndyke FMC Corporation 1185 Coleman Avenue, Box 580 Santa Clara, CA 95052 (408) 289-3112 ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 1985 20:36-CST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles Baldwin, J. F. and Zhou, S. Q. A fuzzy relational inference language. Fuzzy Sets and Systems 14 (1984) no 2 155-174 GWAI 83 (Dassel, 1983) Informatik-Fachber 76 Springer, Berlin New York 1983 (It appears that some or all of these items may be in German): Dilger, Werner and Janson, Agnes Unification graphs for intelligent backtracking in deduction symbols Eder, Elmar Properties of substitutions and unifications Elsinger, N. A technical note on splitting and clausal normal form algorithms Horster, Patrick J. Complete reduction systems Ohlbach, Hans Jurgen A rule-based method of proof using clausal graphs Habel, Christopher Logical systems and representation problems Zap. Nauchn. Sem. Leningrad. Otdel. Mat Inst. Steklov 137(1984) 80-86 Linear-time recognition of isomorphism of tree-like images (Russian with English summary) by A. N. Grigor'eva International J. Comput. Inform. Sci 13(1984) no1 H. R. Lu, Inferability of context-free programmed gammars. Electron. Comm Japan 67 (1984) no 6 10-17 An extended Fisher criterion for feature extraction--Malina's method and its problems. Studies aand Research in Data Processing Masson, Paris 1984 252 pp Jean-Claude Simon, Pattern Recognition by algorithms. Inform. Process. Lett 1984 no 1 41-46 P. A. Subrahmanyam, "On embedding functions in logic" Pattern Recogniton 17 (1984) no 3 331-337 Dean M. Young, Patrick Odell A formulation and comparison of two linear feature selection techniques applicable to statistical classification Engineering Cybernetics 21 (1983) no 4 85-92 An information approach to estimation of the usefulness of features in statistical pattern recognition RAIRO Inform. Theor 18 (1984) no 2 161-170 Luis Farlinas del Cerro A resolution principle in modal logic. AT&T Bell Labs Tech J 63 (1984) no 7 1213-1243 B. H. Juang. On the hidden Markov model and dynamic time warping for speech recognition -- a unified view Engineering Cybernetics 21 (1983) no 4 1-11 (1984) M. I. Sudelkin Search for solutions using Knowledge Simulation Volume 44 No 1 Jan 1985 Artificial Intelligence Topics at IBM 33 Computer Design Volume 24 No 1 Jan85 Machine Vision Technology is Coming of Age but is not here yet 64 Symbolic Processor Aids Design of Complex Chips 147 Lisp Workstation brings AI power to Users desk 155 Electronics Week Vol 58 No 2 Jan 7 85 Expert System uses AI for Natural Sound Computer Languages Volume 9 No 3/4 161-182 Huhu: The Hebrew University Hebrew Understander ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Mar 85 14:41:04 pst From: Curtis L. Goodhart Subject: Jokes on rape Some things are immoral, period. Rape is one of them, and thankfully there is still an overwhelming consensus on that (unlike shifts in our society's view on other issues). In any case, consensus or not, I'd like to request that such material not be submitted to the net, and if it is submitted it should be eliminated by the mail reviewer should he or she see it. Those who have similar feelings should definitely speak up. Though there is the tendency to fear being labeled a prude, silence only gives the appearance that there is no opposition or other side, and consequences will follow. For example, if all the decent people stay out of politics, by default the government will be run by indecent people, and we can not complain, indeed we can only expect the quality of our government to reflect this indecency. [I apologize to all who were offended by the posting. I have received a few messages on each side of the issue, but it seems clear that Poly Nomial and Curly Pi should have been left to make their own way in the world without the help of AIList. The policy of this list is to avoid "ethnic" humor or any form of wit at the expense of individuals or sensitive groups. There may have been a few lapses, but I'll try to enforce the policy strictly in the future. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Mar 85 17:24:33-PST From: Andrei Broder Subject: Seminar - Cheating Husbands and Other Stories (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] This AFLB talk might interest AI and systems people as well. - Andrei 3/14/85 - Yoram Moses(Stanford) Cheating Husbands and Other Stories: A Case Study of Knowledge, Action, and Communication We present variants of the cheating husbands puzzle in order to illustrate the subtle relationship between knowledge and action in a distributed environment. We examine the state of knowledge of a message that a group of wives achieves as a function of how the message is communicated. We analyze how the states of knowledge arising in the different circumstances may affect the wives' ability to act and the success of their actions in achieving their stated goals. This will be a recreational AFLB. This work is joint with Danny Dolev of the Hebrew University and Joe Halpern of IBM San Jose. ***** Time and place: March 14, 12:30 pm in MJ352 (Bldg. 460) ****** [AIList does not, of course, endorse activities of cheating husbands. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Tue 12 Mar 85 11:26:53-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - The Limits of Calculative Rationality (CSLI) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] CSLI COLLOQUIUM Speaker: Hubert Dreyfus University of California, Berkeley Title: From Socrates to Expert Systems: The Limits of Calculative Rationality. Time and Place: March 14, 1985, 4:15, Redwood Hall, rm. G-19 Abstract: An examination of the general epistemological assumptions of artificial intelligence with special reference to recent work in the development of expert systems. I will argue that expert systems are limited because of a failure to recognize the real character of expert intuitive understanding. Expertise is acquired in a five-step process; only the first of which uses representations involving objective features and strict rules. A review of the successes and failures of various specific expert systems confirms this analysis. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 15-MAR-1985 05:19 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a023946; 15 Mar 85 2:30 EST Date: Thu 14 Mar 1985 22:33-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #34 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Fri, 15 Mar 85 05:15 EST AIList Digest Friday, 15 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 34 Today's Topics: AI Sites - Universities, Linguistics - Hangul, Literature - The Journal for the Integrated Study of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Applied Epistemology, Policy - Humor, Humor - AI Joke Contest & Eliza & Political/Mathematical Humor & ))) & Greedy Algorithms, Course - Nonexistent Objects and Fiction (CSLI) Seminars - Knowledge-Based Software Development at Kestrel (SU) & Computational Geometry, Rewrite Rules, etc. (PARC) & Shape from Function (MIT) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday, 14 Mar 85 12:55:07 EST From: jaffe (elliot jaffe) @ cmu-psy-a Subject: Universities and AI About 4 months ago on AILIST I remember a discussion about which universities were doing AI work and a general listing was given. 1) Can I get a copy of that set of lists? 2) Does anybody have any new information to enter? Elliot Jaffe Jaffe@CMU-PSY-A.ARPA [I'll send Elliot a copy of the list of sites receiving AIList. See also the November 1983 issue of IEEE Spectrum; it misses some sites -- SRI, for example -- but the chart of academic and nonacademic sites on pp. 59-68 is impressive. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 14 Mar 85 08:14 PST From: Kay.pa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Hangul The word "Hangul" (not "Hungal") may refer to a dialect, but that is not its main use. It is the name of the wonderfully ingenious writing system that Korean has, named after the emperor who invented it. The system is interpretable both phonemically and syllabically and is a gem of design. There are the same number of good automated translation systems for this as for every other natural language, namely none. --Martin Kay. [The last IEEE Computer featured oriental text entry systems; I remember seeing Korean discussed, so perhaps there are some appropriate references. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 08:31:31 pst From: Vaughan Pratt Subject: A place for everything [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I just received volume 1, number 1 of The Journal for the Integrated Study of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Applied Epistemology. It is described as "a quarterly journal published by Communication and Cognition-AI at the State University of Ghent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium." I imagine they will soon tire of allusions to Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," if they haven't already. -v ------------------------------ Date: 14 Mar 85 15:30:43 EST From: Tim Subject: Policy on Humor [...The policy of this list is to avoid "ethnic" humor or any form of wit at the expense of individuals or sensitive groups. There may have been a few lapses, but I'll try to enforce the policy strictly in the future. -- KIL] Unfortunately, if you really intend to stick strictly to this policy, I'm afraid you will end up posting no humor at all, as it seems there are very few statements and even fewer jokes which no group finds offensive. Do you realize that, according to this policy, you cannot publish any of the various humorous versions of Little Red Riding Hood? I mourn the demise of humor on AIList. Twinerik ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 16:31:33 pst From: newton@cit-vax (Mike Newton) Subject: rape and humor Though rape is a barbaric act, censorship is a far worse crime for it affects so many more. Do the people who object so much about the "polly nomial" story complain so loudly w.r.t. jokes about murder, or, worse, war? There is a fundamental difference between an act and writing about an act. If jokes about a subject are banned, how long is it before satire about the same subject is banned? Then there is only a small step fiction is banned. Next comes fact, research... mike ps: I realize that the above is a viewpoint some will find objectionable. Arguments about my first sentence had better be convincing: Though due to my sex it would be hard to rape me, I have been shot, mugged and robbed -- one of these incidents still bothers me noticeably -- yet I do NOT think that jokes about these subjects should be censored. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 14 Mar 85 11:11:57-PST From: Wilkins Subject: in defense of humor I am all for decent people expressing opinions and running the government, but being oversensitive can take the fun out of life. Any reasonable definition of rape should include the fact that the raper and rapee are human or at least members of the animal kingdom. I find it hard to be offended when polynomials are raped, however. We all know mathematical/computer language is colorful, but using a verb that would be in poor taste when applied to humans does not mean its in poor taste when applied to abstract data structures. For example, killing a line in your editor is not considered murder. While the story in question did say Polly Nomial was a "paragon of womanly virtue", it never said she was a woman or was human, so one can easily assume she is a polynomial. The story implies that Curly Pi is a "common fraction" which is consistent with these characters being abstract mathematical being. This story was good humor, though admittedly non-mathematicians might not appreciate it and transfer it into a human domain and be offended. I personally enjoyed getting the chance to read it. Striking a blow for more humor and fun in life, David ------------------------------ Date: Tue 12 Mar 85 13:26:45-EST From: Bob Hall Subject: AI Jokes RESULTS [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] Q. "What do you get when you cross an expert system with an orangutan?" A. "Another Harry Reasoner." Yes folks, that's it, the winner of the first annual AI Jokes Contest. The winner has been awarded his lovely blue and gold Cal T-shirt. We got many entries (single digits, though), which were much appreciated. Highlights follow. The names have been withheld just in case the authors are sensitive about being associated with their entries. (Anyone who wants explicit credit should send me mail.) Consensus honorable mentions: Q. "What did the Apple 5e say when a human fell on it?" A. "Ureka! (sic) I've discovered gravity!" Q. "How many expert systems does it take to screw in a light bulb?" A. "If they're so smart, why don't they know?" ******************************************************************* Now that you've got a feel for the competition, ANNOUNCING AI JOKES II: THE WRATH OF CONS Send your entry for the next, bigger, better AI Jokes Contest to either me (rjh%mit-oz@mit-mc) or US mail directly to AI JOKES II: THE WRATH OF CONS 1717 Allston Way Berkeley, CA 94703 Terms are the same: if yours is the funniest, as judged by an impartial panel of natural intelligences, you win your choice of a T-shirt from one of the following schools: U.C. Berkeley Cal State, Hayward Chabot College, Hayward MIT Harvard Leland Stanford Junior College Doug Flutie's alma mater Enter Now!! (Include shirt size and school preference) ******************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: 14 March 1985 0512-EST From: Jeff Shrager@CMU-CS-A Subject: Security the MIT way [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] If you have access to MIT-OZ, try sending a message to their operator from a not-logged-in task. In order to handle dial-in randoms who tend to do operator sends (and used to get no reply) they've now piped the operator's message buffer through an Eliza system, which proceeds to "analyze" the luser's problems. Hack Hack. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 6 Mar 85 08:57:18-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Political/Mathematical Humor From a WORKS message by Greg Kuperberg (harvard!talcott!gjk or talcott!gjk@topaz): "2*x^5-10*x+5=0 is not solvable by radicals." -Evariste Galois. ------------------------------ Date: Sun 24 Feb 85 14:13:34-PST From: Steven Tepper Subject: Found: right parens [Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I found a sequence of right parentheses lying around on the Ethernet. They look like they might have fallen off the end of somebody's Lisp program. If you lost some and think these might be yours, send me a message identifying them. Also, has anyone seen a matched pair of asterisks in Gacha 10? I can get new ones, but this particular pair had sentimental value. ------------------------------ Date: Sun 24 Feb 85 15:31:58-PST From: Gustavo Fernandez Subject: RE: Found: right parens [Forwarded from the Stanford AI bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Sorry, I have not seen your asterisks, but please! Does anyone know where the daily bit buckets are stored? I lost some data Thusday night by doing one too many left shift on a program I was writing on SCORE and I was wondering whether I might be in some way able to recover the bit strings. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Gus Fernandez FERNANDEZ@SCORE ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 85 17:57:17 est From: Walter Hamscher Subject: Graduate Student Lunch *SEMINAR* [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] Place: *THIRD FLOOR THEORY PLAYROOM* Date: Friday, March 8 Time: 12 Noon Hosts: Isaac Kohane and Mike Wellman COMPUTER AIDED CONCEPTUAL ART REVOLTING SEMINAR SERIES presents GREEDY ALGORITHMS FOR REALLY HARD PROBLEMS Mike Generous Penny Weise Dahlia Fulisch Perhaps the best known greedy algorithm is Kruskal's Minimum Spanning Tree algorithm. The concept of "greedy algorithm" is here generalized to provide a framework in which any problem can be solved with bounded error in constant time. The simplest such algorithm is a stupefyingly straightforward algorithm for finding the maximum of a list of numbers: take the maximum of the first two elements of the list. The bounded error arises from the provability of the correctness criterion "We could have done worse!". The Satisfiability problem for the predicate calculus is solved trivially, because we have shown conclusively elsewhere that we are Satisfied with predicate calculus. The framework applies also to meta-problem solving (i.e. "What problem should we sic the greedy algorithm on next"), as we will demonstrate by applying it to the problem of generating grant proposals. If there is time, we will give other examples involving Single-State Automata (Moronotrons) and Extremist Graph Theory. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 14 Mar 85 16:42:26-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Course - Nonexistent Objects and Fiction (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT Graduate Seminar - Philosophy ``Nonexistent Objects and the Semantics of Fiction'' Edward N. Zalta, CSLI The problem of how it is we can think about and tell stories about what does not exist is one of the foremost problems in the study of intentionality. We'll begin by asking what an analysis of fiction, and stories in general, ought to do, and then quickly review the problems facing the semantic analysis of sentences about nonexistent objects developed by Meinong, Russell, Quine, and the free logicians. We then turn to a careful presentation of both Terence Parsons' neo-Meinongian views (developed in his book: Nonexistent Objects) and my own, which has a Meinongian flavor. There will be a comparison of how the language and logic of these theories represent the meaning of English sentences about nonexistents. Then we shall ask whether these theories provide a better representation, and do a better job of analyzing fiction in general, than some current alternatives, some of which do without nonexistents (Plantinga, Searle, Fine, Lewis) and some of which appeal to some sort of abstract objects (Kripke, van Inwagen, Wolterstorff). We'll conclude the course with a brief examination of how these axiomatized theories fit into a larger picture of the semantics of language and intensionality. The first meeting of this seminar will be held in the Venture Hall trailers conference room, Tuesday April 2, at 1:15. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 11 Mar 85 17:04:08-PST From: Paula Edmisten Subject: Seminar - Knowledge-Based Software Development at Kestrel (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] DATE: Friday, March 15, 1985 LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical and Organic Chemistry TIME: 12:05 SPEAKER: Douglas R. Smith, Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA. ABSTRACT: KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AT KESTREL INSTITUTE Kestrel Institute is a non-profit organization with a two-fold purpose: Research and graduate education in computer science. Its main research goal is the formalization and incremental automation of software development. Towards this goal, we carry out research in such areas as machine intelligence, very-high-level languages, algorithm design, transformation and synthesis, software project management, and knowledge-base programming environments. I'll present an overview of current and planned research at Kestrel Institute and describe our experience with the DSE system, a knowledge-base programming environment in routine use. The bulk of the talk will examine two research themes at Kestrel: Knowledge compilation and, The use of schemes in program synthesis. Knowledge compilation involves transforming declarative knowledge plus directions for its useage into efficient procedural form. The uses of program schemes and strategies for instantiating them include knowledge compilation and the design of algorithms from specifications. Paula ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 85 15:53:13 PST From: yao.pa@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Seminars - Computational Geometry, Rewrite Rules, Etc. (PARC) [Excerpted from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The next BATS [Bay Area Theory Seminar] will take place on Friday, March 15 at Xerox PARC (in the auditorium). [...] -- Frances SCHEDULE 10 a.m. Ronald Graham (AT&T Bell Lab): Remarks on The Finite Radon Transform 11 a.m. Frances Yao (Xerox PARC): A General Approach to d-Dimensional Geometric Queries 1 p.m. Andrew Yao (Stanford): Separating the Polynomial-Time Hierarchy by Oracles 2 p.m. Joe Halpern (IBM): What Does It Mean for Rewrite Rules to be "Correct"? 3 p.m. Andrei Broder (DEC): Vote Early and Vote Often; The Distributed Lottery Problem [...] A General Approach to d-Dimensional Geometric Queries Frances Yao Xerox Palo Alto Research Center ABSTRACT Research results in the area of computational geometry have been largely limited to problems concerning simple relations between objects in the plane. In this talk, we shall define what we call a "generic query" in d-space, and present a uniform solution to it. As examples of application, the nearest-neighbor query in d-space can be solved in linear space and sublinear time; the pairwise intersection problem for polytopes and the construction of minimum spanning trees in d-space can be solved in linear space and subquadratic time. What does it mean for rewrite rules to be "correct"? Joe Halpern IBM San Jose Research Center ABSTRACT We consider an operational definition for FP via rewrite rules. What would it mean for such a definition to be correct? We certainly want the rewrite rules to capture correctly our intuitions regarding the meaning of the primitive functions. We also want there to be enough rewrite rules to compute the correct meaning of all expressions, but not too many, thus making equivalent two expressions that should be different. And what does it mean for there to be "enough" rules? We give a formal criterion for deciding whether there are enough rewrite rules and show that our rewrite rules meet that criterion. We develop powerful techniques to prove these results, that involve imposing a notion of types on the untyped language FP, and then using techniques of typed lambda-calculus theory. (Note: This talk is completely self-contained. No previous knowledge of FP or lambda calcuclus will be assumed.) ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 1985 22:11 EST (Tue) From: "Daniel S. Weld" Subject: Seminar - Shape from Function (MIT) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] AI Revolving Seminar Tues 3/19/85 4:00pm 8th floor playroom SHAPE FROM FUNCTION VIA MOTION ANALYSIS with Application to the Automatic Design of Orienting Devices for Vibratory Part Feeders TOMAS LOZANO-PEREZ This talk explores the premise that a device's function can be characterized by how it interacts with other objects. I focus on devices for which some aspect of their function can be characterized in terms of constraints they place on the motions of objects. Commonplace examples of this class of device abound; any office is full of them: chairs, cups, rulers, telephones, cabinets, bookends, etc. In fact, the shape of most objects is constrained by the legal motions of that object and of objects it must interact with. I suggest a representation for the function of this class of objects in terms of motion contraints. These possible--motion constraints are expressed as an abstract diagram. Combinations of these diagrams serve both in describing a device's function and in designing devices with specified behavior. The design problem for these devices is a kind of inverse of the motion planning problem in robotics. In both cases we know the shape of the moving part. In motion planning, we are given the obstacles and we must find a legal path between the specified origin and destination. In our view of design, however, we are given the desired motion (actually a range of possible motions) and are asked to find a legal shape of the obstacle, that is, the device. We illustrate our approach to design with a detailed case study of mechanical part feeders, a class of real devices with an interesting and direct relationship between shape and function. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 16-MAR-1985 00:15 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a000255; 15 Mar 85 21:10 EST Date: Fri 15 Mar 1985 17:14-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #35 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Sat, 16 Mar 85 00:10 EST AIList Digest Saturday, 16 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 35 Today's Topics: Literature - Recent Articles, Seminars - The Berkeley PROLOG Machine (IBM-SJ) & Tools for Conceptual Modeling (Toronto) & Innate Linguistic Knowledge (UCB), Conferences - Intelligent Information Retrieval & ACM Northeast Regional Conference & System Sciences Software Track ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 13 Mar 1985 17:27-CST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles Cybernetics: Theory and Applications Hemisphere, New York, N. Y. 1983 Donald C. Gause Gary Rogers Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence 339-360 Ya Z. Tsypkin The theory of adaptive and learning systems 57-89 ____________________________________________________________________________ Zh. Vychisl. Mat. i Mat. Fiz 24 (1984) no 9 1392-1401 I. V. Issev Design of pattern recognition and classification algorithms by the covering method (in Russian) ____________________________________________________________________________ Information Sciences 33 (1984) no. 3 197-207 Rudolf Kruse Statistical Estimation and Linguistic Data ____________________________________________________________________________ Kexue Tongbao (English Ed.) 29 (1984) no 7 861-866 Xin Zhan Wu On the classification entropy criterion in pattern recognition ____________________________________________________________________________ Figural Synthesis Erlbaum Hillsdale NJ 1984 David H. Foster Local and Global Computational Factors in Visual Pattern Recogniton ____________________________________________________________________________ Journal Multivariate Analysis 15 (1984) no 2 147-163 Richard A. Olshen, Louis Gordon Almost surely consistent nonparametric regression from recursive parrtitioning schemes ____________________________________________________________________________ Raoro Inform. Theor. 18 (1984) no 3 191-208 J. P. Jouannaud H. Kirchner Constructing a smallest simplification ordering ____________________________________________________________________________ Studia Logica 42 (1983) no 4 443-451 J. A. Kalman Condensed detachment as a rule of inference ____________________________________________________________________________ Engineering Cybernetics 21 (1983) no 5 107-115 V. M. Sumarokov System Modelling of Information Structures of Data BAses ____________________________________________________________________________ Communications, Pure and Applied Math 37 (1984) no 6 815-848 Jacob T. Schwartz Micha Sharir On the Piano Movers' Problem V. The case of a rod moving in three-dimensional space amidst polyhedral obstacles. ____________________________________________________________________________ Discrete and Applied Math 9 (1984) no 3 269-295 51 Walter Whitely, A correspondence between scene analysis and motions of frameworks ____________________________________________________________________________ Engineering Costs and Production Economics Volume 8 No 3 Dec 15 1984 Two Heuristic Methods for Grouping Inventory Items Page 211 ____________________________________________________________________________ Computer Decisions Volume 17 Number 1 jan 15 1985 Expert Systems Get Down to Business A. Lampert 138 ____________________________________________________________________________ Theoretical Computer Science Volume 34 NO 1-2 Nov 1985 T. Sato H. Tamaki Enumeration of Success Patterns in Logic Programs pp 227 ____________________________________________________________________________ The Institute April 1985 Volume 9 Number 4 Page 8 "Optical Crossbar Switch to be Developed" Work done on a 32 by 32 crossbar to implemented with optical switch technology Page 8 "VLSI called second-best for future architecture" Discussion of various architectures in Connection Machines and Lisp Machines. Page 9 "Reddy calls for Design Library to Help Build 'superchips'" Discussion of chip libraries and needs for special purpose computers and chips in AI work ____________________________________________________________________________ Infoworld March 18, 1985 Volume 7, Issue 11 "Pathfinder Aims at Resale" Pathfinder from KDS Corp of Wilmette has been announced which reads up to 256,000 facts and converts them into a set of rules. Designed to allow novices to devlop expert systems. Available on IBM PC with work being done on Apple II and Macintosh versions. The Apple and Macintosh versions will run the resulting expert system only and not be able to create new expert systems. ____________________________________________________________________________ The Artificial Intelligence Report Artificial Intelligence Publications 3600 West Bayshore Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA (415)-424-1447 Volume 2 Number 1 Describes various AI work at SRI-International Knowledge Based Systems: Prospector and HYDRO Natural Language Processing Planning Problem-Solving and Deduction: electromechanical system assembly and disassembly planning, distributed AI Image Processing Computer Vision Distributed Data Management Automatic Program Syunthesis Inference Machine Architecture SHAKEY: mobile robot STRIPS LIFER: programmable natural language system TEAM: natural language and databased QA4, QLISP, AI languages LADDER: distributed data base access MEDINQUIRY: medical patient management and clinical research Robotics Lab the problem of identifying objects in a jumble of parts using multiple arms arc welding visual inspection AI and the Military expert system for loading military cargo planes AALPS ADVISOR: system used by planes returning from missions FLIREX: Flight rules expert system SAMPL: mission planning CHATTER: natural language system Advanced Computer Systems Department Systems Life Cycle Management, computer architecture, simulation, Computer System Performance Prediction, Data Base system Design, Office Automation System feasibility studies of expert systems in monitoring earth-orbiting spacecraft for malfunctions and planning of space missiONS expert system for the design of consumer good packaging, loan application checking Financial Applications International Bank Loan Evaluations, Commercial Loan Evaluation, Financial Planning, Insurance Underwriting, Financial Product sales, Insurance Claims Processing SRI has developed a PC based expert system. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 16:16:57 PST From: IBM San Jose Research Laboratory Calendar Reply-to: IBM-SJ Calendar Subject: Seminar - The Berkeley PROLOG Machine (IBM-SJ) [Excerpted from the IBM-SJ Calendar by Laws@SRI-AI.] IBM San Jose Research Lab 5600 Cottle Road San Jose, CA 95193 Wed., March 20 Computer Science Seminar 10:40 A.M. THE BERKELEY PROLOG MACHINE Cafe. A The Berkeley Prolog Machine (PLM) is a co-processor architecture designed for efficient execution of Prolog programs. It is the first prototype of a logic processor for our Aquarius heterogeneous MIMD machine. Currently, it is attached to an NCR/32 system which provides the memory and I/O subsystem as well as processing power for other operations not suited to the functional unit of the PLM (e.g., floating point operations). This paper describes the architecture of the PLM and some aspects of its implementation. We conclude with an analysis of some performance data obtained from a simulation of the design. Prof. A. M. Despain, Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley Host: G. Langdon, Jr. (LANGDON@IBM-SJ) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Mar 85 13:19:09 est From: Voula Vanneli Subject: Seminar - Tools for Conceptual Modeling (Toronto) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Tuesday, March 19, at 2 p.m., SF 3201 Hannu Kangassalo University of Tampere, Finland "Comic - A Project for Developing Tools for Conceptual Modelling and Information Construction" Abstract: The goal of the project is to develop concepts, methods and software tools to support end users and data administrators in their work for developing a conceptual schema on a graphical workstation. A graphical language, Concept D contains two sublanguages, one for describing independent concept defninitions and one for describing the conceptual schema. The information given in the conceptual schema is stored into the data base from which it can be analyzed and manipulated for different purposes, e.g. for producing a data base schema. The presentation gives also the outline of the architecture of the comic-system which is being developed at the University of Tampere. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Mar 85 15:27:07 pst From: chertok%ucbcogsci@Berkeley (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Innate Linguistic Knowledge (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237B TIME: Tuesday, March 19, 11:00 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center (followed by) DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: Janet Dean Fodor, University of Connecticut and CSLI TITLE: ``A Formal Theory of Innate Linguistic Knowledge'' An infant must be innately provided with some sort of representational medium in which to record what he observes about his target language. It has occasionally been suggested that the formal properties of this mental metalanguage could be the source of universal properties of natural languages. This is quite different from the standard (= substantive) approach, which assumes that children are born with certain statements of the metalanguage innately tagged as true. I propose to take the formal approach seriously. That way to do so seems to be to try for a theory which accounts for ALL universals in the same way, i.e., solely on the basis of what can and cannot be expressed in the metalanguage. The attempt is very informative, regardless of whether it ultimately succeeds or fails. Success is by no means guaranteed, for the formal theory overthrows many familiar assumptions. For example, it can be shown to be incompatible (on standard assumptions about chil- dren and their linguistic input) with the existence of any con- straints on rule application or on derivational representa- tions. All the work of distinguishing well-formed from ill- formed sentences must be done by rules only. Constraints can determine the shape of the rules, but cannot tidy up after them if they overgenerate. It is easiest to see how to set about formulating grammars of this kind within the framework of GPSG, and it is encourag- ing to find that a number of universals do fall out as conse- quences of the GPSG formalism. But there are problems too. Syntactic features, in particular, create headaches for learna- bility. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 09:25:52 est From: rada@nlm-mcs (Roy Rada CSB) Subject: Conference - Intelligent Information Retrieval CALL FOR PAPERS Session(s) on Intelligent Information Retrieval are being organized for the upcoming "Expert Systems in Govern- ment Conference". Papers are requested on any of a wide variety of topics, such as adaptive document or query description, knowledge-bases to guide document search, and classification of documents via semantic parsing. The Conference is not restricted to Government-related work. If you are interested in submitting a paper or organizing a session, please contact Roy Rada at National Library of Medicine Bethesda, MD 20209 phone 301-496-2475 ARPA net: Rada@NLM Permission has been secured from the Editor Donald Kraft of the Journal of the American Society of Information Science (JASIS) to have the best papers considered for publication, perhaps as a special issue. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE CONFERENCE FLIER Expert Systems in Government Conference October 23-25, 1985 THE CONFERENCE objective is to allow the developers and implementers of expert systems in goverenment agencies to exchange information and ideas first hand for the purpose of improving the quality of existing and future expert systems in the government sector. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently been maturing so rapidly that interest in each of its various facets, e.g., robotics, vision, natural language, supercomputing, and expert systems, has acquired an increasing following and cadre of practitioners. [...] Additional information may be obtained from the Program Chairman: Dr. Kamal Karna MITRE Corporation W852 1820 Dolley Madison Boulevard McLean, Virginia 22102 Phone (703) 883-5866 ARPANET: Karna @ Mitre -- Roy Rada ------------------------------ Date: 13 Mar 1985 10:38-EST From: Brad Goodman Subject: Conference - ACM Northeast Regional Conference I am chairing the natural language session and especially encourage people to submit papers in that area. Thanks. -Brad Goodman CALL FOR PAPERS SECOND ANNUAL ACM NORTHEAST REGIONAL CONFERENCE "Integrating the Information Workplace: the Key to Productivity" 28-30 October 1985 Sheraton-Tara Hotel Framingham, Mass. and The Computer Museum Boston, Mass. The conference sessions are grouped into tracks corresponding to major areas of interest in the computer field. Papers are solicited for the Conference's Artificial Intelligence Track. The Track's program will emphasize "real world" approaches and applications of AI. Topics of interest include: - Expert Systems - Natural Language - Man-Machine Interface - Tools/Environment - A.I. Hardware - Robotics and Vision Papers are invited. Two copies of an abstract (maximum 500 words) should be submitted for review by April 1 to the Program Chairman, ACM Northeast Regional Conference, P.O. Box 499, Sharon, MA 02067. Three copies of the final paper, in camera-ready form, should be sent by July 1, 1985 to Dr. David S. Prerau, Track Chairman, Artificial Intelligence Track, ACM Northeast Regional Conference, GTE Laboratories Inc., 40 Sylvan Road, Waltham, MA. 02254. For additional information on the Conference, write: ACM Northeast Regional Conference P.O. Box 499 Sharon, MA. 02067 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Mar 85 07:46:44 EST From: "Bruce D. Shriver" Subject: Conference - System Sciences Software Track, Revised CALL FOR: Papers, Referees, Session Coordinators, Task Forces ============================================================= SOFTWARE TRACK of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences ======================================================================== HICSS-19 is the nineteenth in a series of conferences devoted to advances in information and system sciences. The conference will encompass develop- ments theory and practice in the areas of systems architecture, software, decision support systems, and knowledge-based systems. The conference is sponsored by the University of Hawaii and the University of Southwestern Louisiana in cooperation with the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. It will be held on Jan. 8-10, 1986 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Papers, referees, and session coordinators are solicited in the following areas: Software Design Tools, Techniques, and Environments Models of System and Program Behavior Testing, Verification, and Validation Professional Workstation Environments Alternative Language Paradigms Reuseability in Design and Implementation Knowledge-Based Systems Software Algorithm Analysis and Animation Visual Languages Authors please submit 250 word abstracts by May 1, 1985. Session and Task Force Coordinators should submit a 350 word proposal for the session or task force by Apr. 1, 1985. Referees should submit a list of the topics and the number of papers they are willing to review May 15, 1985. Authors should submit six (6) copies of the full paper (not to exceed 26 double-spaced pages including diagrams and references) by July 5, 1985 directly to: Bruce D. Shriver HICSS-19 Software Track Coordinator IBM T. J. Watson Research Center PO Box 218, Route 134 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (914) 945-1664 compmail+: b.shriver csnet: shriver.yktvmv@ibm-sj ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: CSVPI 18-MAR-1985 04:42 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a009317; 18 Mar 85 2:46 EST Date: Sun 17 Mar 1985 22:35-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #36 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Mon, 18 Mar 85 04:39 EST AIList Digest Monday, 18 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 36 Today's Topics: Applications - SIGART Special Issue on AI in Engineering, Programming - 4th-Generation Languages & AI Programming & KBES, Literature - Recent Articles & Principles of OBJ2, Seminar - Discourse Semantics for Temporal Expression (BBN) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Friday, 15 March 1985 22:17:23 EST From: Duvvuru.Sriram@cmu-ri-cive.arpa Subject: SIGART Special Issue on AI in Engineering The special issue on AI in engineering (SIGART Newsletter) will be available sometime in the middle of April or begining of May. It will be around 90+ SIGART pages and contains contributions from over sixty researchers from 6 countries. Copies of this special issue are sent to SIGART members at no extra cost. If you are not a member and interested in getting a copy then extra copies are available at $5.00 each from the SIGART-ACM office. Sriram ------------------------------ Date: 14 March 1985 0809-EST From: Dave Touretzky@CMU-CS-A Subject: 4th generation languages [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI. This was in response to a question about 4th-generation languages.] 4th generation languages are not programming languages in the usual sense. They allow you to define database files, process transactions against databases, and generate reports from them. For example, you can say "For every state, for every product we sell in that state, list the salesmen who sell that product, their annual sales, their commissions, and their office location, sorted by annual sales." The actual command language uses a slightly more complex syntax, but it's still pretty close to English. These systems are not just report writers. They allow you to extract, sort, copy, and update databases. They use clever hashing and indexing algorithms for fast retrieval. Thus, one can write substantial data processing applications in them, using their simple English-like commands, without ever learning how to "program". This is a far cry from conventional data processing as taught in universities, which emphasize languages like COBOL or PL/I. The database access algorithms used by 4th generation languages are more sophisticated than anything you would expect someone with a two or four year degree in data processing to come up with. Martin's complaint is based on the following scenario. A student is hired by a local DP shop and, for his first assignment, asked to generate a sales report. He goes off for a month and returns with a huge piece of PL/I code, nicely structured and commented, and mostly debugged, that does the job. But he could have done the same thing in two days if he'd just used RAMIS, or FOCUS, or one of the other 4th generation languages that run on IBM mainframes. Martin's point is valid. Much of routine DP programming is becoming obsolete -- except in the universities. Now, not all university CS programs are designed to produce data processing technicians. I don't think MIT or CMU teaches much COBOL these days. But your average rinky-dink CS department, which just graduated from punched cards a few years ago, would be wise to teach more than just COBOL or PL/I (or even Pascal) to its students if it wants them to be useful in the real world of DP. [Some other languages that James Martin cites in the March CACM are SAS, Natural, Ideal, Nomad, Application Factory, ADF, CNS, DMS, Mapper, and [for DB query only] QBE. He excludes Smalltalk and VisiCalc. C is 3rd-generation and LISP is 5th-generation. Martin seems interested only in languages for commercial DP. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Mar 85 21:03:19 PST From: Richard K. Jennings Subject: AI Programming In response to benefits of AI versus 'common' software: Our application is to improve the efficiency of a huge, real time, reliable, control system. Based upon about a year's worth of research, my opinion [not yet that of my employers .. but hopefully soon to be that of my immediate bosses] is that arguing about the utility of Expert Systems is like arguing about the utility of the "if" statement in a programming language. There are situations where they are useful, and there are applications where they are not. In a simple, overengineered application they look great -- in tough problems they provide no panacea. The question to ask is how should they be used, and how can we use them to do our job. First I will describe what we initially thought. Then I will transition to my current view. Like everybody else, we read the standard AI texts, visited the AI demo's, and read the AI and other journals -- all talking about specialized expert systems that configure vaxes, identify fingerprints, prospect for oil, fix locomotives. We said: let us go out and find such an application within our organization. We found it, and my boss sent me out to develop a briefing to convince the world that it was what should be done. Based upon, in hindsight, some poorly thought out logic from one of our contractors -- we thought to remove our dependance upon experts with expert systems. Is not that what happened in the above cases? We made an important and subtle mistake: expert systems should be targeted towards *people* not *areas* *of* *expertise*. This can be understood from two perspectives: 1) an expert system is only as good as the rules within, and they must continue to evolve, and 2) if the expert only uses the system a part of the time, then he never becomes proficient with it or the knowledge within it to use it effectively. In our case, we could have had one operator using 15+ different expert systems created by different contractors, with vastly different knowledge structures at one time. The difference between expert systems should now be clear: an expert system is tied to a person's job; commom software is tied to a specific technical area. There is a lot of common ground here, but the difference is distinct. Why? Anybody with experience with expert systems understands how quickly massive rule bases become unwieldy -- just like nested if statements. Keying expert systems to people keeps them small, and permits the integrity of the distributed knowledge base to be effectively managed. Our expert system became a network of distributed expert systems, mapped very closely to our current organizational structure. Our thinking was that individuals within an organization drive its evolution, and we should apply expert systems and let nature take its course. Our organization is a learning one, and so must be the entity we set up. The expert systems must contribute to flexibility and fluidity of the organization -- by permiting the programmer and the user to meld into one. People, once again, will be responsible for what their computer does. No one is advocating total elimination of all computers in favor of expert systems. We will have our share of big number crunchers. Personal expert systems will provide the interface to these machines in the terms meaningful to specific experts. Personal expert systems will also provide interfaces with each other. With these insights, we looked again at our organization. We also considered inexpensive commercially available products such as the PC-AT, and the PC-AT-II-jr due out this summer with a 600MB removable optical disk. After some analysis of what our experts were actually doing most of the time, our transitional approach became clear: 1) use off-the-shelf micros to automate the routine tasks that micros do better than experts and 2) slip in expert system technology to these PC's to permit the experts to easily offload all their well understood "routine" tasks and 3) put all these machines into a network which permits expert systems to talk to each other under the supervision of expert people. We can also build "learning systems" by extending this approach. I welcome comments on this matter; especially those that are critical (but not abusive). Richard Jennings Arpa: jennings@Aerospace AFSCF/XRP AFSCF.XRP@AFSC-HQ PO 3430 Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3430 AV: 799-6427 comm: 408 744-6427 ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 15 March 1985 22:37:58 EST From: Duvvuru.Sriram@cmu-ri-isl1.arpa Subject: KBES - comments This is in reference to Goodhart's comments on expert systems. Knowledge-Based Expert Systems (KBES) are supposed to differ from conventional programming languages in the following manner: 1. Completeness : Knowledge in a KBES can be incrementally added, while it is very difficult to make any changes to a conventional program. 2. Uniqueness: A conventional program is supposed to give an unique answer for a certain input data. KBES can come up with a number of possible solutions, ranked in a certain order. 3. Sequencing: In a KBES sequencing does not matter. The above differences can be clearly seen in a production-based expert system, since the knowledge tends to be separate from the inference mechanism. The production system programming can be viewed as a different programming methodology. Production system programming is also closely related to the decision table approach used in the early 70's. Only when an EXPERT'S knowledge is included in the knowledge-base we have an KBES. Otherwise we are talking about knowledge-based systems. Even your algorithmic program can be viewed as a knowledge-based system; only it doesn't have the specialist's knowledge. Any decent (engineering) KBES would combine the specialist's knowledge with the algorithmic knowledge. Building a KBES is quite a painful task. Before you venture into building one, study the pros and cons properly. Make sure that proper experts are available. Regarding inexact inferences, experts will never say anything with 100% certainty. Hence a KBES should handle uncertain information. [A different viewpoint is expressed in a Consultants in Information Technology study done in late 1983 for the British Alvey Committee (as reported in Expert Systems, vol. 1, no. 1, July 1984, pp. 19-20). They conclude that expert systems are easier to construct than is generally believed, and that academic concerns about search, conflict resolution, and uncertain knowledge are largely irrelevant to the commercial expert systems now under development. (These systems generally avoid applications that require tentative hypotheses or must deal with uncertain data other than the user dialog.) -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 1985 08:53-EST From: leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Recent Articles Electronics Week March 4, 1985 page 77-78 Announcement of Timm, an expert system development kit for the PC. Electronics Week March 11, 1985 page 65-66 Describes work on testability and testing of electronic circuits using AI. Part of a larger article on the military's new push for reliability. I just received an announcement of a journal called "New Generation Computing." Cost of a subscription is $96.00 to be obtained from Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. Attn: D. Emin 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010 They also are willing to send out sample issues. Table of Contents: Volume 2 No 3 Preface: Communication and Knowledge Engineering I. Toda Efficient Unification over Infinite Terms J. Jaflar Fair, Biased and Self-Balancing Merge Operators: Their Specification and Implementation in Concurrent Prolog, E. Shapiro and C. Mierowsky A Multiport Page-Memory Architecture and a Multiport Disk-Cache System Y. Tanaka Functional Programming with Streams-Part II, T. Ida and J. Tanaka ORBIT: A Parallel Computing Model of Prolog H. Yasuhara and K. Nitadori Serialization of Process Reduction in Concurrent Prolog A. J. Kusalik The following are NTIS publications noted in SIGPLAN (Volume 20 Number 3 March 1985). Prices are paper copy prices. PROLOG Programming Language. 1974-August 1984 (Citations from the INSPEC: Information Services for the Physics and Engineering Communities Data Base) PB84-874775 $35.00 Grasp; Uma Proposta Para Extensao Do Lisp (In Portugese) N84-27463/8 $4.50 Kanji PROLOG Programming System (In Japanese) Also can be found in Mitsubishi Denki Giho Volume 58 n6 p 9-13 1984 PB84-218197) $11.50 Enhanced Prolog for Industrial Applications Same article as above page 5-8 PB84-218197 $11.50 The Artificial Intelligence Report Volume 2 No 2 Discussion of AI and the Personal Computer by Esther Dyson Discussion of Air Force new AI Consortium involving Syracuse University, University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY at Buffalo; Rensselaer Polytechnic; Clarkson University; Colgate University; University of Massachussetts Cognitive Systems Inc.: System for portfolio analysis AI at Sperry Review of Hewlett Packards Integrated Personal Computer Agreement between Inference Corp and Lockheed Corporation Reviews of AI growth: AI is growing at 50% a year, 53 million in 1983 and $142 million in 1984; 70 million in Lisp Machines sale for 1984 and in 1989 310 million in Lisp Machines; natural language systems did 16 million in sales with 200 million in 1989 AI company percentage break down by state: California 30 per cent, Massachusetts 24 per cent; New York; 12 per cent; Michigan and Florida eight per cent each; New Jersey 5 per cent and Texas 3 percent Gartner Group estimates $183 million in Lisp machine sales broken down by company: Symbolics 88 million Lisp Machine, Inc 37 million Xerox 35 million Texas Instruments 23 million A series of AI titles available from National Bureau of Standards is available for $100.00 total from Business/Technology Books Expert Systems: Principles and Case Studies Reviews Artificial Intelligence Report Volume 2 Number 3 AI at NASA: Lists research activities at various centers of NASA. A lot of work is done in robotics for space applications and space station as well as basic research in many areas of research. Current Projects include: Lisp Machine for space applications, smart checklist for procedural execution which knows about human factors pilot training system; life support system controller; visual pattern recognition for interpretation of scanning electron microscope pictures of airborn sulfuric acid particles; aircraft design expert system; system to assist helicopter crews; pilots associate An expert system has been developed to assist in monitoring Halley's Comet. List of Lisp and Prolog vendors for the PC including reviews of some products. Description of project to replace harbor and river pilots on Japanese ships. Dec has signed agreements with the following vendors to jointly market products: SRL+ and PLUME from Carnegie Group PROLOG II from Prologia GCLISP from Gold Hill Computers ART from Inference Corporation Agreement between Sumitomo Electric Industries to market Silogic's Knowledge Workbench in Japan AI area breakdown of papers submitted to 1985 IJCAI Expert Systems 111 Natural Language 99 Knowledge Representation 77 Learning and Knowledge Acquisition 75 Perception 61 Automated Reasoning 49 social implications of AI 4 Geographic Breakdown US 460 Europe 150 Asia 79 Canada 29 ------------------------------ Date: Thu 14 Mar 85 16:42:26-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Report - Principles of OBJ2 [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] NEW CSLI REPORT A new CSLI Report by Kokichi Futatsugi, Joseph Goguen, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud, and Jose Meseguer, ``Principles of OBJ2'' (Report No. CSLI-85-22), has been published. To obtain a copy of this report write to David Brown, CSLI, Ventura Hall, Stanford 94305 or send net mail to Brown at SU-CSLI. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Mar 1985 15:10-EST From: AHAAS at BBNG.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Discourse Semantics for Temporal Expression (BBN) [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] The next BBN Artificial Intelligence seminar will be at 10:30 AM on Tuesday March 19, in the 2nd floor large conference room at 10 Moulton St. Erhard Hinrichs of Stanford and Ohio State wil speak on "A Discourse Semantics for Temporal Expressions in English". His abstract follows: Apart from the semantic properties of tenses, temporal conjunctions, and temporal adverbials in discourse, I will discuss the contribution of Aktionsarten to the shift of reference time. Adopting the classification of Aktionsarten into states, activities, accomplishments, and achievements suggested in Vendler(1967), only accomplishments and achievements lead to the introduction of a new reference point, which moves the time frame of a narrative forward, whereas states and activities are ordered with respect to previously introduced reference points and therefore do not move the time frame of the narrative. These properties of Aktionsarten turn out to be relevant for the analysis of both tenses and temporal conjunctions. The semantics of temporal frame adverbials in the sense of Bennett/Partee(1972) can best be accounted for by means of a reference point scoreboard, which is designed to keep track of context information. I will demonstrate how this approach to frame adverbials can acount for phenomena such as restricted quantification and reference time nesting. I will further suggest how to incorporate the interpretation of temporal expressions in discourse into the framework of discourse representation structure (DRS) developed by Kamp(1981). I propose to augment DRS theory by a modified version of the system of event structures proposed in Kamp(1979). However, unlike Kamp's original structures, the event structures I am proposing offer a formal implementation of the three-dimensional tense logic of Reichenbach(1947). ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** From: COMSAT 19-MAR-1985 23:34 To: JOSLIN,MINDELJL,ROACH,FOX Subj: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Received: from sri-ai.arpa by csnet-relay.arpa id a009337; 19 Mar 85 17:06 EST Received: from SRI-AI.ARPA by SRI-AI.ARPA with TCP; Tue 19 Mar 85 13:04:14-PST Date: Tue 19 Mar 1985 10:50-PST Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V3 #37 To: AIList@SRI-AI Received: from rand-relay by vpi; Tue, 19 Mar 85 23:30 EST AIList Digest Tuesday, 19 Mar 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 37 Today's Topics: Expert Systems - RULEMASTER Language, Humor - ))) & Sesame Street FA, Policy - Censorship & Rape, Seminars - Social Effects of Computing (SU) & Expert Systems in China & TUILI (SU) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 18 Mar 85 10:42:55 EST From: Mary.Lou.Maher@CMU-RI-CIVE Subject: RULEMASTER Language Has anyone heard of the RULEMASTER language for building expert systems? It is an inductive system; i.e it learns rules from examples, can interface with lisp, pascal, c, or fortran, and can access databases. It was developed under the direction of Donald Michie and sold by Radian Corp. I am considering going to take their tutorial course and would like to know if anyone has heard of or used this language. ------------------------------ Date: Sat 16 Mar 85 04:47:58-CST From: Werner Uhrig Subject: RE: Found: right parens RE: Sorry, I have not seen your asterisks, but please! Does anyone know where the daily bit buckets are stored? I lost some data Thusday night by doing one too many left shift on a program I was writing on SCORE and I was wondering whether I might be in some way able to recover the bit strings. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Formerly, the NSA sent all dropped bits to the shredder, but these days they are transported nightly via Federal Express to MCC where they are trying to solve the problems that escaped the rest of y'all. Earlier this week a comment was overheard between two members of a visiting Russian delegation to Texas' high-tech city: "Dammit, comrade, they look all alike." I no longer wonder what they were refering to. [Hey, if you think this is lousy humour, watch David Letterman sometimes. I figure Johnny Carson supports him to justify his own whopper of a salary] ------------------------------ Date: 15 Mar 85 19:01:21 EST From: Carl.Ebeling@CMU-CS-UNH Subject: Sesame Street FA [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] I was watching Sesame Street today (getting the kid started early) and it appears that they are teaching some beginning theory. They had a box that accepted only the letter 'A'. Next week they're going to cover regular expressions and the Pumping Lemma. ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 15-Mar-85 11:05:43-GMT From: DIANA HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) <"[140,153]%edxa"@ucl-cs.arpa> Subject: Censoring jokes about rape [Though rape is a barbaric act, censorship is a far worse crime for it affects so many more.......] I'm not going to answer your first point because, like you, I have never been the victim of rape and hence cannot compare the effects of rape with those of censorship. But I will just say that FEAR of rape has profoundly affected the lives of at least as many people as censorship; indeed, it even acts as a kind of censorship - a censorship of behaviour, of being afraid to say certain things, go to certain places, enter into certain kinds of relationship, even to be out of doors at certain times of the day. And to imply i) that rape is a normal part of human(male) behaviour, or ii) that the victim enjoyed it (the Poly Nomial joke does both) is to encourage an acceptance of attitudes that lead both to rape and to that fear. [There is a fundamental difference between an act and writing about an act. If jokes about a subject are banned, how long is it before satire about the same subject is banned? Then there is only a small step fiction is banned. Next comes fact, research...] There is actually a very big leap between banning jokes which casually make assumptions that are damaging to a group of people, and banning satire which questions people's assumptions. For example, you would probably not want to encourage the circulation of a joke that took it for granted that the victims of shooting, mugging or theft enjoyed the experience? In a sense, such jokes have already been censored - no-one even writes or tells them! [..Any reasonable definition of rape should include the fact that the raper and rapee are human or at least members of the animal kingdom. I find it hard to be offended when polynomials are raped, however.......] I'm very surprised that David enjoyed the joke, since he seems to have missed its main point. The point of the joke is that the language used to describe mathematical functions can be neatly turned into a description of a piece of human behaviour. It certainly would have been very funny, if it had not required the acceptance of the two appalling assumptions regarding rape that I noted above. Apropos, I should like to know how AIlist readers would have reacted if the joke had referred to 'Paul E Nomial', the 'epitome of masculine qualities', instead of a clearly female character? Would the joke still be funny? Would it still be less offensive than censorship? Diana Bental University of Edinburgh mail: bental%edxa@ucl-cs ------------------------------ Date: Fri 15 Mar 85 13:30:09-PST From: Ken Laws Subject: Reply to Diana Bental This discussion of morality on the network should really be conducted on Human-Nets, but I'll permit it to continue on AIList for awhile. (I.e., I can't resist putting in my two-cents worth.) Diana Bental claims that the Impure Mathematics story depicts Poly Nomial as enjoying being raped. I have reread the story and can find no support for this view (aside from a very cryptic remark about having "satisfied her hypothesis"). The entire tone of the story is just the opposite. She also claims that the humor in this piece is in its use of mathematical terms to describe human behavior. I think it equally supportable that the humor is in attributing human emotions to mathematical entities, as David Wilkins said. No doubt both viewpoints contribute to the mental gymnastics that we call humor. As for the offensiveness of this or any other text, I believe that people regard the public distribution of material offensive when 1) the depicted behavior is threatening to them or to their society, and 2) the material is likely to promote such behavior. (There is also a second category of offensive material, namely anything that one finds personally disgusting or frightening. In this case, however, we seldom object to others having access to the material unless it is forced upon them. My wife, for instance, used to have a very strong fear of snakes and worms, but she never felt that such subjects should be banned from the public media.) In support of this view, I submit that subjects we would find very offensive on TV would be perfectly acceptable in a scientific treatise or an X-rated videocassette -- the latter media are less likely to have an effect on social behavior. We perceive less threat in graphic portrayals of war attrocities than in Bugs Bunny hitting Elmer Fudd. Many people have recently found words such as "he" and "chairman" offensive even in technical texts, precisely because they believe that such language does affect our society adversely. I think we all all agree that point one is applicable here: rape is abhorrent. (The question of whether it is "normal human (male) behavior", in the absence of strong social sanctions, could be discussed at great length.) Ms. Bental's comments about the fear of rape being as harmful as censorship are well taken. The applicability of the second point is more doubtful. It may be true that if AIList sanctions such material, the material is more likely to be distributed through other channels having more effect on social behavior. This is far fetched, but is essentially identical to the reasoning behind much of the "sexist language" controversy. Rape is a sufficiently serious social problem that we must consider the possibility of such influences. Let's not get carried away, however. Impure Mathematics >>is<< funny, or at least witty, regardless of whether it has to be banned for social reasons. It does not "require the acceptance" of rape, and might be funny even if it did require a "willing suspension of disbelief". (Cartoons are often based on unbelievable premises.) The story is not intrinsically offensive, any more than is the word "he" or the biblical story of the flood; those of us who enjoyed it are not perverts or misogynists. -- Ken Laws ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Mar 85 15:23 IST From: Henry Nussbacher Subject: Humor I too cast my vote for humor. Not to repeat what others have said (Issue #34), I have found that computers have been filled with violence and I do not find it intentional. How often do we say 'Let me execute the program...', and realize what we are saying? In VM, when issuing the CMS START command, CMS replies with 'EXECUTION BEGINS...'. A non- computer person looking over your shoulder might be offended if they recently had a person they know executed. The Wylbur operating system uses the command KILL to force a user off the system, and VM uses the command FORCE to do the same. Not very nice language. When a user complains that their terminal is 'dead', they say that their terminal is 'hung'. Not very nice language, indeed. I have often heard users complaining that the system just 'died'. There used to be a regression analysis package that was extended with new functions and was named RAPE (and forced to change its name to RAPFE a few years later). I could go on and on. The point is the author of Poly Nomial didn't intend to glorify rape. No one in their right mind likes rape. But censoring humor is not going to stop rape. Henry Nussbacher Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot, Israel ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 18-Mar-85 14:55:12-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Jokes_P ? Curtis L. Goodhart's comments (Vol 3 # 33) are very important. AI is a male dominated domain and that should change. The situation is, of course, moving forward, but what we really need is a change of attitude. Gordon Joly gcj%edxa@uk.ac.ucl.cs ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Mar 85 13:45:24 pst From: wfi <@csnet-relay.arpa,@ucsc.CSNET (Wayne F. Iba):wfi@ucsc.CSNET> Subject: rape and censorship [ Though rape is a barbaric act, censorship is a far worse crime for it affects so many more. ] This might have some validity (and I emphasize might) if we were talking about censorship in the context of some government official dictating to various publishers what's to be printed and what's not. However, in the context of the present discussion, we are referring to editorial decisions. Any printed newspaper will print only what it wants with respect to anticipated reader reaction. They generally won't print items which might tend to reduce their readership. For Ken to withold such items in the future is not the same as censorship. Just as you can choose to read a newspaper or not, you can choose to read this newsletter. I am adding my voice to those requesting that such not be printed. Even if I am in the minority, I submit that if for no other reason, we refrain from printing such on the basis that computer science and AI are heavily male dominated to begin with, and that printing stories about rapes in a context which might be amusing, is no way to encourage female involvement. --wayne ------------------------------ Date: Fri 15 Mar 85 12:23:04-PST From: Gio Wiederhold Subject: Seminar - Social Effects of Computing (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] CS 300 -- Computer Science Department Colloquium -- Winter 1984-1985. Our final presentation will be on Tuesday, March 19, 1985 at 4:15 in Terman Auditorium Rob Kling Department of Information and Computer Science University of California, Irvine THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF COMPUTERS, COMPUTING, AND COMPUTERIZATION Research on the social impacts of computing indicates few "deterministic" consequences of introducing computer-based systems into social settings such as organizations. Jobs may become more or less skilled; decisions may be "better" or more confused; power may shift to or from central administrators. Much depends upon the kinds of systems introduced, who controls them, and the particular practices and procedures that people develop to use the computer systems and the services that they support. The social consequences of computer use are often very "context sensitive." Moreover, computer-based systems which can be perfectable under static laboratory conditions and when supported by a rich array of resources may be very problematic when introduced into dynamic social settings, settings rife with social conflict, or settings where support resources are limited. This talk will examine some organizing ideas to help understand the context-sensitive character of computerization. One cluster of ideas is embodied in web models and these will be explained in the talk. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 18 Mar 85 12:19:29-PST From: Paula Edmisten Subject: Seminar - Expert Systems in China & TUILI (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] SPEAKER: Dr. Ru-qian Lu, Professor and Head of Department of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics, Academy of Science, Beijing, China ABSTRACT: This will be a combination of two talks: 1. DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERT SYSTEMS IN CHINA (SELF EXPLANATORY) 2. TUILI - A GENERAL PURPOSE TOOL FOR DESCRIBING EXPERT SYSTEMS (ABSTRACT BELOW) DATE: Friday, March 22, 1985 LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical and Organic Chemistry TIME: 12:05 Since the seventies, more and more people are involved in developing expert systems. But most of them are special-purpose systems, containing only knowledge and experiences of a special field, even of a special person (such as an experienced doctor of traditional Chinese Medicine). Despite the advances in the field of knowledge representation, general-purpose tools for describing expert systems are still rare and in the early stage of their development. In many cases, they are only new versions of existing special-purpose tools with minor extensions. Tuili (Tool for Universal Interactive Logical Inference) takes the generality as one of its important design goals. The main mechanism of its knowledge representation are production rules, but other mechanisms can be simulated as well. Here are the main characteristics of Tuili: 1. Not only predicates, but also predicate procedures are allowed in production rules. 2. The parameters of predicates and predicate procedures are pattern elements of different data types. 3. A new principle of semantic pattern matching is proposed. Users are allowed to define their own pattern matching rules. 4. Users can define their own probability functions, attribute functions and their propagation rules during the course of inference. 5. Rule bases and data bases are modular structured. 6. The control structure is represented as production rules, they form the meta-structure, which can be organized hirarhically to form a multi-level control structure. 7. The system provides a rich set of built-in control strategies to be chosen from by users. They can define their own strategies, too. At present, Tuili is being used to write an expert system for brain diseases and one for teaching traditional Chinese Medicine. Paula ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************