Subject: AIList Digest V4 #88

From: vtcs1::in% ([email-masked])
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 86 04:59:43 est

AIList Digest            Monday, 14 Apr 1986       Volume 4 : Issue 88

Today's Topics:
  Seminars - DADO/TREAT: Parallel Execution of Expert Systems (UTexas) &
    Inverse Method of Establishing Deducibility (SRI) &
    Perspectives, Prototyping, and Procedural Reasoning (CMU) &
    Improving Planning Efficiency (Rutgers) &
    Anaphora: Events and Actions (UPenn),
  Conference - AI Impacts at FAA, Date Change &
    Discourse Analysis &
    AI and Automatic Control

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 9 Apr 86 10:06:20 CST
From: Rose M. Herring <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - DADO/TREAT: Parallel Execution of Expert Systems (UTexas)

                      University of Texas

                  Computer Sciences Department

                           COLLOQUIUM

SPEAKER:                Daniel Miranker
                                Columbia University

TITLE:          DADO & TREAT:  A Sytem for the Parallel Execution of
                          Expert Systems

DATE:           Thursday, April 10, 1986
PLACE:          TAY 3.144
TIME:           11:00-12:00 noon

        The development of expert computer programs has moved out
of  the  research  lab  and  into a quickly developing commercial
field.  The development of computer architectures that are better
suited  for  executing  these programs has recently come into the
forefront of computer architecture research. Indeed, a new  term,
fifth generation computers, has been coined to describe these ar-
chitectures.
        This talk will describe  the  architecture  and  software
systems  of  a  recently  completed  parallel  computer, the DADO
machine, designed to accelerate expert systems written in produc-
tion  system  form.  The talk will also describe a new production
system matching algorithm that, although motivated by  the  algo-
rithmic  requirements of parallel computing, has been shown to be
better than the RETE match (the currently accepted  best  produc-
tion system algorithm), even in a sequential environment.

                  COFFEE AT 10:30 in TAY 3.128

------------------------------

Date: Thu 10 Apr 86 11:23:55-PST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Seminar - Inverse Method of Establishing Deducibility (SRI)

                    WHAT IS THE INVERSE METHOD?

                    Vladimir Lifschitz (VAL@SAIL)
                       Stanford University

                    11:00 AM, MONDAY, April 14
         SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228 (new conference room)

In 1964, the same year when J. A. Robinson introduced the resolution rule,
a Russian logician and philosopher, Sergey Maslov, published his four-page
paper, "An Inverse Method of Establishing Deducibility in Classical
Predicate Calculus".  Maslov's method is based on a major discovery in
proof theory which has remained largely unnoticed by logicians. The method
does not require that the goal formula be written in clausal or even
prenex form, and there may exist a possibility of applying it to
non-classical systems (e.g., modal). Computer programs based on the
inverse method are reported to be comparable, in terms of efficiency, to
those using resolution. The inverse method has been also applied to solving new
special cases of the decision problem for predicate logic, and it can serve as
a uniform approach to solving almost all known solvable cases.

In this talk I explain the idea of the inverse method on a simple example.

Note to visitors:  SRI now has stricter security rules and won't allow
people to just walk up to the AIC.  If you have any problems being admitted,
please call either me (Amy Lansky -- x4376) or Margaret Olender (x5923).

------------------------------

Date: 10 April 1986 1536-EST
From: Betsy [email-masked]
Subject: Seminar - Perspectives, Prototyping, and Procedural Reasoning (CMU)

Speaker:        David A. Evans, Dept. of Philosophy, CMU
Date:           Wednesday, April 23
Time:           11:30 - 1:00
Place:          5409 Wean Hall
Title:          Perspectives, prototyping, and procedural reasoning

In the special task of developing a consultation and tutoring
facility for the CADUCEUS expert system, it is necessary to
identify several perspectives over detailed diagnostic information,
which can be organized into meta-level knowledge structures that
reflect explicit procedures, contexts, and pragmatics, associated
with the task of explaining and justifying diagnostic inferences.
Such structures offer concrete interpretations of notions such as
prototypes (taken from cognitive science) and suggest constraints
that can be exploited in controlling discourses and procedural
reasoning.

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 86 13:18:38 EST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Seminar - Improving Planning Efficiency (Rutgers)

                        Machine Learning Colloquium

                                 REAPPR:
    Improving planning efficiency via local expertise and reformulation

               Bresina, J.L., Marsella, S.C., and Schmidt, C.F.
                            Rutgers University

                         11 AM, April 22, Tuesday
                             #423, Hill Center

                                Abstract

We discuss planning within the problem reduction paradigm.  Within this
paradigm, a key issue is handling subproblem interactions.  We point out the
advantages of problem reduction over goal reduction (which characterizes most
previous planning systems).  We introduce an implemented planning system -
REAPPR - which extends the problem reduction paradigm to capture and
efficiently utilize expert planning knowledge.  The features of REAPPR
include: (i) potential parallelism, (ii) local control information, (iii)
flexible problem reduction, and (iv) reformulations.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 Apr 86 12:19 EST
From: Tim Finin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Anaphora: Events and Actions (UPenn)

Forwarded From: Ethel Schuster <Ethel@UPenn> on Thu 10 Apr 1986 at 20:22

            TOWARDS A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF ANAPHORA IN DISCOURSE:

                        REFERENCE TO EVENTS AND ACTIONS

                                Ethel Schuster

                                   Abstract

When  people  talk  or  write,  they refer to things, objects, events, actions,
facts and/or states that have been  mentioned  before.  Such  context-dependent
reference is called anaphora.  In general, linguists and researchers working in
artificial intelligence have looked at the problem of  anaphora  interpretation
as  that  one  of  finding  the correct antecedent for an anaphor--that is, the
previous words or phrases to  which  the  anaphor  is  linked.  Lately,  people
working in the area of anaphora have suggested that in order for anaphors to be
interpreted correctly, they must be interpreted by reference to entities evoked
by the previous discourse rather than in terms of their antecedents.

This  work  describes  the  process of dealing with anaphoric language when the
reference is to events and actions. It involves four issues:  (i) what  aspects
of the discourse give evidence of the events and actions the speaker is talking
about, (ii) how actions and events are represented in the listener's  discourse
model, (iii) how to identify the set of events and actions as possible choices,
and (iv) how to obtain the speaker's intended referent to an  action  or  event
from  a  set  of  possible  choices.  Anaphoric forms that are used to refer to
actions and events include sentential-it, sentential-that pronominalizations as
well  as  do  it, do that, and do this forms. Their interpretations can be many
and because of that, they cannot be understood only on linguistic  grounds  but
on  models  of  the  discourse.  So,  I will concentrate on developing the four
previously mentioned issues along with other mechanisms that  will  provide  us
with  better  tools for the successful interpretation of anaphoric referents to
actions and events in discourse.

                                April 16, 1986
                                     11 am
                          Moore 129 (Faculty Lounge)
                            Advisor: Bonnie Webber
                          Committee: Tim Finin, Chair
                                 Aravind Joshi
                        Ellen Prince (Linguistics Dpt.)
                         Tony Kroch (Linguistics Dpt.)
                              Candy Sidner (BBN)

------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 86 23:55:32 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Tom Blenko)
Subject: Conference - AI Impacts at FAA, Date Change

        ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IMPACTS WORKSHOP

                     presented by

          AMERICAN COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

               >>> June 11-13, 1986 <<<-- NOTE change of date

                 FAA Technical Center
           Atlantic City Airport, New Jersey

This is a mildly-technical workshop for marketing, planning and
manufacturing professionals who are interested in artificial
intelligence.  Workshop emphasizes marketing data, competitive
analyses, planning information, financials, opportunities and
contraints, etc., from a world-wide survey of businesses and
governments involved in AI.

Information can be obtained from:

              American Computer Technologies, Inc.
              237 Lancaster Avenue, Suite 255
              Devon, PA 19333
              Attn: Ms. Carol Ward
              (215) 687-4148,

and/or Ms. Pat Watts of the Federal Aviation Administration Technical
Center:

              (609) 484-6646.

(This information is being posted for a friend: please respond to the
address given above).

------------------------------

Date: 10 Apr 86 16:55:09 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Andre Vellino)
Subject: Conference - Discourse Analysis

                               First Ad Hoc Conference
                                on Discourse Analysis

                                  April 24-25, 1986
                                    138 Tate Hall
                                University of Georgia
                                   Athens, Georgia

          Thursday, April 24

           9 a.m.    Rainer Bauerle (University of Tubingen)
                        "Nominalizations, Event Anaphora,
                         and Order of Events in a DRT-framework"

           10.30 a.m.   Coffee Break

           11 a.m.   Nirit Kadmon (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
                        "Maximal Collections, Specificity,
                         and Discourse Anaphora"

           12.30 p.m.   Lunch Break

            2 p.m.   Hans Kamp (University of Texas, Austin)
                        "Plural Anaphora and Plural Determiners"

          Friday, April 25

           9 a.m.    Craige Roberts (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
                         "Modal Subordination and Pronominal Anaphora
                          in Discourse"

           10.30 a.m.    Coffee Break

           11 a.m.   Michael Covington (University of Georgia, Athens)
                         "Modelling Implicature with Defeasible Logic"

           12.30 p.m.    Lunch Break

            2 p.m.   Barbaree Partee (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
                         "Nominal and Temporal Anaphora"

                        Advanced Computational Methods Center
                                University of Georgia
                                Athens, Georgia 30602

            For further information contact Marvin Belzer (404) 542-5110

------------------------------

Date: 11 Apr 1986 19:22:05 EST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Conference - AI and Automatic Control

Dr. Andrews
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
Ames Research Center
San Jose, CA

Dear Dr. Andrews:

Per your note to AI-LIST on April 1, regarding the synergism between
the fields of artificial intelligence and automatic control, I would
like to bring your attention to the American Control Conference to be
held in Seattle from June 18-20 this year.  The American Control
Conference is sponsored by the American Automatic Control Council,
which is a council consisting of member organizations which include
the AIAA, AICHE, ASME, IEEE, ISA, and SCS.  The ACC is the U.S.
representative to IFAC (the International Federation of Automatic
Control).  In addition, other engineering societies, such as
Automation Engineers, participate.  This is the largest conference on
control held in the United States, and is multidisciplinary.  It has
been held for a number of years.

Looking at this year's program, it is clear that your idea of exploring
the common ground between control and artificial intelligence is
already seriously in progress.  Out of 68 sessions, there are seven
sessions whose major themes are artificial intelligence and control,
or robotics and control.

First, on Wednesday A.M., there is a session on Artificial
Intelligence in Process Control.  The Chairman is R. Moore of LISP
Machines, Inc., and a number of national and international experts are
talking about this very interesting topic.  In parallel with this
session on Wednesday A.M., there is a session entitled Robotics that
explores many aspects of robotics control.  The Chairman of this
session is Jason Speyer from the University of Texas at Austin, and it
will be co-chaired by M. Railey from the University of Akron.

On Wednesday P.M., there is a session entitled Artificial Intelligence
Applications in Sensor Fusion and Command and Control.  This session
is chaired by Dr. S. Brodsky, Sperry Corporation, and addresses some
very interesting work in the area of artificial intelligence
applications to sensor fusion and command and control.  Typical papers
from this session include J. Flynn of DARPA on "Carrier Based Threat
Assessment", J. Delaney of Stanford talking on "Multisensor Report
Integration Using Blackboards", and M. Grover and M. Stachnick of
Advanced Decision Systems discussing "Overlooked and Unconventional AI
Techniques for Command and Control".  A number of other very
interesting papers are in this session.

On Thursday A.M., there is a session on 4D Aircraft Guidance and
Expert Traffic Management, which is chaired by A. Chakravarty of
Boeing Commerical Airplane Company and co-chaired by R. Schwab, also
of Boeing.  An exemplar paper in this session is "Time-Based Air
Traffic Management Using Expert Systems" by L. Tobias and J. Scoggins
of NASA Ames Research Center.  Running in parallel on Thursday A.M.,
is a specialist session on Direct Drive Robot Arms.  This is chaired
by J. Slotine of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chaired
by H. Asada of Kyoto University, Japan.

Another general session on Artificial Intelligence is to be held on
Thursday P.M., chaired by J. Birdwell from the University of Tennessee
and co-chaired by G. Allgood, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  A number
of excellent papers include: "Domains of Artificial Intelligence
Relevant to Systems", by J. Birdwell and J. Crockett, University of
Tennessee, and J. Gabriel of Argonne National Laboratory; "Knowledge
Representation by Scripts in an Expert Interface" by J. Larsson and P.
Persson of Lund Institute of Technology; and "An Expert System to
Control a Fusion Energy Experiment" by R. Johnson, et al., from
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

On Friday A.M., there is a session on Aerospace and Robotics
Applications of Nonlinear Control, chaired by F. Fadali, University of
Nevada-Reno and co-chaired by T. Dwyer, University of Illinois.  In
parallel on Friday A.M., there is a session on Robot Tracking Control
chaired by George Saridis of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

On Friday P.M., there is a session on Multitarget Tracking and Data
Association chaired by C. Chong, Advanced Information & Decision
Systems, and co-chaired by M. Shensa, Naval Ocean Systems Center.
This discusses an area that is ripe for artificial intelligence
applications and, for example, includes a paper entitled "An Expert
System for Surveillance Automation" by R. Mucci of BBN Laboratories.
Also in parallel with this Friday P.M. session is one on Robot Control
chaired by J. Garbini, University of Washington, and co-chaired by C.
Nachtigal of Kistler Morse Company.

In addition to these sessions, there are a number of papers on
artificial intelligence, expert systems and robotics applications
scattered throughout a number of other sessions in the program.

Also, of interest to people who are interested in the AI List
information, there is a one-day tutorial workshop on Monday, June 16,
preceding the conference, entitled "Intelligent Control System Design
and Analysis".  The purpose of this workshop is to introduce control
systems engineers and engineering managers to the possibility of using
intelligent systems during the design and analysis of control systems.
Participants will learn the techniques for building expert systems and
will see examples of their use in control system design.  This
tutorial workshop will be taught by Guy Beale of Vanderbilt University
and Charles Buenzli of Gilbarco-Exxon.  On Tuesday, June 17, another
tutorial workshop will be taught by Roger Brockett of Harvard
University and Robert M. Goor of General Motors Research Laboratory.
The topic of this workshop will be "Modeling and Control of Robotic
Manipulators".

The General Chairman for the conference is Dr. Ed Stear, who is
Associate Dean of Electrical Engineering at the University of
Washington and Head of the Washington Technology Center.  It may also
be of interest to this community that one of the plenary speakers is
Dr. Robert Rankine, Brigadier General, U.S. Air Force and Head of Air
Force SDI activities.  He will discuss some of the control challenges
associated with the SDI Program and with the proposed new hypersonic
trans-atmospheric vehicles.

All in all, for someone interested in the merging of the fields of
artificial intelligence, expert systems and automatic control, this is
an excellent conference to attend.  There is also a great social
program planned for the evenings to allow informal discussions among
the attendees.  Also, Expo '86 is only a few miles up the road in
Vancouver, British Columbia, for those interested in attending this
activity before or after the conference.

To obtain information regarding registration, please contact the
office of Dagfinn Gangsaas, BMAC, P.O. Box 3707, MS 33-12, Seattle, WA
98124, (206) 241-4348.  Preliminary programs may be obtained by
sending a request to me via Arpanet, c/o ALSPACH (at) USC-ISI or
mailing a request to D. L. Alspach, ORINCON Corporation, 3366 N.
Torrey Pines Ct., Suite 320, La Jolla, CA 92037.

Sincerely,
Daniel L. Alspach
Program Chairman
1986 American Control Conference
BBN Laboratories.

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End of AIList Digest
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