Subject: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST%sri-ai.arpa@CSNET-RELAY>

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Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 05:16:31 est

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Subject: AIList Digest   V3 #162
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AIList Digest            Tuesday, 5 Nov 1985      Volume 3 : Issue 162

Today's Topics:
  Games - ACM Computer Chess Championship,
  Expert Systems - DARPA Funds KEE,
  Opinion - AIList Discussion Style & Definition of AI &
    Japanese Fith-Generation Motives
    
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Date: Sat 2 Nov 85 19:16:33-PST
From: Stuart Cracraft <CRACRAFT at ISI-VAXA.ARPA>
Subject: ACM Computer Chess Championship

           [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.]

The annual slug-fest of machine against machine in the game of chess has
produced a new champion while in the same process dethroning CRAY BLITZ
which ran on multiple, parallel, CRAY processors. The new champion, by a
perfect 4-0 score against its opponents, is HITECH at Carnegie-Mellon,
searching 175,000 chess positions per second.

Below are reproduced descriptions of the participants including the names of
the computer chess programs, the authors, their affiliation, the type of
hardware used, and the number of nodes the particular program searches per
second. The time control for this is usually about 2 or 3 minutes per move
so you can multiply the nodes per second by 3x60 to get the total nodes
executed by a program in order to find its chess move (on the average).

In recent years, this number has been on the order of 10^7. There are
various schools of thought which believe that this will have to increase by
several orders of magnitude before an artificial player will defeat the
human champion, unless significant breakthroughs in chess knowledge
representation are achieved.

Also, in recent years, the best computer chess programs have barely passed
the National Master ranking. That is, they have achieved a rating of 2200.
The human champion is normally rated beyond 2700.

The relationship of processor speed to ratings has been determined to be
about 100 points per factor of 2 increase in processor speed, at least in
the range up to a 2000 rating.  There is some suspicion that beyond this
level, the relationship is not linear, although this has not yet been
shown by sufficient analysis, either empirical or theoretical.

                                       Stuart Cracraft
                                       (cracraft@isi-vaxa)

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

The following information was provided by the author of Phoenix.

PROGRAM         AUTHOR              AFFILIATION           HARDWARE        N/S
_______         ______              ___________           ________        ___

Awit        Tony Marsland       University of Alberta   Amdahl 5860         10

Bebe        Tony Scherzer       SYS-10 Inc., Chicago    Custom Chess    20,000
                                Engine

Chaos       Mike Alexander      University of Michigan  Amdahl 5860         70
            Fred Swartz
            Jack O'Keefe

Cray Blitz  Robert Hyatt        University of Southern  Cray X-MP      100,000
            Albert Gower        Mississippi             (4 CPUs)
            Harry Nelson

Hitech      Carl Ebeling        Carnegie-Melon          Special pur-   175,000
            Hans Berliner                               pose hardware
            Gordon Goetsch
            Andy Palay
            Murray Campbell
            Larry Slomer

Intelligent Mark Taylor         Intelligent Software    Apple IIE          500
Software    David Levy
            Kevin O'Connell

Lachex      Burton Wendroff     Los Alamos Laboratory   Cray X-MP       50,000

Ostrich     Monty Newborn       McGill University       8 Data General   1,200
                                                        computers

Phoenix     Jonathan Schaeffer  University of Alberta   4 VAX 11/780s    2,000
                                                        6 SUN workstations

Spoc        Jacques Middlecoff  SDI/Cypress Software    IBM PC             300

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

Date: Mon 4 Nov 85 09:25:01-PST
From: Ken Laws <[email-masked]>
Subject: DARPA Funds KEE

>From Expert Systems, Vol 2., No. 3, July 1985, p. 166:

IntelliCorp has recently been awarded a DARPA contract to develop
a prototype expert system development tool.  The tool will be used
by the Department of Defense, related government agencies, and
contractors working on DARPA-funded projects.  The contract is
worth $1 million to IntelliCorp and will take two years to complete.

The new system will be based on a refined version of KEE, incorporating
new knowledge representation techniques.  IntelliCorp sees limitations
in current ways of representing knowledge as being the limiting factor
in developing more powerful expert systems.  New techniques will allow
the full diversity of an expert's knowledge to be used.

IntelliCorp will retain exclusive ownership of the KEE system around
which the new tool will be built.  The compiled version of KEE will be
sublicenced to the Department of Defense, related agencies, and DARPA-
funded contractors.  Ownership of the remainder of the new system will
be shared by IntelliCorp and DARPA, with the company retaining
exclusive rights to its further release and commercialisation.

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

Date: Thu 31 Oct 85 19:07:57-PST
From: Gary Martins <[email-masked]>
Subject: Contributions of "AI" ?

A recent issue of AIList [#156] carries a highly emotional message from
Mr. Chris Welty in defense of "AI".  The message is entitled "Contributions
of AI".  Wouldn't you expect such a message to refer to some real
contributions of "AI" ?  Instead, it contains:

        * idle speculations about the relationship between my wife and
          Prof. Minsky
        * complaints about his morning mail
        * educational advice
        * finally, the usual vague, abstract "AI" blah about all kinds
          of contributions "AI" has made to the world; Mr. Welty says
          the list is too long to provide in full -- and so he
          provides no specific information of any kind

I cannot pretend to help Mr. Welty with all of these problems.  I
think he should adopt a "wait and see" posture on the first point.
Perhaps a scrolling terminal will help with #2.  Advice duly noted.
As for the same old "AI" gobbledegook: CAN'T YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC ?

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

Date: Sat, 2 Nov 85 14:26:53 pst
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Minsky's definition of AI (really definition of I)

Interesting posting.
I'm not doing AI work, but I have something to share.

Two weeks ago on the plane down to JPL/Caltech, I read a very interesting
definition of "Intelligence" in the airline's magazine (PSA).
Intelligence is the ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory
thoughts in one's head. I am working on parallelism, and I sort of like
that definition.

>From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Research Center
  {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene
  emiya@ames-vmsb

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

Date: Thu 31 Oct 85 15:21:39-EST
From: Steven M. Kearns <[email-masked]>
Subject: The Japanese are Coming!

THE JAPANESE ARE CONTROLLING THE WORLD - FUN, FICTION, OR FACT?

        Here is proof that fiction is actually stranger than truth: the
first "correct" exposition of the true goals of the Japanese Fifth Generation
program.  Actually, this is a fun look at some of the Fifth Generation Hype
that might leave you wondering "what if it is true???"

        (Q1) QUESTION:  Why the "open architecture" of the Japanese
Fifth Generation effort?  Why tell the world exactly what the goals are,
the money to be spent, and the principal goals to be pursued?

        (A1) The Japanese have stated in their Fifth Generation propoganda
material that the security of Japan in the future depends on transforming the
structure of today's economy.  Nowadays it is resource based;  Japan would
like it to be information based.  The reasons for this are clear.  Japan
imports something like > 90% of their fuel and food.  In a war, their enemies
could stop these shipments, while Japan could only threaten to cut off next
years shipment of remote control VCRs.   In addition, Japan has a severe space
shortage.  Material resources take up critical space, while information does
not.
                If Japan had the power to transform the world economy by
themselves, they would.  But the truth is, they do not have the resources to
do it by themselves.  To do so requires mobilizing the world - and in high
tech the "world" means the United States.  So the Japanese were very clever.
By committing a small amount of money (< 1 billion over 10 years, I believe)
and publicizing it as much as possible, they managed to steer the lumbering
giant of the United States, and the rest of the world, in the direction that
they wanted.  In effect, the Japanese are investing a little money, and in
return they get to mobilize ALOT of money in a way that benefits them the
most.  And none of the money that they invest is wasted either:  if the
Japanese Fifth Generation program does provide a significant advance, they get
to finally shake the unfair label of "imitators, not creators".  If no major
advance results, they are at least ready to exploit the successes of the
rest of the world.
                Let's look at some facts that support this theory.  As already
mentioned, the Japanese committment is less than 1 billion over 10 years.
In contrast, IBM's R&D budget is something like one and a half billion
EVERY YEAR.  And though I do not know the specific data, I would suspect that
the defense department's Fifth Generation budget is of similar order of
magnitude (after all, the defense budget is now 300 Billion).
Finally, there are the contributions from other countries of
the world such as Britain and France, which have now mounted efforts
comparable to Japan's.
                Thus, all of the gloom and doomers warning about the
onslaught of the Japanese are actually aiding the Japanese' cause.

-steve kearns
([email-masked])

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End of AIList Digest
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