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

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Date: Wed, 13 Nov 85 02:47:21 est

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Subject: AIList Digest   V3 #167
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AIList Digest            Monday, 11 Nov 1985      Volume 3 : Issue 167

Today's Topics:
  Seminars - TI AI Symposium Sites &
    Model Theory for Knowledge and Belief (SRI) &
    Example-Based Reasoning (NU) &
    Knowledge Representation (UCB) &
    Partial Truth Conditions and Their Logics (CSLI) &
    Automatic Generation of Graphical Presentations (CSLI) &
    CommonLoops (MIT) &
    Minimal Entailment (UPenn) &
    Alternatives to Concurrent Prolog (MIT),
  Conference - Eastern Simulation Conference

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

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 85 00:09 EST
From: Tim Finin <[email-masked]>
Subject: TI AI Symposium Sites

Two sites in our area that will be providing the TI AI Symposium are:

        University of Pennsylvania
        Harrison Auditorium (in the Univ. Museum, 33rd & Spruce)
        Philadelphia, PA
        contact: Tim Finin, TIM@UPenn (215-386-1749)
        lots of room - all are welcome - no invitation/RSVP needed

        U.S. Army Communications /Automatic Data Processing Center
        Watters Hall
        Fort Monmouth, NJ
        contact: Ms. Van dyke (201-544-2929)
        arrive early to assure seating.

It starts at 9:15 (EST) on Wednesday, November 13th.

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

Date: Wed 6 Nov 85 17:41:42-PST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Seminar - Model Theory for Knowledge and Belief (SRI)

                MODEL THEORY FOR KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF

                           Moshe Vardi
                           IBM San Jose

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

Recently, there has  been  a surge of interest in the modal logic of
knowledge and belief, which has applications in many area of computer
science.  The  standard semantics for modal logic is Kripke semantics.
In this semantics, possible worlds and the possibility relation are both
primitive notions. This has both technical and conceptual shortcomings.
>From a technical point of view, the mathematics associated with Kripke
semantics is often quite complicated.  From a conceptual point of view,
it is not clear how to use Kripke structures to model knowledge and belief,
where one wants a clearer understanding of the notions that are taken as
primitive in Kripke semantics.

We introduce modal structures as models for modal logic. We use the idea
of possible worlds, but by directly describing the internal semantics of
each possible world.  It is much easier to study the standard logical
questions, such as completeness, decidability, and compactness, using
modal structures.  Furthermore, modal structures offer a much more
intuitive approach to modelling knowledge and belief.

As an application, we present a semantic model for knowledge
with the following properties:

   (1) Knowledge is necessarily correct

   (2) agents are logically omniscient, i.e., they know all
       the consequences of their knowledge

   (3) agents are positively introspective, i.e., they are aware of
       their knowledge, but not negatively introspective,
       i.e., they may not be aware of their ignorance.

We argue that this is the appropriate model for implicit knowledge.
We investigate the properties of the model, and use it to formalize
notions such as "to know more" and "all that is known is".

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

Date: Wed, 6 Nov 85 14:53 EDT
From: Carole D Hafner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Example-Based Reasoning (NU)

               College of Computer Science Colloquium
               Northeastern University, Boston, MA

                     Example-Based Reasoning

                      Prof. Edwina Rissland
               Dept. of Computer and Information Science
               University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

In this talk, I shall discuss example-based reasoning,
particularly in the contexts of assisting in the preparation of
legal arguments and offering on-line explanations.
In the case of legal argumentation, I discuss how hypotheticals
serve a central role in analyzing the issues in
a case and describe a program, called HYPO, which generates
legal hypotheticals, and an environment, called COUNSELOR,
which provides support for legal reasoning and other strategic
tasks, like resource management. I'll briefly describe our
current work on on-line assistance and how we are trying to
make it more intelligent by embedding custom-tailored examples
in the explanations. I'll also discuss some general issues
about examples such as their generation, structure and importance
in reasoning, especially in the domains of mathematics and the law.

Date: Wednesday, Nov. 13, 1985
Time: 12:00 noon
Place: To be announced (contact hafner@northeastern or call the
       department office at 437-2462).

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

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 85 17:29:20 PST
From: [email-masked] (Cognitive Science Program)
Subject: Seminar - Knowledge Representation (UCB)

                      BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
                     Cognitive Science Seminar - IDS 237A

                      Tuesday, November 12, 11:00 - 12:30
                        240 Bechtel Engineering Center
                 Discussion: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4

             ``Knowledge Representation and a Theory of Meaning''
                                Robert Wilensky
                       Computer Science Division, U.C.B.

        Knowledge representation is central to most Artificial Intelli-
        gence   endeavors.    However,  most  knowledge  representation
        schemes are incomplete in a number  of  ways.   In  particular,
        their  coverage is inadequate, and they do not capture signifi-
        cant aspects of meanings.  Many do not  even  adhere  to  basic
        criteria of well-formedness for a meaning representation.

        KODIAK is a theory of  knowledge  representation  developed  at
        Berkeley  that  attempts to address some of these deficiencies.
        KODIAK incorporates representational ideas  that  have  emerged
        from  different  schools of thought, in particular from work in
        semantic networks, frames,  Conceptual  Dependency,  and  frame
        semantics.   In  particular,  KODIAK  eliminates the frame/slot
        distinction  found  in  frame-based  languages  (alternatively,
        case/slot distinction found in semantic network-based systems).
        In  its  place  KOKIAK  introduces  a  new  notion  called  the
        absolute/aspectual  distinction.   In addition, the theory sup-
        ports ``non-literal'' representations, namely, those  motivated
        by  metaphoric  and metonymic considerations.  Using these dev-
        ices, the theory allows for the representation  of  some  ideas
        that  in  the  past  have  only  been represented procedurally,
        informally, or not at all.

        KODIAK is being used to represent both linguistic  and  concep-
        tual   structures.   When  applied  to  the  representation  of
        linguistic knowledge, a new framework for talking about meaning
        emerges.   Five aspects of meaning have been identified.  These
        appear to  be  useful  in  describing  processing  theories  of
        natural language use.

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

Date: Thu 7 Nov 85 16:41:45-PST
From: Emma Pease <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Partial Truth Conditions and Their Logics (CSLI)

         [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]

         CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, November 14, 1985

   4:15 p.m.            CSLI Colloquium
     Redwood Hall       Partial Truth Conditions and Their Logics
     Room G-19          Hans Kamp, University of Texas

               Partial Truth Definitions and their Logics
                                Hans Kamp

      Until recently truth definitions for formal and natural languages
   were, with some few exceptions, total (in the sense of specifying
   w.r.t. any model a truth value for each sentence of the language under
   consideration). But during the past decade partial truth definitions
   have become increasingly common both within symbolic logic and in
   formal semantics.
      The motives for adopting partial truth definitions vary considerably.
   I will focus on three issues that have led to the formulation of such
   definitions: i) vagueness; ii) the semantic paradoxes; and iii)
   verification by partial information structures (a concept that has
   inspired both situation semantics and recent work on the semantics of
   data structures). I will discuss and compare some of the partial
   semantics that have been developed in attempts to come to terms with
   these issues, looking in particular at the question what logics are
   generated by the resulting semantic theories. I will argue that the
   relation between semantics and logic is less straightforward when the
   truth definition is partial than when it is total, and consequently that
   the notion of logical validity becomes much more delicate and equivocal
   once total semantics is abandoned in favor of some partial alternative.

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

Date: Thu 7 Nov 85 16:41:45-PST
From: Emma Pease <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Automatic Generation of Graphical Presentations (CSLI)

         [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]

                          PIXELS AND PREDICATES
             Automatic Generation of Graphical Presentations
                             Jock Mackinlay
         CSLI trailers, 1:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 13, 1985

      The goal of my thesis research is to develop an application-
   independent presentation tool that automatically generates appropriate
   graphical presentations of information such as charts, maps, and
   network diagrams.  A presentation tool can be used to build effective
   user interfaces because it exploits the structure of the information
   and the capabilities of the output device to generate appropriate
   presentations.  Application designers need not be graphical
   presentation experts to ensure that their user interfaces use
   graphical languages correctly and effectively.
      The research has two parts: a formal analysis of graphical
   languages for presentation and a prototype presentation tool based on
   the formal analysis.
      The formal analysis uses syntactic and semantic descriptions of
   graphical languages to develop criteria for evaluating graphical
   presentations.  There are two major classes of criteria:  expressiveness
   and effectiveness.  The expressiveness criteria are theorems that identify
   when a set of facts is or is not expressible in a language.  The
   effectiveness criteria are conjectures (rather than theorems) about
   the relative difficulty of the perceptual tasks associated with the
   interpretation of graphical languages.  Sufficiently expressive languages
   are ordered by the difficulty of their associated perceptual tasks.
      The prototype presentation tool, called APT (A Presentation Tool),
   uses the criteria developed by formal analysis to search a space of
   graphical languages for an appropriate presentation.  A novel feature
   of APT is its ability to generate its search space by composing
   sophisticated designs from a small set of fundamental graphical
   languages.  The design portion of APT is a logic program based on the
   MRS representation system.

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

Date: Thu 7 Nov 85 15:32:51-EST
From: "Mary E. Spollen" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - CommonLoops (MIT)

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

                            CommonLoops

                       Speaker:  Gregor Kiczales
                                 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center

                       Date:     November 15, 1985, Friday

                       Time:     2:15 refreshments
                                 2:30 lecture

                       Place:    NE43-512A

CommonLoops is a merger of Object Oriented Programming and Lisp.  It
has a unique combination of features:

1) No special syntax:  Most attempts to add object-oriented programming
to Lisp have resulted in special syntax for message sending.  In
CommonLoops, there is no syntactic difference between calling a function
and "invoking a method."

2) Method Specification: In object oriented programming, methods are
specified in terms of the class of the object being sent the message.
One can think of this as specifying the type of one argument of the
method.  In CommonLoops,  one can specify the type of any number of
arguments to a method.

3) Type space:  The "object" space is an extension of the normal Lisp
type space, not a separate space as in Loops or Flavors.

4) Metaclasses:  The implementation of a type (determined by the
"metaclass") is independent of the type description.  This allows
tradeoffs between early binding and ease of exploratory programming.

Host: Hal Abelson

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

Date: Sat, 9 Nov 85 00:53 EST
From: Tim Finin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Minimal Entailment (UPenn)

FUN WITH MODELS: MINIMAL ENTAILMENT AND NON-MONOTONIC REASONING

                    David W. Etherington
             University of British Columbia
    (Currently at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ.)

                  3:00pm December 3, 1985
   216 Moore School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

     Circumstances  commonly  require  that  conclusions  be
drawn  (conjectured)  even though they are not strictly war-
ranted by the available evidence.  Various forms of  minimal
entailment   have  been  suggested  as  ways  of  generating
appropriate conjectures.  Minimal  entailment  is  a  conse-
quence  relation  in which those facts which hold in minimal
models of a  theory  are  considered  to  follow  from  that
theory.   Thus  minimal  entailment is less restrictive than
the standard logical  entailment  relation,  which  strongly
constrains  what  evidence may be taken as supporting a con-
clusion.

     Different definitions of  minimality  of  models  yield
different  entailment  relations.   The  talk will outline a
variety of such relations.  Domain, Predicate,  and  Formula
Circumscription  [McCarthy  1978,  1980, 1984] are syntactic
formalisms intended to capture these relations.  We  examine
each  from  a  semantic viewpoint, in the hope of clarifying
their respective capabilities and  weaknesses.   Results  on
the  consistency, correctness, and adequacy of these formal-
isms will be presented.

     While minimal entailment corresponds most  directly  to
the  Closed-World  Assumption, that positive information not
implicit in what is known can be assumed false, McCarthy and
others  have  suggested  applications  of circumscription to
more general default reasoning tasks.  With  this  in  mind,
connections  between minimal entailment and Reiter's Default
Logic will be sketched, if time permits.   In  this  connec-
tion,  we will consider positive and negative results due to
Grosof and Imielinski, respectively.

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

Date: Sun, 10 Nov 85 00:56:01 EST
From: "Steven A. Swernofsky" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Seminar - Alternatives to Concurrent Prolog (MIT)

Thursday  7, November  2: 15pm  Room: NE43- 7th floor playroom

         BFCP and GHC - Alternatives to Concurrent Prolog

                 Jacob Levy
                 Department of Applied Mathematics
                 Weizmann Institute of Science

This talk will discuss some of the alternatives to Concurrent Prolog
recently proposed.  Each of these languages is designed to cover a
large subset of Concurrent prolog, but to be much easier to implement.
Flat Concurrent prolog (FCP) and Guarded Horn Clauses (GHC) will be
described in detail.

FCP, which has only And-parallelism, was developed at the Weizmann
Institute as a viable subset of Concurrent Prolog.  Its current
implementation, in terms of a Warren Abstract Machine, will be
described.

The GHC language, designed by K. Ueda of ICOT, Japan, has
OR-parallelism as well as And-parallelism, but instead has more
limited synchronization primitives than Concurent Prolog.  The second
part of this talk will briefly describe my implementation of GHC.

After the talk, a demo of FCP and Logix, its programming environment,
will be given.

Refreshments at 2:00pm

HOSTS: Professors Gerald Jay Sussman and Henryk Jan Komorowski (Harvard)

------------------------------
Date: 1 Nov 1985 17:09-CST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: 1986 Eastern Simulation Conference

10-12 March 1986, Omni International Hotel, Norfolk, Virginia
For more info contact: SCS, PO BOX 17900, San Diego, CA 92117
         (619)277-3888

List of AI related titles:

"TAT Teach" An Expert Training Simulator
Knowledge-Based Opponent Simulation for Tactical Decision Training
Simulators with Artificial Intelligence
Expert Systems in Training/Decision/Simulation
The Simulation Algorithm Itself: Driving the Inference Algorithm

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

End of AIList Digest
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