Subject: AIList V6 #45 - Logic, RuleC, Methodology, Constraint Languages
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue 1 Mar 1988 21:21-PST

AIList Digest           Wednesday, 2 Mar 1988      Volume 6 : Issue 45

Today's Topics:
  Query - Chinese Room Simulation Time,
  Logic - Modal Logic and AI References,
  Expert Systems - RuleC Imbeddable Inference System,
  Methodology - Approaches to AI,
  AI Tools - Representing Uncertainty,
  Opinion - Nanotechnology,
  AI Tools - Constraint Satisfaction Programming

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Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 12:19:12 GMT
From: "G. Joly" (Birkbeck) <[email-masked]>
Subject: Yet another Visit to the Chinese Room

``Thinking Machines'' was the title of a recent Horizon programme on BBC
television, featuring Hubert Dreyfuss, Marvin Minsky and John Searle.
There was a demonstration of the Chinese Room with two Chinese actors
and an English (only) speaking person in the room.  Searle asserted
that ``the room'' could not speak Chinese, since the operator inside
had no knowledge of written Chinese; he was merely manipulating
symbols (as computers do).

But in terms of the Turing test, the room spoke Chinese, since it
satisfied the basic ideas of the test. Agreed that the operator could
not speak the language, but the language was spoken by the (language
translation?) program he was following.

The image was amusing. Does anybody have a ballpark figure for the
time needed to run such a program ``by hand''? More or less than the
age of the universe?

Gordon Joly.
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

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Date: 27 Feb 88 07:11:15 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Thomas Kurfurst)
Subject: Modal Logic and AI -- References Needed

I am seeking references to seminal works relating modal logic to artifical
intelligence research, especially more theoretical (philosophical)
papers rather than applications per se.

Any and all pointers will be greatly appreciated - I am having trouble
tracking these down myself. Thanks in advance.

--

________

Thomas Kurfurst      [email-masked] (CSnet,UUCP,Bitnet)
205 Wineva Road      [email-masked] (EANeX.400)
Toronto, Ontario     {decvax,ihnp4,utcsri,{allegra,linus}!utzoo}!utcs!kurfurst
CANADA M4E 2T5       [email-masked] (CSnet)
(416) 699-5738

________

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Date: 27 Feb 88 17:29:48 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Cliff Joslyn)
Subject: Re: Modal Logic and AI -- References Needed

In article <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Thomas Kurfurst) writes:
>I am seeking references to seminal works relating modal logic to artifical
>intelligence research, especially more theoretical (philosophical)
>papers rather than applications per se.

I am currently researching the application of various kinds of
"alternative" logics to AI.  I, also, would be interested in information
about modal logic in this context, but also for multi-valued and fuzzy
logics.

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Mad Cybernetician
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton, NY
| [email-masked]
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .

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

Date: 29 Feb 88 14:42:52 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (William J. Rapaport)
Subject: Re: Modal Logic and AI -- References Needed

In article <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Thomas Kurfurst) writes:
>
>I am seeking references to seminal works relating modal logic to artifical
>intelligence research, especially more theoretical (philosophical)
>papers rather than applications per se.

Depends, of course, on how broad you intend "modal" to cover, but here
are a few starting points:

S. C. Shapiro (ed.), Encyclopedia of AI (John Wiley, 1987):
    -   articles on Modal Logic, Belief Systems

J. Y. Halpern (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge
(Los Altos, CA:  Morgan Kaufmann)

and, not to be shy, my own work on belief representation is rather
philosophical:

Rapaport, William J. (1986), ``Logical Foundations for Belief Representation,''
Cognitive Science 10:  371-422.
                                        William J. Rapaport
                                        Assistant Professor

Dept. of Computer Science||internet:  [email-masked]
SUNY Buffalo             ||bitnet:    [email-masked]
Buffalo, NY 14260        ||uucp: {ames,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!rapaport
(716) 636-3193, 3180     ||

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

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 88 14:23:41+1200
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: seeking imbeddable inference system

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(Joe Karnicky) writes:
>
>       A friend of mine creates programs and devices to enable severely
> handicapped individuals to interact with computers ...
>       Now, to implement this economically what we would like to
> have is a simple, cheap ($100), IMBEDDABLE inference system.

What you would like to have is RuleC. RuleC is a new language developed
at the Technical University Vienna. It adds a forward-chaining production
system to standard C. The system is totally flexible - you can write your
own conflict resolution strategies, modify the interpreter cycle itself,
have structured facts in the database which may contain components of
arbitrary C data types (pointers(!), arrays, structs, ints, ...).
The execution of a RuleC program starts procedurally with invocation
of the main function. At any point you may start the production system
by calling the function 'run'. This function returns when no more rules
are applicable, procedural processing resumes.
The condition part of rules allows complex patterns including calls
to userwritten comparison functions, the action part looks like an
ordinary C block - you can define local variables and have arbitrary
C statements here! For addition,deletion, and modification of working
memory elements three new statements are provided.

The compiler works as a preprocessor, like yacc. The production system
is based on the RETE-match.

If you want any further info or the software write to:

Herbert Groiss,
Institut fuer Praktische Informatik
Technische Universitaet Wien

Resselgasse 3/180D
A-1040 Vienna
AUSTRIA

The only e-mail address I have from him is a PSI one:
        PSI%02322622107040:HERBERT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I Werner Staringer                     I University of Auckland          I
I                                      I Department of Computer Science  I
I [email-masked]            I Private Bag                     I
I ..uunet!vuwcomp!cscvaxa!aucsv!werner I Auckland                        I
I PSI%0530197000073::CSC_STAR          I New Zealand                     I

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Date: Sun, 28 Feb 88 16:27:09 PST
From: John B. Nagle <[email-masked]>
Subject: Approaches to AI

     McCarthy has recently described two paths to artificial intelligence.
But his two, while the most active, are not the only ones in which substantial
work is underway.  A more general taxonomy might be outlined as follows.

     1.  "Good, old fashioned AI".  This is the line of development that
         includes LISP, GPS, the Blocks World, automatic theorem proving,
         and expert systems.  The major thrust of this line of work is
         to model the world using formalisms related to mathematical logic.

     2.  Neural networks.  This line begins with perceptrons and continues
         through neural networks to connectionism.  The major thrust of
         this line is the development of massively parallel self-organizing
         systems.

     3.  Engineered artificial life.  This bottom-up approach begins with
         such efforts as the Hopkins Beast, continues through the early
         MIT eye-hand coordination work, and continues today with Brooks'
         artificial insects and much of Moravec's robotics work.  The
         major thrust here is the construction of robots that
         function in the real world, using whatever technology seems
         appropriate.

     4.  Study and replication of the detailed structure of biological
         intelligence, without necessarily understanding how it works.
         Drexler proposes this approach, which is primarily in the discussion
         phase at this point.

It is important not to confuse #2 and #4.

                                        John Nagle

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

Date: 29 Feb 88 19:13:18 GMT
From: Paul Creelman <[email-masked]>
Subject: Uncertainty and FUZZY LOGIC VS PROBABILITY

Subject: Uncertainty and FUZZY LOGIC VS PROBABILITY
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Keywords: UNCERTAINTY, PROBABILITY

   There appears to be some discussion about uncertainty by Eric Neufeld
   and others. According to Spiegelhalter, the use of probability for
   representing uncertainty in expert systems is the wrong method. He says
   it  is inappropriate because uncertainty in knowledge does not match the
   chance mechanism of an observable event. It is unnecessary since no meaning
   must be attached to numbers, but instead the rank order of hypotheses is
   often all that matters in an expert system. Furthermore probability is
   somewhat impractical since it requires too many estimates of prior
   probabilities, fails to distinguish ignorance from uncertainty, and
   fails to provide an explanation of conclusions. I must agree. Down with
   probability!
   Surely what is needed is a simplified version of Shafer's evidence theory
   which deals with all possible subsets of the possible variable values, the
   frame of discernment. A number is associated with each subset which measures
   the certainty that the actual variable value is in that subset. Suppose we
   coarsen the uncertainty measure by reducing the number of subsets specified.
   While providing a measure of certainty for all subsets of values may be
   impractical, a system that uses only a limited number of these subsets
   could be very useful. If only there was a way of consistently updating
   certainty for such subsets! I wonder if additivity of the certainty measure
   is necessary. Perhaps a condition like c(B)> c(C) -> c(A+B) > c(A+C) where
   A B and C are disjoint subsets and + is set union. Of course, it is desirable
   to allow A B and C to have common elements as well. I hope this will
   stimulate discussion. For references, see
   William Gale,ed.,Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, Addison-Wesley
   Publishing Company,1986.

   L.N.Kanal,J.F.Lemmer,eds.,Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence,
   North-Holland,1986.

   Paul Creelman
   student
   Dalhousie University

   ZZ

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Date: Mon, 29 Feb 88 11:53:37 HNE
From: Spencer Star <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: AIList V6 #41 - Supercomputers, Nonotechnology

I just got through reading Eve Lewis' article on Nanotechnology.  It
seems to me that interested people ought to send a donation to the
Committe for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal (CSICP) to investigate these claims about creating a
nano computer.  It would make an interesting article in The
Skeptical Inquirer.  The current issue has articles such as "The Brain
and Consciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena" and "Fantasizing
Under Hypnosis: Some Experimental Evidence".  I think something like
"The Brain and Nanotechnology: Fantasizing Under the Spell of AI"
might be an appropriate title.
   One of the problems that AI seems to have is that people outside
of the AI research community have trouble distinguishing between
AI research and AI speculation.  This becomes especially problematic
when the same person engages in both activities.
   Actually I must admit that one of the reasons I read AI-List is for
the interesting speculations on the future of AI.  But I wonder if the
people involved in discussions about nanotechnology see it as pure
speculation or as legitimate research.  If the latter, how do they
come to that conclusion.
                             Spencer Star
                 Arpanet: [email-masked]
                 Bitnet: star@lavalvm1

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Date: 25 Feb 88 18:48:37 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Garry Wiegand)
Subject: Re: constraint satisfaction programming

A week ago I asked about "constraint-based languages", and since then a
number of people have replied. My thanks to you all - your notes have
been a considerable help, and have led me to a lot of good work.

A summary follows...

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked] (Richard Pettit)
** Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.

    See the next to last (January edition I think) of AI Expert. They have
    at least one article on constraint languages in it. No doubt there will
    be many more to follow.

    Rich

[There's another popular article too - in Byte, last September or so. GW]

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked]

    Take a look at ICCP'87.  Prof. Baldwin and I have a paper there (p.
    389) on a parallel constraint-based language.  There is a more
    extensive TR (number 208, "The Design of the Consul Programming
    Language") you might like to order by sending a message to Ms. Peggy
    Meeker ([email-masked]).

    For more details, the person to contact is certainly Prof. Doug
    Baldwin ([email-masked]), who is conducting research on
    general-purpose constraint languages.

    Good luck with your research!
    Cesar
    --------
    Cesar Augusto  Quiroz Gonzalez

    Department of Computer Science     ...allegra!rochester!quiroz
    University of Rochester            or
    Rochester,  NY 14627               [email-masked]

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked] (Jane Eisenstein)
** Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA

    Last fall, I ran into a nice book entitled "Constraint Programming
    Languages, Their Specification and Generation" by Wm Leler which is
    published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.  It "provides an
    introduction to the subject of constraint satisfaction, a survey of
    existing systems, and introduces a new technique that makes
    constraint-satisfaction systems significantly easier to create and
    expand" in a very readable fashion.

    The latter half of the book focuses on the author's general-purpose
    specification language called Bertrand that allows a user to describe a
    constraint-satisfaction system using rules.  The software described is
    available for a "nominal charge" from the author.

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked] (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
** Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle

                A few of our Constraint Language References

    [Borning & Duisberg 86] Alan Borning and Robert Duisberg. Constraint-Based
                          Tools for Building User Interfaces. _ACM_
                          _Transactions_on_Graphics_, 5(4), October 1986.
                          ThingLab basics, object definer and Animus with an
                          emphasis on MVCish things.

    [Borning et al. 87]   Alan Borning, Robert Duisberg, Bjorn Freeman-Benson,
                          Axel Kramer, and Micheal Woolf. Constraint H
                          ierarchies. In _OOPSLA'87_Conference_Proceedings_,
                          pages 48-60, ACM SIGPLAN, October 1987.

    [Borning 81]          Alan Borning. The Programming Language Aspects of
                          ThingLab, A Constraint-Oriented Simulation Laboratory
                          . _TOPLAS_, 3(4):353-387, Oct 1981.

    The OOPSLA'87 one has a good bibliography...

    Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson

[The work of Prof. Borning's group on a general UIMS is wonderful - very
 much along the lines we've started thinking about. GW]

******************************************************************************
** From: Lindsay Errington <[email-masked]>
** Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario

    Constraint Logic Programming is currently getting alot of attention
    at logic programming conferences.

    You might try:

    Jaffar, Joxan and Lassez, Jean-Louis, "Constraint Logic Programming", Proc
    of the 14th ACM Conference on Principles of Programming Languages, Munich,
    January 1987.

    Jaffar, Joxan and Michaylov, Spiro, "Methodology and Implementation of
    a CLP System", Proc of the 4th International Conference on Logic
    Programming, Melbourne Australia, May 1987, pp 196-218, MIT Press.

    Heintze, N.C., Michaylov, S., and Stuckey, P.J., "CLP(R) and Some
    Electrical Engineering Problems", Proc of the 4th International Conference
    on Logic Programming, Melbourne Australia, May 1987, pp 675-703, MIT Press.

    (I suspect that a number of people will send you the same citations)

    Jaffar's work is very interesting since it provides a semantic
    framework (if that makes any sense) for a whole family of constraint
    based languages.

    The bibliographies will point you to other work into constraints and logic
    programming.

    I hope this helps.

    Lindsay

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked]
(Frederick J Dickey)
** Subject: Re: "Constraint-based" languages

    A book has been published recently called (I think) "constraint-
    based languages." The author is William Leler or Leder (sorry, I
    don't have it here at work with me so I can't give you a more
    accurate reference).

******************************************************************************
** From: [email-masked] (Lambert Meertens)
** Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

    Here is a reference to a book that I haven't had an opportunity to look
    into yet since it is still being processed as a new acquistion by our
    library:

      W. Leler (1988).
      Constraint programming languages -- their specification and generation.
      Addison-Wesley series in computer science.
      Reading (MA), [etc.].

    I would be interested in hearing about further references you have or may
    receive, and in particular in relation to UIMS.

    --Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam; [email-masked]

******************************************************************************

I've also heard that at least some Prologs understand how to do arithmetic,
and that there's a commercial product called TK!Solver which does interesting
things. I haven't seen these myself yet.

Constraint languages seem to be very much still in their infancy. Lots of
room for some good work (hint hint!)  - I hope we'll be able to contribute
some too. Thanks again -

garry wiegand   ([email-masked] - ARPA)
                (garry@crnlthry - BITNET)

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End of AIList Digest
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