sences is fascinating, but can be a little fuzzy making. It made me go back and review some of the basics. At the risk of displaying naivete and/or a firm grasp of the obvious, I thought I would pass some of my thoughts along. The problem of essences has been treated in philosophy under the heading of metaphysics, specifically ontology. I have found a good book covering these problems in short, clear text. It is: "Problems & Theories of Philosophy" by Ajdukiewicz, Cambridge University Press, 1975, 170 pp. in paperback. About substance (from the book, p. 78): ".... the fundamental one is that which it was given by Aristotle. He describes substance as that of which something can be predicated but which cannot itself be predicated of anything else. In other words, substance is everything to which some properties can be attributed, which can stand in a certain relationship to something else, which can be in this state, etc., but which is not itself a property, relation or a state, etc. Examples of substances are: this, this table, this person, in a word concrete individual things and persons. To substance are opposed properties which in contradistinction to substances can be predicated of something, relations which also in contradistinction can obtain between certain objects, states, etc. The scholastics emphasized the self-subsistance of substance in contrast to the non-self-subsistance of properties, relations, states, etc. The property of redness, for example, cannot exist except in a substance that possesses it. This particular rose, however, of which redness is an attribute, does not need any foundations for its existance but exists on its own. This self-subsistance of substance they considered to be its essential property and they defined substance as 'res, qui convenit esse in se vel per se'." To me, this implies that an object/substance is an axiomatic "thing" that exists independantly - it is the rock that kicks back each time I kick it - with the characteristic that it is "there", meaning that each time I kick at the rock, it is there to kick back. You can hang attributes on it in order to identify it from some other thing, both now and over time. The Greek Ship problem in this approach becomes one of identifying that Object, the Greek Ship, which has maintained continuous existance as The Greek Ship - i.e., can "be kicked" at any time. This brings us to one of the problems being addressed by this discussion of essences, which is distinguishing between objects and abstractions of objects, i.e. between proper nouns and abstract/general nouns. A proper known refers to a real object, which can never - logically - be fully known in the sense that we cannot be sure that we know *all* of its attributes or that we *know* that the attributes we do know are unchanging or completely predictable. We can always be surprised, and any inferences we make from "known" attributes are subject to change. Real objects are messy and ornery. An abstract object, like pure mathematics, is much neater: it has *only* those attributes we give it in its definition, and there WILL BE no surprises. The amazing thing is that mathematics works: a study of abstractions can predict things in the real world of objects! This seems to work on the "Principle of Minimum Astonishment" (phrase stolen from Lou Schaefer @ SRI), which I interpret to mean that "To the extent that this real object posseses the same characteristics as that abstract object, this real object will act the same as that abstract object, *assuming that it doesn't do anything else particularly astonishing*." And how many carefully planned experiments have foundered on THAT one. There is *nothing* that says that the sun *will* come up tomorrow except the Principle of Minimum Astonishment. So what? So, studies of abstractions are useful; however, an abstract object is not the same as a real object: the model is not the same as the thing being modelled. There is not an infinite recursion of attributes, somewhere there is a rock that kicks back, a source of data/experience from *outside* the system. The problem is - usually - to create/select/update an abstract model of this external object and to predict our interactions with it on the basis of the model. The problem of "identifying" an object is typically not identifying *which* real object it is but *what kind* of object is it - what is the model to use to predict the results of our interaction with it. It seems to me that model forming and testing is one of the big, interesting problems in AI. I think that is why we are all interested in abstraction, metaphor, analogy, pholosophy, etc. I think that keeping the distinction between the model and the object/reality is useful. To me, it tends to imply two sets of data about an object: the historical interaction data and the abstracted data contained in the current model of the object. Perhaps these two data sets should be kept more formally separate than is often done. This has gotten quite long winded - it's fun stuff. I hope that this is useful/interesting/fun! Dave Wyland WYLAND@SRI ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Jun 84 13:11:35 PDT From: Philip Kahn Subject: Relevance of "essences" and "souls" to Artificial Intelligence Quite a bit of the AILIST has been devoted of late to metaphysical discussions of "essences" (e.g., the Greek ship "problem") and "souls." I don't argue the authors' viewpoints, but the discussion has strayed far from the intent of the original Greek ship problem. In short, the problem with "essences" and "souls" are the questions posed, and not the answers given. We are concerned with creating intelligent machines (whether we consider it "artificial" or "authentic"). The "problem" of "essence" is only caused by the necessity that a hard-and-fast, black-and-white discrimination is being asked whether "The reassembled ship is 'essentially' the same." It should be clear that the question phrased as such cannot be answered adequately because it is not relevant. You can say "it looks the same," "it weighs the same," "it has the same components," but how useful is it for the purposes of an intelligent machine (or person) to know whether it is "essentially" the same ship? The field of AI is so young that we do not even have a decent method of determining that it even IS a Greek ship. Before we attempt to incorporate such philosophical determinations in a machine, wouldn't it be more useful to solve the more pressing problem of object identification before problems of esoteric object distinctions are examined? The problem of "souls" is also not relevant to the study of AI (though it is undoubtedly of great import to our understanding of our role as humans in the universe). A "soul," like the concept of "essence," is undefinable. The problem of "cognition" is far more relevent to the study of AI because it can be defined within some domain; it is the object oriented interpretation of some phenomena (e.g., vision, auditory, context, etc.). Whether "cognition" constitutes a "soul" is again not relevent. The more pressing problem is the problem of creating a sufficient "cognitive" machine that can make object-oriented interpretations of sensory data and contextual information. While the question of whether a "soul" falls out of this mechanism may be be of philosophical interest, it moves us no closer to the description of such a mechanism. Another writer's opinion, P.K. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Jun 84 12:24:57-PDT (Sun) From: decvax!cwruecmp!borgia @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Essences and soul Article-I.D.: cwruecmp.1173 ** This is somewhat long ... You might learn something new ... ... from Intellectuals Anonymous (IA not AI) ** A few years ago, I became acquainted with an international group called Community International that operates through a technique called Guided Experiences to assist individuals in their progress towards self actualization. I remember that some of the techniques like Dis-tension, and the Experience of Peace were so effective that the Gurus in the group were sought by major corporations for their Executive Development programs. The Community itself is a non-profit, self-sustaining organization that originated somewhere in South America. The Community had a very interesting (scientific?) model for the body and soul (existence and essence) problem. The model is based on levels or Centers for the Mind. I will summarize what I remember about the Centers of the Mind. 1. The major Centers of the Mind are the Physiological Center, the Motor Center, the Emotional Center, and the Intellectual Center. 2. The functional parts of the Mind belong to different (matrix) cells in a tabulation of major Center X major Center. To illustrate the power of this abstraction, consider the following assertions where the loaded words have the usual meaning. The intellectual part of the intellectual center deals with reason or cognition. The rationalist AI persons must already feel very small. Reliance on reason alone indicates a poverty of the mind! The motor part of the intellectual center deals with imagination and creativity. The emotional part of the intellectual center deals with intuition. Similarly the motor center has intellectual, emotional and motor parts that control functions like learning to walk, the Olympics, and reflexes. The emotional center has intellectual, emotional, and motor parts that control faith and beliefs, the usual emotions like fear, anger, joy etc. and stuff like euphoria, erotica. The Physiological center is unfortunately the least understood. The center controls the survival drives for food, sex, safety etc. (And I believe, rational economic behaviour, free markets etc.) The thesis is that the lower centers (Physiological) must be developed before the higher centers can be productive. This must seem obvious since we don't expect a starving man to cry out with joy, or an emotionally disturbed person to reason effectively. ************************************************************************ I would appreciate any comments, anonymous or otherwise. Does this make any sense to you? Does this change your picture of your own mind? ************************************************************************ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jun 84 17:07:34 PDT From: Joe Halpern Subject: Seminars - Knowledge Representation [Forwarded from the IBM/Halpern distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] The knowledge seminar will be meeting again at 10 AM, Friday, June 8, in Auditorium A of Building 28 at IBM. This week Joe Karnicky will speak on "Knowledge Representation and Manipulation in an Expert System" and I will speak on work in progress entitled "Towards a Theory of Knowledge and Ignorance". I have appended the abstracts below. I have speakers lined up for three more sessions, which will be held June 22, July 6, and July 20. After that the seminar will stop, unless we can find some more volunteers to speak. As you can see by my talk, discussing work in progress is perfectly reasonable, as is talking about research other than your own. If you have any suggestions for speakers, or directions the seminar might take, please let me know. 10 AM -- Knowledge Representation and Manipulation in an Expert System Joe Karnicky, Varian Systems and Techniques Lab (Palo Alto) We are constructing an expert advisory system for chromatography, i.e. a computer program which is to perform as an advisor to analytical chemists (chromatographers) with functionality on the level of human experts. One of the most important considerations in the design of such a program is the choice of techniques for the representation and manipulation of the knowledge in the system. I will discuss these choices of knowledge representation, the results we have achieved, and the advantages and disadvantages we have discovered. The techniques to be discussed include: PREDICATE LOGIC-inference by a prologue-type interpreter (backward chaining + unification) modified to include certainty factors and predicates to be evaluated outside of the rule base. PRODUCTION SYSTEMS-collections of situation-action (if...,then...)rules. FRAMES-heirarchically related data structures. PROCEDURES- small programs for specific tasks in specific situations. ANALOG REPRESENTATIONS-in this case, a detector's output signal vs. time. 11 AM. -- Towards a Theory of Knowledge and Ignorance Joe Halpern, IBM Research Suppose you only have partial information about a particular domain. What can you be said to know in that case? This turns out to be a surprisingly tricky question to answer, especially if we assume that you have introspective knowledge about your knowledge. In particular, you know far more than the logical consequences of your information. For example, if my partial information does not tell me anything about the price of tea in China, then I know I don't know anything about the price of tea in China. Moreover, I know that no one else knows that I know the price of tea in China (since in fact I don't). Yet this knowledge is not a logical consequence of my information, which doesn't mention the price of tea in China at all! I will discuss the problem of characterizing an agent's state of when s/he has partial information, and give such a characterization in both the single agent and multi-agent case. The multi-agent case turns out to be much harder than the single agent case, and we're still not quite sure that we have the right characterization there. I will also try to relate this work to results of Konolige, Moore, and Stark, on non-monotonic logic and circumscriptive ignorance. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 5-Jun-84 21:43:10-PDT,17697;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 5-Jun-84 21:41:54 Date: Tue 5 Jun 1984 21:36-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #70 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 70 Today's Topics: Games - Computer War Games Request, AI Tools - Stanford Computer Plans, Scientific Method - Hardware Prototyping, Seminar - Expert System for Maintenance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 1 Jun 84 13:22:15-PDT (Fri) From: hplabs!intelca!cem @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Computer War Games Article-I.D.: intelca.287 This may be a rather simple problem, but it least it has no philosophical ramifications. I am developing a game that plays very similarly to the standard combat situation type games that Avalon Hill is famous for. Basically, it has various pieces of hardware, such as battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, transports, tanks, armies, various aircraft, etc. and the purpose is to build a fighting force using captured cities and defeat the opposing force. It is fairly simple to make the computer a "game board" however I would also like it to be at least one of the opponents also. So I need some pointers on how to make the program smart enough to play a decent game. I suspect there will be some similarities to chess since it to is essentially a war game. The abilities I hope to endow my computer with are those of building a defense, initiating an offense, and a certain amount of learnablity. Ok world, what text or tome describes techniques to do this ? I have a book on "gaming theory" that is nearly useless, I suspect. One that was a little more practical and less "and this is the proof ...", 10 pages later the next sentence begins. Maybe something like Newman and Sproul's graphics text but for AI. --Chuck McManis ihnp4! Disclaimer : All opinions expressed herein are my \ own and not those of my employer, my dual! proper! friends, or my avacado plant. / \ / fortune! \ / X--------> intelca!cem ucbvax! / \ \ / \ hplabs! rocks34! ARPAnet : "hplabs!intelca!cem"@Berkeley / hao! ------------------------------ Date: Fri 1 Jun 84 15:17:06-PDT From: Mark Crispin Subject: Stanford University News Service press release [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by CC.Clive@UTEXAS-20.] [Forwarded from the UTexas-20 bboard by CMP.Werner@UTEXAS-20.] STANFORD UNIVERSITY NEWS SERVICE STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 (415) 497-2558 FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: Joel Shurkin FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE STANFORD COMMISSIONS COMPUTER TO REPLACE LARGE DEC-20'S. STANFORD-- Stanford University is negotiating with a small Silicon Valley company to build large computers to replace the ubiquitous DECSYSTEM-20s now ``orphaned'' by their manufacturer, Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). The proposed contract, which would total around $1.4 million, would commision two machines from Foonly Inc. of Mountain View for delivery early in 1986. Foonly is owned by former Stanford student David Poole. According to Len Bosack, director of the Computer Science Department's Computer Facilities, the Foonly F1B computer system is about four times faster than the DEC model 2060 and 10 times faster when doing floating-point computations (where the decimal point need not be in the same place in each of the numbers calculated) that are characteristic of large-scale engineering and scientific problems. Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's Low Overhead Time Sharing (LOTS) Facility -- the academic computer center -- said the Foonly F1B system, which is totally compatible with the DEC-20, is an outgrowth of design work done by Poole and others while at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Since 1977, Foonly has built one large system, the F1, and several dozen smaller systems. The Foonly F1B is a descendant of the original F1, with changes reflecting advances in integrated circuit technology and the architectural refinements (internal design) of the latest DEC-20s. A spokesman for DEC said the company announced last year it had discontinued work on a successor to the DEC-20, code named ``Jupiter,'' and would continue to sell enhanced versions of the large mainframe. Service on the machines was promised for the next ten years. However, said Sandra Lerner, director of the Computing Facilities at the Graduate School of Business, the discontinuation of DEC-20 development left approximately 1,000 customers world-wide without a practicable ``growth path.'' Ten DECSYSTEM-20 computers on campus make that machine the most numerous large system at Stanford. The Graduate School of Business uses its two DEC-20s for administration, coursework, and research. The Computer Science Department uses two systems for research and administration. LOTS, the academic computer facility, supports instruction and unsponsored research on three systems and hopes to add one more in the time before the F1B is available. Other DEC-20s are at the Department of Electrical Engineering, the artifical intelligence project at the Medical Center (SUMEX), and the recently formed Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). The Stanford University Network (SUNet), the main university computer communications network, links together the 10 DEC-20s, approximately 30 mid-size computers, about 100 high-performance workstations, and nearly 400 terminals and personal computers. The DEC-20 has been a cornerstone of research in artificial intelligence (AI). Most of the large AI systems evolved on the DEC-20 and its predecessors. For this reason, Stanford and other computer science centers depend on these systems for their on-going research. Lerner said the alternative to the new systems would entail prohibitive expense to change all programs accumulated over nearly twenty years at Stanford and to retrain several thousand student, faculty, and staff users of these systems. The acquisition of the Foonly systems would be a deliberate effort to preserve these university investments. 6-1-84 -30- JNS3A EDITORS: Lerner may be reached at (415) 497-9717, Gorin at 497-3236, and Bosack at 497-0445. ------------------------------ Date: Mon 4 Jun 84 22:22:51-EDT From: David Shaw Subject: Correcting Stone's Mosaic comments Reluctant as I am to engage in a computer-mediated professional spat, it is clear that I can no longer let the inaccuracies suggested by Harold Stone's Mosaic quote go uncorrected. During the past two weeks, I've been inundated with computer mail asking me to clarify the issues he raised. In my last message, I tried to characterize what I saw as the basic philosophical differences underlying Harold's attacks on our research. Upon reading John Nagle's last message, however, it has become clear to me that it is more important to first straighten out the surface facts. First, I should emphasize that I do not in any way hold John Nagle responsible for propagating these inaccuracies. Nagle interpreted Stone's remarks in Mosaic exactly as I would have, and was careful to add an "according to the writer quoted" clause in just the right place. I also agree with Nagle that Stone's observations would have been of interest to the AI community, had they been true, and thus can not object to his decision to circulate them over the ARPANET. As it happens, though, the obvious interpretation of Stone's published remarks, as both Nagle and I interpreted them, were, quite simply, counterfactual. Nagle interpreted Stone's remarks, as I did, to imply that (in Nagle's words) "NON-VON's 1 to 3 are either unfinished or were never started." (Stone's exact words were "Why is there a third revision when the first machine wasn't finished?") In fact, a minimal (3 processing element) NON-VON 1 has already been completed and thoroughly tested. The custom IC on which it is based has been extensively tested, and has proved to be 100% functional. Construction of a non-trivial (though, at 128 PE's, still quite small) NON-VON 1 machine awaits only the receipt from ARPA's MOSIS system of enough chips to build a working prototype. If MOSIS is in fact able to deliver these parts according to the estimated timetable they have given us, we should be able to demonstrate operation of the 128-node prototype before our original milestone date of 12/84. In fact, we have proceeded with all implementation efforts for which we have received funding, have developed and tested working chips in an unusually short period of time, and have met each and every one of our project milestones without a single schedule overrun. When the editors of Mosaic sent me a draft copy of the text of their article for my review, I called Stone, and left a message on his answering device suggesting that (even if he was not aware of, did not understand, or had some principled objection to our phased development strategy) he might want to change the words "wasn't finished" to "hasn't yet been finished" in the interest of factual accuracy. He never returned my call, and apparently never contacted Mosaic to correct these inaccuracies. For the record, let me try to explain why NON-VON has so many numbers attached to its name. NON-VON 2 was a (successful) "paper-and-pencil" exercise intended to explore the conceptual boundaries of SIMD vs. MIMD execution in massively parallel machines. As we have emphasized both in publications and in public talks, this architecture was never slated for physical implementation. To be fair to Stone, he never explicitly said that it was. Still, I (along with Nagle and others who have since communicated with me) felt that Stone's remarks SUGGESTED that NON-VON 2 provided further evidence that we were continually changing our mind about what we wanted to build, and abandoning our efforts in midstream. This is not true. NON-VON 3, on the other hand, was in fact proposed for actual implementation. Although we have not yet received funding to build a working prototype, and will probably not "freeze" its detailed design for some months, considerable progress has been made in a tentative design and layout for a NON-VON 3 chip containing eight 8-bit PE's. The NON-VON 3 PE is based on the same general architectural principles as the working NON-VON 1 PE, but incorporates a number of improvements derived from detailed area, timing, and electrical measurements we have obtained from the NON-VON 1 chip. In addition, we are incorporating a few features that were considered for implementation in NON-VON 1, but were deemed too complex for inclusion in the first custom chip to be produced at Columbia. While we still expect to learn a great deal from the construction of a 128-node NON-VON 1 prototype, the results we have obtained in constructing the NON-VON 1 chip have already paid impressive dividends in guiding our design for NON-VON 3, and in increasing the probability of obtaining a working, high-performance, 65,000-transistor chip within the foreseeable future. Based on his comments, I can only assume that, in my position, Stone would have attempted to jump directly from an "armchair design" to a working, highly optimized 65,000-transistor nMOS chip without wasting any silicon on interim experimentation. This strategy has two major drawbacks: 1. It tends to result in architectures that micro-optimize (in both the area and time dimensions) things that ultimately don't turn out to make much difference, at the expense of things that do. 2. It often seems to result in chips that never work. Even when they do, the total expenditure for development, measured in either calendar months, designer-months, or fabrication costs, is typically far larger than is the case with a phased strategy employing carefully selected elements of "bottom-up" experimentation. Finally, let again state my view that one of the essential characteristics of the emerging paradigm for experimental research in the field of nonstandard architectures is the development of "non-optimal" machines that nonetheless clearly explicate and test new architectural ideas. Even in NON-VON 3, we have not attempted to embody all of (or even all of the most important) architectural features that we believe will ultimately prove important in massively parallel machines. By way of illustration, we have thus far limited the scope of our experimental work to very fine grain SIMD machines supporting only a single physical PE interconnection scheme. This is not because we believe that the future of computation lies in the construction of such machines. On the contrary, I am personally convinced that, if massively parallel machines ever do find extensive use in practical applications (and, in my view, it is too early to predict whether they will), they are almost certain to exhibit heterogeneity in all three dimensions (granularity, synchrony and topology). Ultimately, we hope to broaden the scope of the NON-VON project to consider the opportunities and problems associated with more than one class of processing element, multiple-SIMD, as opposed to strictly SIMD, execution schemes, and the inclusion of additional communication links. In the context of a research (as opposed to a development) effort, however, it often seems to be more productive to explore a few mechanisms in some detail than incorporate within the first architectural experiment all features that seem like they might ultimately come in handy. The NON-VON 1 prototype, along with our proposed NON-VON 3 machine, exemplify this approach to experimental research in computer architecture. Until we lose interest in the problems of massively parallel computation, or run out of either unresolved questions or the funding to answer them, we are likely to stick to our current research strategy, which is based in part on the implementation of experimental hardware in multiple, partially overlapped stages. Although I know this will upset Harold, there may thus someday be a NON-VON 4, a NON-VON 5, and possibly even a NON-VON 6. Some of these later successors may never get past the stage of educated doodles, while others may yield only concrete evidence of the shortcomings of some of our favorite architectural ideas. I believe it to be characteristic of the paradigm shift to which I referred in my last message that the very strategy to which we attribute much of our success is casually dismissed by Stone as evidence of indecison and failure. As decreasing IC device dimensions and the availability of rapid-turnaround VLSI facilities combine to significantly expand the possibilities for experimental research on computer architectures, it may be useful to take a fresh look our criteria for evaluating research methods and research results in this area. David P.S. For those who may be interested, a more detailed explanation of the rationale behind our plan for the phased development of NON-VON prototypes is outlined in a paper presented at COMPCON '84. This paper was not, however, available to Stone at the time his remarks were quoted in Mosaic; in general, our failure to promptly publish papers describing our work is probably the source of much legitimate criticism of the NON-VON project. ------------------------------ Date: 29 May 1984 16:59-EDT From: DISRAEL at BBNG.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Expert System for Maintenance [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] There will be a seminar on Thursday, June 7th at 10:30 in the 2nd floor large conference room. The speaker will be Gregg Vesonder of Bell Labs. ACE: An Expert System for Telephone Cable Maintenance Gregg T. Vesonder Bell Laboratories Whippany, NJ As more of the record keeping and monitoring functions of the local telephone network are automated, there is an increasing burden on the network staff to analyze the information generated by these systems. An expert system called ACE (Automated Cable Expertise) was developed to help the staff manage this information. ACE analyzes the information by using the same rules and procedures that a human analyst uses. Standard knowledge engineering techniques were used to acquire the expert knowledge and to incorportae that knowledge into ACE's knowledge base. The most significant departure from "standard" expert system architecture was ACE's use of a conventional data base management system as its primary source of information. Our experience with building and deploying ACE has shown that the technology of expert systems can be useful in a variety of business data processing environments. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 6-Jun-84 21:52:12-PDT,12132;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 6-Jun-84 21:49:01 Date: Wed 6 Jun 1984 21:35-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #71 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Thursday, 7 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 71 Today's Topics: Games & Expert Systems - Source Information, AI Programming - Definitions, Expert Systems - MYCIN Demo, Humor - Turing Machine, AI Contracts - Automated Classification and Retrieval, Seminar - Programming by Example, Conferences - Approximately Solved Problems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 Jun 1984 13:12:28 EDT From: Perry W. Thorndyke Subject: computer war games Reply to Chuck McManis's request for information on war games: There are literally hundreds of programs, written in a variety of languagues for a variety of machines, that support battle simulation or war gaming. A catalog of these is published annually and is available under the title "Catalog of Wargaming and Military Simulation Models" from Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Agency; Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; The Pentagon; Washington, D.C. Few, if any, of the systems described in the catalog provide "intelligent" simulation of opponent behavior. One reason for this is that there exists no articulated model for expertise in tactical planning and decision making. We at Perceptronics are developing a Navy tactical battle game with an automated opponent based on a cognitive model of tactics. The project is a vehicle to explore (1) development of an expert model of time-stressed tactical decision making, (2) development of an instructional system to teach these skills to a novice, (3) automating an adaptive, intelligent opponent using the expert model, and (4) making the opponent behavior modifiable under program control of the instructional system to achieve pedagogical objectives. A technical report is due out soon; if you are interested, send your address and I'll add you to the mailing list. Perry Thorndyke Perceptronics, Inc. 545 Middlefield Road Menlo Park, CA 94025 (415) 321-4901 thorndyke@usc-isi ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jun 84 16:34:24 EDT (Wednesday) From: Chris Heiny Subject: Re: Computer Wargames Sounds like you've got your work cut out. It'll probably be considerably more complex than a chess player, because chess is the simplest of wargames (I choose to ignore checkers): 2 players with 32 counters (of 6 types) on a 64 space board, with relatively limited connections (4) per space. More complex wargames have more players, with hundreds of counters (of many more than 6 types) on a board with thousands of spaces, each space usually connnecting to 6 others. The rules are vastly more complex as well. The project sounds pretty interesting though, and I'll be glad to lend what aid I can from this distance. Chris ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jun 84 15:07 PDT From: Brian Reid Subject: AI programs: a definition [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] An AI program is a program written by a person who fervently believes that he is doing AI as he writes the program. Mere belief is not sufficient; it must be zealous belief. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jun 84 16:18 PDT From: Mark Kent Subject: AI programs: addition to a definition [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] In addition to the definition given by reid@Glacier: An AI program is a program in which at least one of the important subproblems that needs solving is solved by a brute force method. ------------------------------ Date: Sun 3 Jun 84 20:23:27-PDT From: Bruce Buchanan Subject: AI Program Demo [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] [The following is part of an exchange of messages about the percentage of graduating AI students who have been exposed to actual AI program demos. I have edited it slightly. -- KIL] MYCIN is available on SUMEX from the guest account -- remember that large jobs are slow during the day. Once on Sumex, type MYCIN to the Exec and read the help options. If you don't know much medicine it might be a good idea to run a library case first. You should not need someone else to demo it for you, but there are still people around who worked on MYCIN when it was an active project if you need help. The password for the Sumex guest acct is available from RYALLS @ SUMEX. A caveat: the medical knowledge base has not been updated in the past several years to reflect knowledge of new drugs or improved therapies. bgb ------------------------------ Date: Mon 4 Jun 84 08:46:07-PDT From: Bud Spurgeon Subject: Re: Have you seen? [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] How may MTC students have seen a Turing machine? -- Moshe Vardi Our DEC 2060 nicknamed "TURING" is on view daily in the Pine Hall machine room. -Bud :-) (P.S. We're still looking for a tape cabinet capable of storing infinitely long tape.) (P.P.S. Backups on this thing take FOREVER.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Jun 84 09:26:42 edt From: aronson@nlm-mcs (Jules P. Aronson) Subject: Research Contract Please distribute the following announcement to Research people in the fields of AI and Information Science: -------------------------------------------------------------- AUTOMATED CLASSIFICATION AND RETRIEVAL PROJECT -- The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine, is developing a research project to investigate, develop, and evaluated Information Science, Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence techniques which support the automated classification and retrieval of biomedical literature. The project shall include investigations in natural language understanding, knowledge representation, and information retrieval, to explore the development of automated systems for identifying, representing, and retrieving relevant concepts and main ideas from printed documents. Written requests for RFP NLM-84-115/PSP, should be addressed to the National Library of Medicine, Office of Contracts Management, Building 38A, Room B1N17, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20209, Attention: Patricia Page. The RFP will be available in approximately 30 days and will close 30 days after it is issued. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 5 Jun 84 23:15:02-EDT From: JMILLER%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Seminar - Programming by Example [Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.] Title: Programming by Example Speaker: Dan Halbert, University of California, Berkeley, and Xerox Corporation, Office Systems Division Wednesday, June 6, 2pm, AI playroom (8th floor, Tech Square) Most computer-based applications systems cannot be programmed by their users. We do not expect the average user of a software system to be able to program it, because conventional programming is not an easy task. But ordinary users can program their systems, using a technique called "programming by example". At its simplest, programming by example is just recording a sequence of commands to a system, so that the sequence can be played back at a later time, to do the same or a similar task. The sequence forms a program. The user writes the program -in the user interface- of the system, which he already has to know in order to operate the system. Programming by example is "Do what I did." A simple program written by example may not be very interesting. I will show methods for letting the user -generalize- the program so it will operate on data other than that used in the example, and for adding control structure to the program. In this talk, I will describe programming by example, discuss current and past research in this area, and also describe a particular implementation of programming by example in a prototype of the Xerox 8010 Star office information system. ------------------------------ Date: Thu 24 May 84 16:29:48-EDT From: Joseph Traub Subject: Call for papers CALL FOR PAPERS Symposium on Complexity of Approximately Solved Problems April 17-19, 1985 Computer Science Department Columbia University New York, NY 10027 SUPPORT: This symposium is supported by a grant from the System Development Foundation. SCOPE: This multidisciplinary symposium focuses on problems which are approximately solved and for which optimal algorithms or complexity results are available. Of particular interest are distributed systems, where limitations on information flow can cause uncertainty in the approximate solution of problems. The following is a partial list of topics: distributed computation, approximate solution of hard problems, applied mathematics, signal processing, numerical analysis, computer vision, remote sensing, fusion of information, prediction, estimation, control, decision theory, mathematical economics, optimal recovery, seismology, information theory, design of experiments, stochastic scheduling. INVITED SPEAKERS: The following is a list of invited speakers. L. Blum, Mills College J. Halpern, IBM L. Hurwicz, University of Minnesota D. Johnson, AT&T - Bell Laboratories J. Kadane, Carnegie-Mellon University R. Karp, Berkeley H.T. Kung, Carnegie-Mellon University D. Lee, Columbia University M. Milanese, Politecnico di Torino C.H. Papadimitriou, Stanford University J. Pearl, UCLA M. Rabin, Harvard University and Hebrew University S. Reiter, Northwestern University A. Schonhage, University of Tubingen K. Sikorski, Columbia University S. Smale, Berkeley J.F. Traub, Columbia University G. Wasilkowski, Columbia University and University of Warsaw A.G. Werschulz, Fordham University H. Wozniakowski, Columbia University and University of Warsaw CONTRIBUTED PAPERS: All appropriate papers for which abstracts are contributed will be scheduled. To contribute a paper send title, author, affiliation, and abstract on one side of a single 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. TITLES AND ABSTRACTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY JANUARY 15, 1985 PUBLICATION: Invited papers will be published. REGISTRATION: The symposium will be held in the Kellogg Conference Center on the Fifteenth Floor of the International Affairs Building, 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The conference schedule and paper abstracts will be available at the registration desk. Registration will start at 9:00 a.m. There is no registration charge. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: The program schedule for invited and contributed papers will be mailed by about March 15 only to those responding to this Call for Papers. If you have any questions, contact TRAUB@Columbia-20.ARPA. To help us plan for the symposium please send the following information to NG@Columbia-20.ARPA. Name: ________________________ Affiliation: _______________________________ Address: __________________________________________________________________ City: ___________________ State: _____________________ Zip: _______________ ( ) I will attend the Complexity Symposium. ( ) I may contribute a paper. ( ) I may not attend, but please send program. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 10-Jun-84 15:19:25-PDT,15364;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 10-Jun-84 15:16:36 Date: Sun 10 Jun 1984 14:55-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #72 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Sunday, 10 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 72 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Name Grammar Request, Planning - Multi-Agents and Complex World Models, Courses - Expert Systems, Perception & Philosophy - Cross-Time Identity, Scientific Method - Mathematics, Logic - Logic and AI at U. Maryland, AI Societies & Periodicals - Canadian AI Newsletter ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 6 Jun 84 08:10:26-PDT From: TEX82@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Names BibTeX, LaTeX's bibliography lookup program, needs: * a grammar of author names--that is, a BNF specification of the components of a name, and * a specification of how to print a name, in various styles, given its parse tree. Possible style choices for names include last name first or last and, perhaps, complete first/middle names or initials. The rules should handle almost all cases encountered in technical literature, including 'Brinch Hansen, Per' and 'Jean-Pierre van der Waerden, Jr.' but need not cover cases like 'John Thompson, Earl of Rumford'. The grammar need not be logically complete; for example, it would be all right to consider 'Colonel' to be the first name of 'Colonel John Blimp', if that produces the correct printed version. Please contact me if you know of anything like this. Leslie Lamport [Please forward this to anyone who might have an answer. Leslie has been doing a great job building the LaTeX friendly user interface to TeX, and a great many of us can benefit from any increased functionality he can develop for the bibliography preprocessor. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Jun 84 20:41 EDT From: THE DESK (terminal)OF Subject: multi-agents and complex world models There are many planning systems using multi-agents and temporal constraints. But the domains for most of these systems are limited to only a very simplistic world model. The system we are working on involves a complex graphic display of the inside of NASA's space lab (within the space shuttle). There are many complex objects and multi-agents to contend with to provide a true simulation of even a simple command. Hendrix's model shows an interesting world model for a simple scenario, but without a sophisticated planner. There must be further research in such "robot-like" worlds and if so, I would greatly appreciate any pointers toward articles/papers/books dealing with such complex world models and planning systems. Thank you, Jeffrey S. Gangel [ Gangel%upenn.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa ] Dept. of Computer and Information Science Moore School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Jun 84 10:32:19 PDT (Thursday) From: Isdale.es@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Course using *Building Expert Systems* (Hayes-Roth,Waterman,Lenat) In response to a request for information on courses using the text *Building Expert Systems* by R. Hayes-Roth, D. Waterman, and D. Lenat (Addison Wesley, 1983): UCLA Extension Offered such a class this past spring: Developing Expert Systems. Instructor: Dr. Douglas R. Partridge (works for one of the defense/aerospace contractors in the LA area.) The course was taught as a lecture-seminar w/demonstrations & code walkthroughs. Both LISP and PROLOG methods were discussed. A major portion of the grading depended on a term project. The class was expanded from a seminar given by Dr. Partridge for the Technology Transfer Society. The prospectus I have is 3pg and too long for the digest. I will forward it on request but suggest calling the extension at (213) 825-3985 for more up-to-date information. J.B. Isdale (Isdale.es@XEROX.ARPA) ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jun 84 6:00:08-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Watch out for that tree Article-I.D.: gloria.220 It's the computer's own fault for using human-range vision. Infra-red would have revealed the cardboard tree. "Take these broken wings ... " Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel ------------------------------ Date: 6 Jun 84 6:07:27-PDT (Wed) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: cross-time identity. Article-I.D.: gloria.221 This problem also arises in databases. How do you find out whether the Joe Szmoe in your tax database is the same as the Joe Szmoe in your welfare database? SSNs don't count - he may have several. The problem is even worse when you pass from Artificial Intelligence to Military Intelligence. You may know nothing for certain about enemy spies, and can only suspect that two spies are identical. Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 84 9:47:53 EDT From: Stephen Wolff Subject: Mathematical Methods Not at all deep; maybe others will find our gropings briefly amusing ..... Date: Fri, 8 Jun 84 11:19:30 EDT From: Brint "The usual attitude of mathematicians is reflected in their published research papers and in mathematics textbooks. Proofs are revamped and polished until all trace of how they were discovered is completely hidden. The reader is left to assume that the proof came to the originator in a blinding flash, since it contains steps which no one could possibly have guessed would succeed. The painstaking process of trial and error, revision and adjustment are all invisible." Alan Bundy From: Stephen Wolff I have the greatest respect for Alan Bundy, and I agree with his words. I shall however adamantly disagree with his (or anyone's) implication that "The painstaking process of trial and error, revision and adjustment....." should NOT be invisible -- in a MATHEMATICS paper. The purpose of such a paper MUST be FIRST to advance knowledge; proofs MUST be as spare, concise and lucid as it is within the author's talent to make them -- for sloppy or wordy proofs are just that much harder to verify. And, indeed, the paper is diminished to PRECISELY the extent that the author's trials and fumbles are displayed -- for they may prejudice the world-view of a reader and lead him to the same (POSSIBLY erroneous) result. If you say that there are too few (maybe no) places to publish mathematicians' thought processes, methods of hypothesis, &c., then I shall agree. And, further, state my belief that UNTIL we are able to read how both successful and unsuccessful mathematicians derive the objects of their study, then all successful efforts at automated reasoning will be just blind beginners' luck. From: Paul Broome Bundy was not implying that the dead end paths in the search for a proof should be in the paper that publishes the proof. Just before the portion that Brint quoted, he discussed Polya's books, "How to Solve It" and "Mathematical Discovery" and introduced the paragraph containing the aforementioned quote with, "Polya's attitude in trying to understand the 'mysterious' aspects of problem solving is all too rare." His next paragraph begins with "The only attempt, of which I am aware, to explain the process by which a proof was constructed, is B.L. van der Waerden's paper, 'How the proof of Baudet's conjecture was found', .." He's giving motivation for a book on the modeling of mathematical reasoning. From: Brint Perhaps, as in so many endeavors, several bright people actually agree: 1. Mathematics papers are not the place for discussing trial_and_error, inspirational flashes, false starts, and other means for "discovering" truth and error. 2. Forums are needed for the discussion of such ideas in order to advance our understanding of the process at least toward the end of improving mathematical reasoning by computer. 3. In some limited way, such forums exist. We need to encourage and motivate our mathematicians to contribute to them. Brint ------------------------------ Date: 8 Jun 84 16:57:32 EDT (Fri) From: JACK MINKER Subject: LOGIC and its ROLE in AI SPECIAL YEAR IN MATHEMATICAL LOGIC AND THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE Each year the Mathematics Department of the University of Maryland devotes its attention to a special topic. In conjunction with the Department of Computer Science, the 1984-1985 academic year will be devoted to the topic of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. The year will consist of eight sessions devoted to particular areas. The time-table that has evolved is given below. As will be noted, the week of October 22-26, 1984, will be devoted to issues in LOGIC and its ROLE in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE with emphasis on knowledge representation, com- mon sense reasoning, non-monotonic reasoning and logic pro- gramming. The lectures will be open to the public. The precise times and dates of the lectures for the AI week will be announced in the next few months. We anticipate that there will be modest financial sup- port presumably for graduate students and junior faculty. Applications for support for the week of October 22-26 to be devoted to LOGIC and its ROLE in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE should be sent to: Dr. Jack Minker Department of Computer Science University of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20742 minker@umcp-cs (301) 454-6119 Kindly send a letter including a vitae, a statement as to the importance of these issues to your research, the number of days you might like to attend, and the amount of support that you might require. We emphasize that we do not know if we will have funds and even assuming they are available, they will be modest at best. You should also notify the above by sending a message over the net expressing your interest in attending the open sessions. Those who plan to come, but require no financial sup- port should also inform us of your intentions so that we may arrange for an appropriate size lecture hall. Those individuals interested in other topics associated with this Math Year should contact: Dr. E.G.K. Lopez - Escobar Department of Mathematics University of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20742 egkle@umcp-cs (301) 454-3759 and provide the same information as above. TIME SCHEDULE AND LECTURERS October 1-5, 1984. Semantics and Logics of Programs. Participants: S. Brookes, D. Kozen, A. Meyer, M. O'Donnell, R. Statman October 8-12, 1984. Recursion Theory. Participants: R. Book, J. Case, R. Daley, D. Leivant, J. Myhill, A. Selman, P. Young **October 22-26, 1984. LOGIC and its ROLE in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Participants: J. Barwise, M. van Emden, L. Henschen, J. McCarthy, R. Reiter December 3-7, 1984. Model Theory and Algebra. Participants: A. Macintyre, A. Mekler, C. Wood March 4-8, 1985. Automath and Automating Natural Deduction. Participants: N.G. DeBruijn, J. Zucker March 11-15, 1985. Stability theory. Participants: J. Baldwin, S. Buechler, A. Pillay, C. Steinhorn April 22-26, 1985. Toposes and Model Theory. Participants: A. Joyal, F. Lawvere, I. Moerdijk, G. Reyes, A. Scendrov April 29-May 3,1985. Toposes and Proof Theory. Participants: M. Bunge, P. Freyd, M. Makkai, D. Scott, P. Scott ------------------------------ Date: 5 Jun 84 9:00:08-PDT (Tue) From: ihnp4!alberta!sask!utcsrgv!utai!gh @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Canadian A.I. Newsletter -- Call for submissions Article-I.D.: utai.187 ==================== Call for submissions ==================== CANADIAN A R T I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E NEWSLETTER (Published by CSCSI/SCEIO) The Canadian A.I. Newsletter invites submissions from Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the world of any item relevant to artificial intelligence: -- Articles of general interest. -- Abstracts of recent publications, theses, and technical reports. -- Descriptions of current research and courses at a given institution. -- Reports of recent conferences, workshops and the like. -- Announcements of forthcoming conferences and other activities. -- Calls for papers. -- Book reviews (and books for review). -- Announcements of new A.I. companies and products. -- Opinions, counterpoints, polemic, and controversy. -- Humour, cartoons, artwork. -- Advertisements (rates upon request). -- Anything else concerned with A.I. Please send submissions, either physical or electronic, to the editor: Graeme Hirst Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, CANADA M5S 1A4 Phone: 416-978-6277/6025 CSNET: cscsi@toronto ARPANET: cscsi.toronto@csnet-relay UUCP: utcsrgv!cscsi (connections to allegra, cornell, decvax, decwrl, deepthot, drea, floyd, garfield, hcr, ihnp4, linus, mbcsd, mcgill-vision, musocs, qucis, sask, ubc-vision, utzoo, uw-beaver, watmath, and many other sites) ------------------------ The Canadian A.I. Newsletter is sent to all members of CSCSI/SCEIO, the Canadian artificial intelligence society. To join, write to CIPS (which administers membership matters for the society) with the appropriate fee and a covering note. You need not be Canadian to be a member. CIPS 243 College Street, 5th floor Toronto, CANADA M5T 2Y1 Membership: $10 regular, $5 students (Canadian funds); there is a discount of $2 for CIPS members. Payment may be made in U.S. dollars at the current rate of exchange. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 15-Jun-84 11:25:09-PDT,18334;000000000001 Mail-From: LAWS created at 15-Jun-84 11:23:45 Date: Fri 15 Jun 1984 11:08-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #73 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Friday, 15 Jun 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 73 Today's Topics: AI Programming - Definition, Scientific Method - Mathematics, AI Reports - Recent Titles, Forum - Minsky and Asimov at Rensselaerville, Seminars - Motion of Objects in Contact & AI and APL & Learning Equation Solving Methods, Workshops - Expert Systems & Reasoning ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Jun 84 14:06:55-PDT (Sat) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!cmcl2!floyd!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!exodus!dhc @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Definition of an AI program Article-I.D.: exodus.169 In-Reply-To: Article <581@sri-arpa.UUCP> How about this: A program is an AI program if and only if it is written in LISP. David H. Copp [Or Prolog? The "if ..." is commonly assumed, but the "only if ..." seems much too strong. I currently do list processing in C; while I don't claim much AI content, I see little difference between the C code and equivalent algorithms written in LISP. Bob Amsler has pointed out to me that spelling correctors are knowledge-based programs capable of outperforming even intelligent humans; few such programs are written in AI languages. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wednesday, 13-Jun-84 16:33:08-BST From: BUNDY HPS (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: Mathematical Methods I support Broome's and Brint's interpretations of what I was trying to say in my book. I was not trying to criticise mathematics papers per se, but to point out that they do not contain some of the information that AI researchers need for computational modelling and to make a plea for a forum for such information. But let me add a caveat to that. The proofs in a paper are at least as important a contribution to mathematics as the theorems they prove. Future mathematicians may want to use these proofs as models for proofs in analogous areas of mathematics (think of diagonalization arguments, for instance). So it will improve the MATHEMATICAL content of the papers if the author points out the structure of the proof and draws attention to what s/he regards as the key ideas behind the proof. Alan Bundy ------------------------------ Date: 12 Jun 84 20:27:32-PDT (Tue) From: hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!sher @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: Re: Mathematical Methods Article-I.D.: rocheste.7379 Personally, I have done mathematics up to the beginning graduate level for various courses. When I do any difficult piece of mathematics I find that after the fact I can never remember how I came upon the proof. I can reconstruct my steps but the reconstruction has no real relationship to what I really did. The sensation of finishing a proof is highly analogous to waking up from a dream. This is possibly the most important reason why I am doing artificial intelligence rather than mathematics today. If other real mathematicians also operate in this manner then it is not surprising that they are reluctant to write up their reasoning processes. They literally cannot remember them. -David ------------------------------ Date: Sun 10 Jun 84 13:26:20-PDT From: Chuck Restivo Subject: LP - Library Update [Forwarded from the Prolog digest by Laws@SRI-AI.] Isaac Balbin and Koenraad Lecot sent a copy of their useful publication; "Prolog and Logic Programming Bibliography" The cost for obtaining your own copy is $5.00 Australian, and includes the cost of Air Mail. Contact: Isaac Balbin Department of Computer Science Parkville 3052 Melbourne, Australia Send information reg