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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 028
AIList Digest Friday, 29 Jul 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 28
Today's Topics:
USENET and AI
AI and the Military
The Fifth Generation Computer Project
Lisp Books, Nondeterminism, Japanese Effort
Automated LISP Dialect Translation
Data Flow Computers and PS's
Repeated Substring Detection
A.I. in Sci Fi (2)
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Date: 26 Jul 83 11:52:01-PDT (Tue)
From: teklabs!jima @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: USENET and AI
Article-I.D.: teklabs.2247
In response to [a Usenet] query about AI research going on at USENET
sites:
The Tektronix Computer Research Lab now has a Knowledge-Based Systems
group. We are a <very> new group and are still staffing up. We're
looking into circuit trouble shooting as well as numerous other topics
of interest.
Jim Alexander
Usenet: {ucbvax,decvax,pur-ee,ihnss,chico}!teklabs!jima
CSnet: jima@tek
ARPA: jima.tek@rand-relay
------------------------------
Date: Wed 27 Jul 83 21:29:44-PDT
From: Ira Kalet <IRA@WASHINGTON.ARPA>
Subject: AI and the military
The possibilities of AI in unmanned weapons systems are wonderful!
Now we could send all the weapons, and their delivery vehicles to the
moon (or beyond) where they can fight our war for us without anyone
getting hurt and no property damage. That would be progress! If only
the decision makers valued us humans more than their toys..........
------------------------------
Date: 27 Jul 83 18:38:58 PDT (Wednesday)
From: Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: The Fifth Generation Computer Project
In case some of you are not on every junk mailing list known to man
the way I am, there is a new international English-language journal
with an all-Japanese editorial board called "New Generation
Computing", published by Springer-Verlag, Journal Fulfillment Dept.,
44 Hartz Way, Secaucus, NJ 07094. The price is even more outrageous
than the stuff published by North Holland: vol.1 (2 issues) 1983,
$52; vol.2 (4 issues) 1984, $104.
Can anybody explain why so much AI literature (even by US authors) is
published by foreign publishers at outrageous prices? I should have
thought some US univerity press would get smart and get into the act
in a bigger way. Lawrence Erlbaum seems to be doing a creditable job
in Cognitive Science, but that's just one corner of AI.
--Bruce
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 1983 0838-PDT
From: FC01@USC-ECL
Subject: Re: Lisp Books, Nondeterminism, Japanese Effort
Lots of things to talk about today, A good lisp book for the beginner:
The LISP 1.6 Primer. It really explains what's going down, and even
has exercises with answers. It is not specific to any particular lisp
of today (since it is quite old) and therefore gives the general
knowledge necessary to use any lisp (with a little help from the
manual).
Nondeterministic production systems: Lots of work has been done. The
fact is that a production system is built under the assumption that
there is a single global database. The tree version of a production
system doesn't meet this requirement. On the other hand, there are
many models of what you speak of. The Petri-net model treats such
things nondeterministically by selecting one or the other (assuming
their results prevent each other from occuring) seemingly at random.
Of course, unless you have a real parallel processor the results you
get will be deterministic. I refer you to any good book on Petri-nets
(Peterson is pretty good). Tree structured algorithms in general have
this property, therefore any breadth-first search will try to do both
forks of the tree at once. Other examples of theorem provers doing
this are relatively common (not to mention most multiprocess operating
systems based on forks).
%th generation computers: There is a lot of work on the same basic
idea as 5th generation computers (a 5th generation computer by any
other name sounds better). From what I have been able to gather from
reading all the info from ICOT (the Japanese project directorate) they
are trying to do the project by getting foreign experts to come and
tell them how. They anounce their project, say they're going to lead
the world, and wait for the egos of other scientists to bring them
there to show them how to really do it. The papers I've read show a
few good researchers with real good ideas but little in the way of
knowing how to get them working. On the other hand, data flow, speech
understanding, systolic arrays, microcomputer interfaces to
'supercomputers' and high BW communications are all operational to
some degree in the US, and are being improved on a daily basis. I
would therefore say that unless we show them how, we will be the
leaders in this field, not they.
***The last article was strictly my opinion-- no reflection on anyone
else***
Fred
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 83 11:34:17 CDT
From: Paul.Milazzo <milazzo.rice@Rand-Relay>
Subject: Automated LISP Dialect Translation
When Rice University got its first VAX, a friend of mine and I set
about porting a production system based game playing program to Franz
Lisp from Cambridge Lisp running on an IBM 370. We used, as I recall,
a combination of Emacs macros (to change lexical constructs) and a
LISP program (to translate program constructs). The technique was not
an elegant one, nor was it particularly general, but it gives me good
reason to think that the LISP translator Fred proposes is far from
impossible. It also points out that implementation superiority is not
the only reason for choosing one LISP over another.
Paul Milazzo <milazzo.rice@Rand-Relay>
Dept. of Mathematical Sciences
Rice University, Houston, TX
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
P.S. Fred: After living in Texas for eight years, I'm still not
sure I could interpret a Texan's remarks for a New Yorker.
The dialect is easy to understand, but the concepts are all
different...
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
------------------------------
Date: 28 Jul 1983 1352-PDT
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
Subject: data flow computers and PS's
(more speculation)
There has been some developement of computers suited to certain high
level languages, includeing the LISP machines. There has also been
some research into non-Von Neuman machines. One such machine is
the Data Flow Machine.
The data flow machine differs from the conventional computer in that
ALL instructions are initiated when the program starts. Each
instruction waits for the calculations yeilding its arguments to
finish before it finishes.
This machine seems, to me, to be ideally suited to Production
Systems/Expert Systems. Each rule would be represented as a few
instructions (the IF part of the production) and the THEN part would
be represented by the completion of the rule. For example, the rule
(Month-is-june AND Sun-is-up) -> (Temperature-is-high) would be coded
as:
Temperature-is-high: AND
/ \
/ \
/ \
(Month-is-june) (Sun-is-up)
Where (Month-is-june) and (Sun-is-up) are represented as either
other rules, or as data (which I assume completes instantly).
j'
------------------------------
Date: Thu 28 Jul 83 16:06:46-PDT
From: David E.T. Foulser <FOULSER@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: Repeated Substring Detection
Would anyone in AI have use for the following type of program? Given
a k-dimensional (the lower k the better) input string of characters
from a finite alphabet, the program finds all substrings of dimension
k (or less if necessary) that occur more than once in the input
string. I don't have a program that does this, but would like to know
of any interest.
Sincerely,
Dave Foulser
------------------------------
Date: 27 Jul 1983 1617-PDT
From: Park
Subject: A.I. in Sci Fi
[Reprinted from the SRI BBoard.]
Do you have a favorite gripe about the way scientists, computers,
robots, or artificial intelligence are portrayed on tv shows? Send
them to me and I will forward them on Monday August 1 to an
honest-to-God tv-show writer who is going to write that kind of show
soon and would like to do it right.
Bill Park, EJ239 SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park,
CA 94025
------------------------------
Date: Thu 28 Jul 83 12:24:12-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Re: A.I. in Sci Fi
Gripes? You mean things like:
Hawaii 5-0 always using the card sorter as the epitome
of computer readout?
Stepford Wives portraying androids so realistic that no one
notices, and executives/scientists who prefer them to true
companions?
Demon Seed showing impregnation of a woman by a computer?
Telephon slowing down CRT typeout to 150 baud and adding
Teletype sound effects?
War Games similarly slowing the CRT typeout; using
natural language communication; using voice synthesis
on a home terminal connected by modem to a military computer;
postulating that our national defense is in the hands of
unsecured computers with dial-up ports, faulty password
systems, games directories, and big panels of flashing lights;
and portraying scientists and generals as nerds?
Star Wars suggesting that computerized targeting mechanisms
will always be inferior to human reflexes?
Tron's premise that a computer can suck you into its internal
conceptual world?
Star Trek and War Games preaching that any computer can be
disabled, even melted, by a logical contradiction or an
unsatisfiable task?
Nah, I don't mind.
-- Ken Laws
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End of AIList Digest
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