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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 027
AIList Digest Thursday, 28 Jul 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 27
Today's Topics:
Multiple producers in a production system
PROLONG
HFELISP
Getting Started in AI
Lisp Translation
Re: Expectations of Expert System Technology
The Fifth Generation Computer Project
The Military and AI
AI Koans
HP Computer Colloquium 7/28
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 26 Jul 1983 0937-PDT
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
Subject: Multiple producers in a production system
(speculation/question)
Has anyone heard of multiple "producers" in production systems? What
I mean is: should the STM contain (a b c) and there is a rule (a b)
-> (d) and another (b c) -> (e), would it be useful to somehow do BOTH
productions? The PS could become two PS's, one with (d c) and another
with (e a) in STM. This sort of a PS could be useful in fuzzy areas
of knowledge where the same implicants could (due to lack of other
implicants, or due to lack of understanding) imply more than one
result.
j'
------------------------------
Date: Tue 26 Jul 83 23:14:06-PDT
From: WALLACE <N.WALLACE@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: PROLONG
PROLONG: A VERY SLOW LOGIC PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
ABSTRACT
PROLONG was developed at the University of Heiroglyphia over a 22-year
period. PROLONG is an implementation of a very well-known technique
for deciding whether a given well-formed formula F of first-order
logic is a theorem. We first type in the axioms A of our system.
Then PROLONG applies the rules of inference successively to the axioms
A and the subsequent theorems we derive from A. A matching routine
determines whether F is identical to one of these theorems. If the
algorithm stops, we know that F is a theorem. If it never stops, we
known that F is not.
------------------------------
Date: 27 Jul 1983 0942-PDT
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
Subject: HFELISP
HFELISP (Heffer Lisp) HUMAN FACTOR ENGINEERED LISP
ABSTRACT
HFE sugests that the more complicated features of (common) Lisp are
dangerous, and hard to understand. As a result a number of Fortran,
Cobol, and 370 assembler programmers got together with a housewife.
They pared Lisp down to, what we belive to be, a much simpler and more
understandable system. The system includes only the primitives CONS,
READ, and PRINT. However CONS was restricted to only take an atom for
the first argument, and a onelevel list for the second. Since all
lists are onelevel they also did away with parenthesis. All the
primitives were coded in ADA and this new lisp is being considered as
the DOD's AI language.
j'
------------------------------
Date: 22 Jul 83 15:39:24-PDT (Fri)
From: harpo!floyd!cmcl2!rocky2!flipkin @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Getting Started in AI
Article-I.D.: rocky2.103
Can someone point me to a good place to begin with AI? I find the
subject fascinating (as does my EECS girlfriend), and I would
appreciate some help getting started. Thanks in advance,
Dennis Moore
(reply via mail please, unless you think it is of great interest
to the net)
[I think it is of great interest! I recommend the AI Handbook for a
general overview. I am still looking for a good intro to Lisp and the
programming conventions needed to produce interesting Lisp programs.
(Winston and Horn is a reasonable introduction, and Charniak,
Riesbeck, and McDermott has a lot of good material. The Little Lisper
is a good introduction to recursive programming if you can stand the
"programmed text" question-and-answer presentation.)
-- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jul 1983 0833-PDT
From: FC01@USC-ECL
Subject: Lisp Translation
This lisp debate seems to be turning into a freeforall.
Slanderous remarks are unnecessary. The fact is that once you get used
to something, the momentum of keeping with it is often more powerful
than any advantages attainable by changing from it. Perhaps functions
like transor from Interlisp could be extended by some of the AI
researchers to provide real translations from lisp to lisp. This way,
you could develop your programs in the lisp of your choice and run
them in the most efficient lisp available on any given machine. With
all the work that has been done on human translations and the extreme
complexity thereof, it would seem a practical and only extremely
ambitious (as opposed to down right unrealistic) project to develop a
translator between lisps. Think of it like translating between a New
Yorker and a Bostonian and a Texan, all talking breeds of English. If
the energy spent on developing new lisps and arguing about their
superiorities were spent in the lisp translation area, we might have
it done by now.
Fred
------------------------------
Date: 25 Jul 83 18:11:37-PDT (Mon)
From: decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!sts @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Expectations of expert system technology
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.345
Expert systems technology is an experimental field whose basic
concepts have been fairly well established in the past few years.
Since it is really an engineering field (knowledge engineering) much
of the important research is carried on by attempting to develop a
specific application and seeing what sorts of problems and solutions
crop up. This is true for MYCIN, R1, PROSPECTOR, and many other
expert systems. Our Expert Systems Technology group at Boeing has
been developing a prototype flight route planner. It has provided a
good test bed for more theoretical work on the kinds of tools and
capabilities needed for knowledge engineering (although as a planner,
it may never be fully functional). Our application is sufficiently
difficult that it is quite experimental, however a simple expert
system is not particularly difficult to put together, if some of the
existing and available tools are used. Needless to say, many sweeping
generalizations and unjustified assumptions (read: gross hacks) must
be made, in order to simplify the problem to a point where an expert
system can be built. The resulting expert system, although perhaps
not much more capable than a good C program, will be much smaller and
more transparent in structure than any ordinary program.
The ad in question may or may not be reasonable. I don't know enough
about finance to say whether the knowledge in that domain can be
easily encoded. However, if the company's expectations are not too
high, they may end up with a reasonable tool, one that will be just as
good as if some C wizard had spent a year of sleepless nights
reinventing the AI wheels.
Stan ("the Leprechaun Hacker") Shebs
Boeing Aerospace Co.
ssc-vax!sts (soon utah-cs)
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jul 83 10:50:26-PDT (Tue)
From: decvax!linus!utzoo!hcr!ravi @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: The Fifth Generation Computer Project
Article-I.D.: hcr.455
Has anyone out there had any contact with the Japanese Institute for
New Generation Computer Technology (which is running the Fifth
Generation Computer Project)? Since the the first rush of publicity
when the project was initiated, things have been fairly quiet (except
for the somewhat superficial book by Feigenbaum and a few papers in
symposia), and it's a bit hard to find out just how the project is
progressing. I am especially interested in talking to people who have
visited INGCT recently and have met with the people directly involved
in the project. Thanks!
--ravi
{linus, floyd, allegra, ihnp4} ! utzoo ! hcr ! hcrvax ! ravi
OR
decvax ! hcr ! hcrvax ! ravi
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 83 08:42 EDT
From: MJackson.Wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: The military and AI
Food for thought:
Date: 26 Jul 83 12:05:02 PDT (Tuesday)
From: McCullough.PA
Subject: The military and AI
To: antiwar^
From "The Race to Build a Supercomputer" in Newsweek, July 4, 1983...
[Robert Kahn, mentioned below, is DARPA's computer director]
'Once they are in place, these technlogies will make possible an
astonishing new breed of weapons and military hardware. Smart robot
weapons--drone aircraft, unmanned submarines and land vehicles--that
combine aritificial intelligence and high-powered computing can be
sent off to do jobs that now involve human risk. "This is a sexy area
to the military, because you can imagine all kinds of neat,
interesting things you could send off on their own little missions
around the world or even in local combat," says Kahn. The Pentagon
will also use the technologies to create artificial-intelligence
machines that can be used as battlefield advisers and superintelligent
computers to coordinate complex weapons systems. An intelligent
missile-guidance system would have to bring together different
technologies--real-time signal processing, numerical calculations and
symbolic processing, all at unimaginably high speeds--in order to make
decisions and give advice to human commanders.'
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jul 1983 16:21-PDT
From: greiner@Diablo
Subject: AI Koans
[This has appeared on several BBoards thanks to Gabriel Robins, Rich
Welty, Drew McDermott, Margot Flowers, and no doubt others. I have
no idea what it is about, but pass it on for your doubtful
enlightenment. -- KIL]
AI Koans: (by Danny)
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the
power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke
sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
understanding of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
- - - - -
One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a
better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the
pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following
story-
"One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to
make a better garbage collector...
- - - - -
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play"
Minsky shut his eyes,
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
"So the room will be empty."
At that momment, Sussman was enlightened.
- - - - -
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types
as Lisp". Almost before the student had finished his question,
Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
- - - - -
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his
morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider,"because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the
paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster- "I wish the
toaster to be happy too".
- - - - -
(by who?)
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found.
"Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing
student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
- - - - -
And, of course, my own contribution:
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?"
Very earnesty, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor."
The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the
keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the
head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then
Enlightened.
- Gabriel [Robins@ISIF]
------------------------------
Date: 26 Jul 83 14:10:41 PDT (Tuesday)
From: Kluger.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Reply-to: Kluger.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: HP Computer Colloquium 7/28
Professor Gio Wiederhold
Department of Computer Science
Stanford University
Knowledge in Databases
We define knowledge-based approaches to database problems.
Using a clarification of application levels from the enterprise to the
system levels, we give examples of the varieties of knowledge which
can be used. Most of the examples are drawn from work at the KBMS
project at Stanford.
The object of the presentation is to illustrate the power, and also
the high payoff of quite straightforward artificial intelligence
applications in databases. Implementation choices will also be
evaluated.
Thursday, July 28, 1983 4:00 pm
5M Conference room
HP Stanford Park Labs
1501 Page Mill Rd
Palo Alto
*** Be sure to arrive at the building's lobby ON TIME, so that
you may be escorted to the conference room
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End of AIList Digest
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