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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 053
AIList Digest Friday, 2 Sep 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 53
Today's Topics:
Conferences - AAAI-83 Attendance & Logic Programming,
AI Publications - Artificial Intelligence Journal & Courseware,
Artificial Languages - LOGLAN,
Lisp Availbility - PSL & T,
Automatic Translation - Ada Request,
NL & Scientific Method - Rebuttal,
Intelligence - Definition
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Date: 31 Aug 83 0237 EDT
From: Dave.Touretzky@CMU-CS-A
Subject: AAAI-83 registration
The actual attendance at AAAI-83 was about 2000, plus an additional
1700 people who came only for the tutorials. This gives a total of
3700. While much less than the 7000 figure, it's quite a bit larger
than last year's attendance. Interest in AI seems to be growing
rapidly, spurred partly by media coverage, partly by interest in
expert systems and partly by the 5th generation thing. Another reason
for this year's high attendance was the Washington location. We got
tons of government people.
Next year's AAAI conference will be hosted by the University of Texas
at Austin. From a logistics standpoint, it's much easier to hold a
conference in a hotel than at a university. Unfortunately, I'm told
there are no hotels in Austin big enough to hold us. Such is the
price of growth.
-- Dave Touretzky, local arrangements committee member, AAAI-83 & 84
------------------------------
Date: Thu 1 Sep 83 09:15:17-PDT
From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: Logic Programming Symposium
This is a reminder that the September 1 deadline for submissions to
the IEEE Logic Programming Symposium, to be held in Atlantic City,
New Jersey, February 6-9, 1984, has now all but arrived. If you are
planning to submit a paper, you are urged to do so without further
delay. Send ten double-spaced copies to the Technical Chairman:
Doug DeGroot, IBM Watson Research Center
PO Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
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Date: Wed, 31 Aug 83 12:10 PDT
From: Bobrow.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Subscriptions to the Artificial Intelligence Journal
Individual (non institutions) belonging to the AAAI, to SIGART or
to AISB can receive a reduced rate personal subscription to the
Artificial Intelligence Journal. To apply for a subscription, send a
copy of your membership form with a check for $50 (made out to
Elsevier) to:
Elsevier Science Publishers
Attn: John Tagler
52 Vanderbilt Avenue
New York, New York 10017
North Holland (Elsevier) will acknowledge receipt of the request for
subscription, and provide information about which issues will be
included in your subscription, and when they should arrive. Back
issues are not available at the personal rate.
Artificial Intelligence, an International journal, has been the
journal of record for the field of Artificial Intelligence since
1970. Articles for submission should be sent (three copies) to Dr.
Daniel G. Bobrow, Editor-in-chief, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304, or to Prof.
Patrick J. Hayes, Associate Editor, Computer Science Department,
University of Rochester, Rochester N.Y. 14627.
danny bobrow
------------------------------
Date: 31 Aug 1983 17:10:40 EDT (Wednesday)
From: Marshall Abrams <abrams at mitre>
Subject: College-level courseware publishing
I have learned that Addison-Wesley is setting up a new
courseware/software operation and are looking for microcomputer
software packages at the college level. I think the idea is for a
student to be able to go to the bookstore and buy a disk and
instruction manual for a specific course.
Further details on request.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Aug 1983 2154-PDT
From: VANBUER@USC-ECL
Subject: Re: LOGLAN
[...]
The Loglan institute is in the middle of a year long "quiet spell"
After several years of experiments with sounds, patching various small
logical details (e.g. two unambiguous ways to say "pretty little
girls"'s two interpretations), the Institute is busily preparing
materials on the new version, preparing to "go public" again in a
fairly big way.
Darrel J. Van Buer
------------------------------
Date: 30 Aug 1983 0719-MDT
From: Robert R. Kessler <KESSLER@UTAH-20>
Subject: re: Lisps on 68000's
Date: 24 Aug 83 19:47:17-PDT (Wed)
From: pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Lisps on 68000's - (nf)
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2626
....
I think PSL is definitely a superior lisp for the 68000, but I
have no idea whether is will be available for non-HP machines...
Jordan Pollack
University of Illinois
...pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack
Yes, PSL is available for other 68000's, particularly the Apollo. It
is also being released for the DecSystem-20 and Vax running 4.x Unix.
Send queries to
Cruse@Utah-20
Bob.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1983 14:32 EDT
From: MONTALVO@MIT-OZ
Subject: Lisps on 68000's
From: pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Lisps on 68000's - (nf)
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2626
I played with a version of PSL on a HP 9845 for several hours one
day. The environment was just like running FranzLisp under Emacs
in ...
A minor correction so people don't get confused: it was probably an
HP 9836 not an HP 9845. I've used both machines including PSL on the
36, and doubt very much that PSL runs on a 45.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 83 01:25:29 EDT
From: Jonathan Rees <Rees@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Lisps on 68000's
Date: 19 Aug 83 10:52:11-PDT (Fri)
From: harpo!eagle!allegra!jdd @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Lisps on 68000's
Article-I.D.: allegra.1760
... T sounds good, but the people who are saying it's
great are the same ones trying to sell it to me for several
thousand dollars, so I'd like to get some more disinterested
opinions first. The only person I've talked to said it was
awful, but he admits he used an early version.
T is distributed by Yale for $75 to universities and other non-profit
organizations.
Yale has not yet decided on the means by which it will distribute T to
for-profit institutions, but it has been negotiating with a few
companies, including Cognitive Systems, Inc. To my knowledge no final
agreements have been signed, so right now, no one can sell it.
"Supported" versions will be available from commercial outfits who are
willing to take on the extra responsibility (and reap the profits?),
but unsupported versions will presumably still be available directly
from Yale.
Regardless of the final outcome, no company or companies will have
exclusive marketing rights. We do not want a high price tag to
inhibit availability.
Jonathan Rees
T Project
Yale Computer Science Dept.
P.S. As a regular T user, I can say that it is a good system. As its
principal implementor, I won't claim to be disinterested.
Testimonials from satisfied users may be found in previous AILIST
digests; perhaps you can obtain back issues.
------------------------------
Date: 1 Sep 1983 11:58-EDT
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@NRL-AIC>
Subject: Translation into Ada: Request for Info
It is estimated that the WMCCS communications system will require five
years to translate into Ada. Not man-years, but years; if the
staffing is assumed to exceed two hundred then we are talking about a
man-millenium for this task.
Has any work been done on mechanical aids for translating programs
into Ada? I seek pointers to existing and past projects, or
assurances that no work has been done in this area. Any pointers to
such information would be greatly appreciated.
To illustrate my lack of knowledge in this field, the only work I have
heard of for translating from one high-level language to another is
UniLogic's translator for converting BLISS to PL/1. As I understand
it, their program only works on the Scribe document formatter but
could be extended to cover other programs. I am interested in hearing
of other translators, especially those for translating into
strongly-typed languages.
Dan Hoey HOEY@NRL-AIC.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Wed 31 Aug 83 18:42:08-PDT
From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: Solutions of the natural language analysis problem
Given the downhill trend of some contributions on natural language
analysis in this group, this is my last comment on the topic, and is
essentially an answer to Stan the leprechaun hacker (STLH for short).
I didn't "admit" that grammars only reflect some aspects of language.
(Using loaded verbs such as "admit" is not conducive to the best
quality of discussion.) I just STATED THE OBVIOUS. The equations of
motion only reflect SOME aspects of the material world, and yet no
engineer goes without them. I presented this point at greater length
in my earlier note, but the substantive presentation of method seems
to have gone unanswered. Incidentally, I worked for several years in a
civil engineering laboratory where ACTUAL dams and bridges were
designed, and I never saw there the preference for alchemy over
chemistry that STLH suggests is the necessary result of practical
concerns. Elegance and reproduciblity do not seem to be enemies of
generality in other scientific or engineering disciplines. Claiming
for AI an immunity from normal scientific standards (however flawed
...) is excellent support for our many detractors, who may just now be
on the deffensive because of media hype, but will surely come back to
the fray, with that weapon plus a long list of unfulfilled promises
and irreproducible "results."
Lack of rigor follows from lack of method. STLH tries to bludgeon us
with "generating *all* the possible meanings" of a sentence. Does he
mean ALL of the INFINITY of meanings a sentence has in general? Even
leaving aside model-theoretic considerations, we are all familiar with
he wanted me to believe P so he said P
he wanted me to believe not P so he said P because he thought
that I would think that he said P just for me to believe P
and not believe it
and so on ...
in spy stories.
The observation that "we need something that models human cognition
closely enough..." begs the question of what human cognition looks
like. (Silly me, it looks like STLH's program, of course.) STLH also
forgets that is often better for a conversation partner (whether man
or machine) to say "I don't understand" than to go on saying "yes,
yes, yes ..." and get it all wrong, as people (and machines) that are
trying to disguise their ignorance do.
It is indeed not surprising that "[his] problems are really concerned
with the acquisition of linguistic knowledge." Once every grammatical
framework is thrown out, it is extremely difficult to see how new
linguistic knowledge can be assimilated, whether automatically or even
by programming it in. As to the notion that "everyone is an expert on
the native language", it is similar to the claim that everyone with
working ears is an expert in acoustics.
As to "pernicious behavior", it would be better if STLH would first
put his own house in order: he seems to believe that to work at SRI
one needs to swear eternal hate to the "Schank camp" (whatever that
is); and useful criticism of other people's papers requires at least a
mention of the title and of the objections. A bit of that old battered
scientific protocol would help...
Fernando Pereira
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1983 15:57 EDT
From: MONTALVO@MIT-OZ
Subject: intelligence is...
Date: 25 Aug 1983 1448-PDT
To: AIList at MIT-MC
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
Subject: intelligence is...
An intelligence must have at least three abilities; To act; To
perceive, and classify (as one of: better, the same, worse) the
results of its actions, or the environment after the action; and
lastly To change its future actions in light of what it has
perceived, in attempt to maximize "goodness", and avoid "badness".
My views are very obviously flavored by behaviorism.
Where do you suppose the evolutionary cutoff is for intelligence? By
this definition a Planaria (flatworm) is intelligent. It can learn a
simple Y maze.
I basically like this definition of intelligence but I think the
learning part lends itself to many degrees of complexity, and
therefore, the definition leads to many degrees of intelligence.
Maybe that's ok. I would like to see an analysis (probably NOT on
AIList, althought maybe some short speculation might be appropriate)
of the levels of complexity that a learner could have. For example,
one with a representation of the agent's action would be more
complicated (therefore, more intelligent) than one without. Probably
a Planaria has no representation of it's actions, only of the results
of its actions.
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End of AIList Digest
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