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AIList Digest Volume 1 Issue 082
AIList Digest Wednesday, 26 Oct 1983 Volume 1 : Issue 82
Today's Topics:
AI Hardware - Dolphin-Users Distribution List,
AI Software - Inference Engine Toolkit for PCs,
Metaphysics - Parallelism and Conciousness,
Machine Learning - Readings,
Seminars - CSLI & Speech Understanding & Term Rewriting & SYDPOL Languages
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Date: Tue 25 Oct 83 11:56:44-PDT
From: Christopher Schmidt <SCHMIDT@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Dolphin-Users distribution list
If there are AIList readers who would like to discuss lisp machines
at a more detailed level than the credo of AIList calls for, let me alert them
to the existence of the Dolphin-Users@SUMEX distribution list. This list was
formed over a year ago to discuss problems with Xerox D machines, but it has
had very little traffic, and I'm sure few people would mind if other lisp
machines were discussed. If you would like your name added, please send a note
to Dolphin-Requests@SUMEX. If you would like to contribute or ask a question
about some lisp machine or problem, please do! --Christopher
------------------------------
Date: Wed 26 Oct 83 10:26:47-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Inference Engine Toolkit for PCs
I have been requested to pass on some product availability data to AIList.
I think I can do so without violating Arpanet regulations. I am
uncomfortable about such notices, however, and will generally require
that they pass through at least one "commercially disinterested" person
before being published in AIList. I will perform this screening only
in exceptional cases.
The product is a document on a backward-chaining inference engine
toolkit, including source code in FORTH. The inference engine uses
a production language syntax which allows semantic inference and
access to analytical subroutines written in FORTH. Source code is
included for a forward-chaining tool, but the strategy is not
implemented in the inference routines. The code is available on
disks formatted for a variety of personal computers. For further
details, contact Jack Park, Helion, Inc., Box 445, Brownsville, CA
95919, (916) 675-2478. The toolkit is also available from Mountain
View Press, Box 4656, Mountain View, CA 94040.
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, 25 October 1983, 10:28-EST
From: John Batali <Batali at MIT-OZ>
Subject: Parallelism and Conciousness
I'm interested in the reasons for the pairing of these two ideas. Does
anyone think that parallelism and consciousness necessarily have anything
to do with one another?
------------------------------
Date: Tue 25 Oct 83 12:22:45-PDT
From: David Rogers <DRogers@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Parallelism and Consciousness
I cannot say that "parallelism and consciousness are necessarily
related", for one can (at least) simulate a parallel process on a
sequential machine. However, just because one has the ability to
represent a process in a certain form does not guarantee that this
is the most natural form to represent it in; e.g., FORTRAN and LISP
are theoretically as powerful, but who wants to program an expert
system in FORTRAN?
Top-down programming of knowledge is not (in my opinion) an
easy candidate for parallelism; one can hope for large
speed-ups of execution speed, but rarely are the algorithms
able to naturally utilize the ability of parallel systems to
support interacting non-deterministic processes. (I'm sure
I'll hear from some parallel logic programmer on that one).
My candidate for developing parallelism and consciousness involves
incorporating the non-determinism at the heart of the system, by
using a large number of subcognitive processes operating in
parallel; this is essentially Hofstadter's concept of consciousness
being an epiphenomenon of the interacting structures, and not being
explicitly programmed.
The reason for the parallelism is twofold. First, I would
assume that a system of interacting subcognitive structures would
have a significant amount of "random" effort, while the more
condensed logic based system would be more computationally more
efficient. Thus, the parallelism is partially used to offset the
added cost of the more fluid, random motion of the interacting
processes.
Second, the interacting processes would allow a natural interplay
between events based on time; for example, infinite loops are
easily avoided through having a process interrupt if too much
time is taken. The blackboard architecture is also naturally
represented in parallel, as a number of coordinating processes
scribble on a shared data structure. Actually, in my mind, the
blackboard structure has not been developed fully; I have the
image of people at a party in my mind, with groups forming,
ideas developed, groups breaking up and reforming. Many blackboards
are active at once, and as interest is forgotten, they dissolve,
then reform around other topics.
Notice that this representation of a party has no simple
sequential representation, nor would a simple top level rule
base be able to model the range of activities the party can evolve to.
How does "the party" decide what beer to buy, or how long to stay intact,
or whether it will be fun or not? If I were to model a party, I'd
say a parallel system of subcognitive structures would be almost
the only natural way.
As a final note, I find the vision of consciousness being
analogous to people at a party simple and humorous. And somehow,
I've always found God to clothe most truths in humor... am I the only
one who has laughed at the beautiful simplicity of E=MC^2?
David
------------------------------
Date: 22 Oct 83 19:27:33 EDT (Sat)
From: Paul Torek <flink%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay>
Subject: re: awareness
[Submitted by Robert.Frederkind@CMU-CS-SAD.]
[Robert:]
I think you've misunderstood my position. I don't deny the existence of
awareness (which I called, following Michael Condict, consciousness). It's
just that I don't see why you or anyone else don't accept that the physical
object known as your brain is all that is necessary for your awareness.
I also think you have illegitimately assumed that all physicalists must be
functionalists. A functionalist is someone who believes that the mind
consists in the information-processing features of the brain, and that it
doesn't matter what "hardware" is used, as long as the "software" is the
same there is the same awareness. On the other hand, one can be a
physicalist and still think that the hardware matters too -- that awareness
depends on the actual chemical properties of the brain, and not just the
type of "program" the brain instantiates.
You say that a robot is not aware because its information-storage system
amounts to *just* the states of certain bits of silicon. Functionalists
will object to your statement, I think, especially the word "just" (meaning
"merely"). I think the only reason one throws the word "just" into the
statement is because one already believes that the robot is unaware. That
begs the question completely.
Suppose you have a "soul", which is a wispy ghostlike thing inside your body
but undetectable. And this "soul" is made of "soul-stuff", let's call it.
Suppose we've decided that this "soul" is what explains your
intelligent-appearing and seemingly aware behavior. But then someone comes
along and says, "Nonsense, Robert is no more aware than a rock is, since we,
by using a different level of abstraction in thinking about it, can see that
his data-structure is *merely* the states of certain soul-stuff inside him."
What makes that statement any less cogent than yours concerning the robot?
So, I don't think dualism can provide any advantages in explaining why
experiences have a certain "feel" to them. And I don't see any problems
with the idea that the "feel" of an experience is caused by, or is identical
with, or is one aspect of, (I haven't decided which yet), certain brain
processes.
--Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 24 October 1983 15:31:13 EDT
From: Robert.Frederking@CMU-CS-CAD
Subject: Re: awareness
Sorry about not noticing the functionalist/physicalist
distinction. Most of the people that I've discussed this with were either
functionalists or dualists.
The physicalist position doesn't bother me nearly as much as the
functionalist one. The question seems to be whether awareness is a function
of physical properties, or something that just happens to be associated with
human brains -- that is, whether it's a necessary property of the physical
structure of functioning brains. For example, the idea that your "soul" is
"inside your body" is a little strange to me -- I tend to think of it as
being similar to the idea of hyperdimensional mathematics, so that a person's
"soul" might exist outside the dimensions we can sense, but communicate with
their body. I think that physicalism is a reasonable hypothesis, but the
differences are not experimentally verifiable, and dualism seems more
reasonable to me.
As far as the functionalist counter-argument to mine would go, the
way you phrased it implies that I think that the "soul" explains human
behavior. Actually, I think that *all* human behavior can be modeled by
physical systems like robots. I suspect that we'll find physical correlates
to all the information processing behavior we see. The thing I am
describing is the internal experience. A functionalist certainly could make
the counter-argument, but the thing that I believe to be important in this
discussion is exactly the question of whether the "soul" is intrinsically
part of the body, or whether it's made of "soul-stuff", not necessarily
"located" in the body (if "souls" have locations), but communicating with
it. As I implied in my previous post, I am concerned with the eventual
legal and ethical implications of taking a functionalist point of view.
So I guess I'm saying that I prefer either physicalism or dualism to
functionalism, due to the side-effects that will occur eventually, and that
to me dualism appears the most intuitively correct, although I don't think
anyone can prove any of the positions.
------------------------------
Date: 24 Oct 1983 13:58:10-EDT
From: Paul.Rosenbloom at CMU-CS-H
Subject: ML Readings
[Reprinted from the CMU-AI bboard.]
The suggested readings for this Thursday's meeting of the machine learning
course -- on chunking and macro-operators -- are: "Learning and executing
generalized robot plans" by Fikes, Hart, and Nilsson (AIJ 1972); "Knowledge
compilation: The general learning mechanism" by Anderson (proceedings of the
1983 machine learning workshop); and "The chunking of goal hierarchies: A
generalized model of practice" by Rosenbloom and Newell (also in the
proceedings of the 1983 machine learning workshop). These readings are now
(or will be shortly) on reserve in the E&S library.
------------------------------
Date: Mon 24 Oct 83 20:09:30-PDT
From: Doug Lenat <LENAT@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: CS Colloq 10/25 Terry Winograd & Brian Smith
[Reprinted from the SU-Score bboard. Sorry this one is late,
but it still may be valuable as the first mention of CSLI on
AIList. -- KIL]
CS Colloquium, Tuesday, Octobe 25, 4:15 Terman Auditorium
Terry Winograd (CSD) and Brian Smith (Xerox PARC)
Introducing the Center for the Study of Language and Information
This summer a new institute was created at Stanford, made up of
researchers from Stanford, SRI, Xerox, and Fairchild working in the study
of languages, both natural and formal. Participants from Stanford will
include faculty, students and research staff from the departments of
Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy. We will briefly describe
the structure of the institute, and will present at some length the
intellectual vision on which it is based and the content of the current
research projects.
------------------------------
Date: 23 Oct 1983 22:14:30-EDT
From: Gary.Bradshaw at CMU-RI-ISL1
Subject: Dissertation defense
[Reprinted from the CMU-AI bboard.]
I am giving my dissertation defense on Monday, October 31 at 8:30 a.m.
in Baker Hall 336b. Committee members: Herbert Simon (chair),
Raj Reddy, John Anderson, and Brian MacWhinney. The following is the
talk abstract:
LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND SPEECH SOUNDS:
A THEORY AND MODEL
Gary L. Bradshaw
Current theories of speech perception postulate a set of innate
feature detectors that derive a phonemic analysis of speech, even though a
large number of empirical tests are inconsistent with the feature detector
hypothesis. I will briefly describe feature detector theory and the
evidence against it, and will then present an alternative learning theory of
speech perception. The talk will conclude with a description of a
computer implementation of the theory, along with learning and performance
data for the system.
------------------------------
Date: 25 Oct 1983 1510-PDT
From: GOGUEN at SRI-CSL
Subject: rewrite rule seminar
TENTATIVE PROGRAM FOR TERM REWRITING SEMINAR
--------------------------------------------
FIRST TALK:
27 October 1983, Thursday, 3:30-5pm, Jean-Pierre Jouannaud,
Room EL381, SRI
This first talk will be an overview: basic mechanisms, solved & unsolved
problems, and main applications of term rewriting systems.
We will survey the literature, also indicating the most important results
and open problems, for the following topics:
1. definition of rewriting
2. termination
3. For non-terminating rewritings: Church-Rosser properties, Sound computing
strategies, Optimal computing strategies
4. For terminating rewritings: Church-Rosser properties, completion
algorithm, inductive completion algorithm, narrowing process
Three kind of term rewriting will be discussed: Term Rewriting
Systems (TRS), Equational Term Rewriting Systems (ETRS) and Conditional Term
Rewriting Systems (CTRS).
--------------------------------------------------
Succeeding talks should be more technical. The accompanying bibliographical
citations suggest important and readible references for each topic. Do we
have any volunteers for presenting these topics?
---------------------------------------------------
Second talk, details of terminating TRS:
Knuth and Bendix; Dershowitz TCS; Jouannaud; Lescanne & Reinig,
Formalization of Programming Concepts, Garmisch; Huet JACM; Huet JCSS; Huet
& Hullot JACM; Fay CADE 78; Hullot CADE 80; Goguen CADE 80.
Third and fourth talk, details of terminating ETRS:
Jouannaud & Munoz draft; Huet JACM; Lankford & Ballantine draft; Peterson &
Stickel JACM; Jouannaud & Kirchner POPL; Kirchner draft; Jouannaud, Kirchner
& Kirchner ICALP.
Fifth talk, details of turning the Knuth-Bendix completion procedure into a
complete refutational procedure for first order built in theories, with
applications to PROLOG:
Hsiang thesis; Hsiang & Dershowitz ICALP; Dershowitz draft "Computing
with TRW".
Sixth and seventh talks, non-terminating TRS and CTRS:
O'Donnel LNCS; Huet & Levy draft; Pletat, Engels and Ehrich draft; Bergstra
& Klop draft.
Eighth talk, terminating CTRS:
Remy thesis.
(More time may be needed for some talks.)
------------------------------
Date: 25 Oct 83 1407 PDT
From: Terry Winograd <TW@SU-AI>
Subject: next week's talkware - Nov 1 TUESDAY - K. Nygaard
[Reprinted from the SU-SCORE bboard.]
Date: Tuesday, Nov 1 *** NOTE ONE-TIME CHANGE OF DATE AND TIME ***
Speaker: Kristen Nygaard (University of Oslo and Norwegian Computing Center)
Topic: SYDPOL: System Development and Profession-Oriented Languages
Time: 1:15-2:30
Place: Poly Sci Bldg. Room 268. ***NOTE NONSTANDARD PLACE***
A new project involving several universities and research centers in three
Scandinavian countries has been establihed to create new methods of system
development, using profession-oriented languages. They will design
computer-based systems that will operate in work associated with
professions (the initial application is in hospitals), focussing on the
problem of facilitating cooperative work among professionals. One aspect
of the research is the development of formal languages for describing the
domains of interest and providing an interlingua for the systems and for
the people who use them. This talk will focus on the language-design
research, its goals and methods.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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