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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 052
AIList Digest Wednesday, 25 Apr 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 52
Today's Topics:
AI Tools - Another Microcomputer Lisp,
Linguistics - Metaphors & Use of "And",
Journal Announcement -- Data and Knowledge Engineering,
Seminar - Nondeterminism and Creative Analogies
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Date: Sun 22 Apr 84 22:11:14-PST
From: Sam Hahn (Samuel@Score)
Reply-to: SHahn@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA
Subject: Another microcomputer Lisp
In line with the previous mentions of microcomputer implementations of Lisp,
how about this pointer:
I saw in the current (May) issue of Microsystems an advertisement for
Waltz Lisp, from ProCode International. "Waltz Lisp is not a toy. It is the
most complete microcomputer Lisp, including features previously available only
in large Lisp systems. In fact, Waltz is substantially compatible with Franz
... and is similar to MacLisp and Lisp Machine Lisp."
Does anyone know anything about Waltz? How about a review?
[further claims: functions of type lambda, nlambda, lexpr, macro
built-in prettyprinting and formatting
user control over all aspects of the interpreter
complete set of error handling and debugging functions
over 250 functions in total ]
They're at POBox 7301, Charlottesville, VA 22906.
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Date: 17 Apr 84 17:06:46-PST (Tue)
From: harpo!ulysses!burl!clyde!watmath!utzoo!dciem!mmt @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: metaphors
Article-I.D.: dciem.861
There is a very large literature on metaphor. As a start, try
A. Ortony (Ed.) Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge U Press, 1979.
A new journal called "Metaphor" is being started up with first issue
probably in Jan 1985. Sorry, I don't have ordering information.
In AI, check out the work of Carbonell.
Once you start getting a few leads, you will be overwhelmed by studies.
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
------------------------------
Date: 18 Apr 84 9:22:00-PST (Wed)
From: pur-ee!uiucdcs!marcel @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: metaphors
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.32300025
You might like to think about partial matching as a step toward analogical
or metaphorical reasoning. Try the following:
Fox, MS and Mostow, DJ Maximal consistent interpretations of errorful data in
hierarchically modelled domains. IJCAI-77, 165ff.
Kline, PJ The superiority of relative criteria in partial matching and
generalization. IJCAI-81, 296ff
Perhaps also check the growing literature on abductive reasoning, hypothesis
formation, disambiguation, categorization, diagnosis, etc. Some papers I found
most interesting:
Carbonell, JR and Collins, AM Natural semantics in Artificial Intelligence.
IJCAI-73, 344ff. { the SCHOLAR system }
Collins, A et al Reasoning from incomplete knowledge. In BOBROW & COLLINS's
book "Representation and Understanding", Academic Press, NY (1975).
{ more on SCHOLAR }
Pople, HE On the mechanization of abductive logic. IJCAI-73, 147ff
In NL research the role of expectations has become important to expedite
disambiguation. Includes use of attention focusing. Some very well-known work
at Yale on this. See eg papers by Riesbeck and Schank in the book by Waterman
& Hayes-Roth ('78), and by Schank & DeJong in Machine Intelligence 9. Lots of
other work too. Happy wading!
Marcel Schoppers
{ ihnp4 | pur-ee } ! uiucdcs ! marcel
------------------------------
Date: 23-Apr-84 21:36 PST
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Use of "and"
Hmmm, perhaps a friendly retrieval expert should accept statements from the user
like "Dont tell ME how to think!", deduce that there is some ambiguity of
interpretation over the meaning of a request, and ask for explicit
disambiguation of the troublesome operators after each future request, until the
user decides to pick and live with a single unambiguous interpretation.
-- kirk
------------------------------
Date: Sun 22 Apr 84 23:24:45-PST
From: Janet Coursey <JVC@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: "and"
William Gass is expansive but probably incomplete in examining functional
uses of "and" in written literature. He finds these uses and meanings: a
conditional, a conjunction, adverbial, to balance or coordinate, finally, in
particular or above all, joint dependency of truth value, in addition,
following in time, following in space, next, equally true, increased emphasis,
sum or total, equivalence of interpretation or "that is to say", to condense,
to skip, suddenness in time, suddenness in space, consequence and cause...
More uses and their wonderful subtleties are presented in the article;
they are more varied than the aiList discussion has yet revealed.
The author is the David May Distinguished University Professor in the
Humanities at Washington University.
Gass, William H. "And." Harper's. February, 1984.
------------------------------
Date: 19 Apr 84 19:01:54-PST (Thu)
From: hplabs!tektronix!ogcvax!metheus!howard @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Use of "and" - (nf)
Article-I.D.: metheus.237
The "Indiana & Ohio" problem can be explained by a feature of human language
processing which goes on all the time, although we are not often conciously
aware of it. I refer, of course, to the rejection of contradictory, unlikely,
or impossible interpretations.
The reason we interpret "all customers in Indiana and Ohio" to mean "all
customers in Indiana and *all customers in* Ohio" is that the seemingly
logical interpretation is contradictory and cannot possibly refer to any
customers (regardless of what is in the database). It is interesting to
note in this connection that some oriental forms of logic require that a
pair of examples be given for each set of things to be described, one of a
thing in the set, the other of a thing out of the set. This prevents
wasting time with arguments based on the null set, like "All purple cows
made out of neutrinos can fly; all animals that can fly have wings; therefore
all purple cows made out of neutrinos have wings". An example syllogism:
"Where there is smoke, there is fire. Here, there is smoke: like in a kitchen,
unlike in a lake. Therefore, here there is fire."
This rejection is extremely sophisticated, and includes, for example, infinite
loop detection. An example: how many people would take the obvious "logical"
interpretation of the instructions "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." to be the correct
one? We all automatically read this as "Lather. Rinse. Repeat the previous
two instructions once." because the other reading doesn't make physical sense.
How many people ever had to THINK about that, consciously, at all?
Also, it is customary to be able to be able to delete redundant or implied
information from a sentence. Since the three words between stars above are
somewhat redundant, and can be deleted without affected the only reasonable
interpretation of the phrase, it should be O.K. to delete them.
Just more fat on the fire (my, how it sizzle!) from:
Howard A. Landman
ogcvax!metheus!howard
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 84 10:40:05 cst
From: Peter Chen <chen%lsu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Announcing a new journal -- DATA & KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING
TITLE OF THE JOURNAL:
DATA & KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING
PUBLISHER:
North-Holland
OBJECTIVES AND COVERAGE:
Although database systems and knowledge systems have their differences,
they share many common principles. For example, both are interested in the
representations of real-world phenomena. Therefore, it is beneficial to
have a common forum for database and knowledgebase systems.
This new journal will bring together the new advances in database and
knowledgebase areas to the attention of researchers, designers, managers,
administrators, and users. It will focus on new techniques, tools,
principles, and theories of constructing successful databases or
knowledgebases. The journal will cover (but not be limited to) the
following topics:
Representation of Data or Knowledge
Architecture of Database or Knowledgebase Systems
Construction of Data/Knowledge Bases
Applications of Data/Knowledge Bases
Case Studies and Management Issues
Besides these technical topics, the journal will also have columns on
conference reports, calendars of events, book review, etc.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
Original papers in the field of data & knowledge engineering are
welcome. In the cover letter, the author is required to declare
the originality of the manuscript (i.e.,
no similar versions of the manuscript have been published
or have been submitted elsewhere) and to agree
to the transfer of the copy right
to the publisher once the paper is accepted.
Please submit 5 copies of your manuscript to one of
the Associate Editors in the speciality field or to the regional editor.
Or, if you prefer, mail directly to the Editor-in-Chief.
The following are the addresses of the editors:
(1) Editor-in-Chief:
Prof. Peter Chen
Dept. of Computer Science
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4020
(chen%lsu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa)
(CSNET: chen@lsu)
Tel: (504) 388-2482
(2) Associate Editors:
(a) Data Engineering:
Prof. Wesley Chu
Dept. of Computer Science
U.C.L.A.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Prof. Jane Liu
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Illinois
1304 West Springfield Rd.
Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801
(b) Knowledge Engineering:
Dr. Donald Walker
Natural-Language and Knowledge-Resource Systems
SRI International
Menlo Park, CA 94025
(During Dr. Walker's transition from SRI International
to Bell Communications Research, manuscripts should be
sent to the Editor-in-Chief during the period
4/15/84 to 10/15/84.)
(3) Regional Editor for Europe:
Prof. Reind van de Riet
Dept. of Math. and Computer Science
Free University
1081 HU Amsterdam
The Netherlands
PUBLICATION DATE:
The journal will be published quarterly, and
the first issue is planned for the last quarter of 1984.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, INSTITUTIONAL SUBCRIPTION, OR A FREE SAMPLE COPY:
Please contact the publisher:
(1) In the USA/Canada:
Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc.
P.O. Box 1663
Grand Central Station
N.Y., N.Y. 10163
(2) In all other countries:
North-Holland
P.O. box 1991
1000 BZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
FOR SPECIAL PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION RATE:
Please contact the Editor-in-Chief.
FOR SERVING AS THE REFEREE:
Please send a short note to the Editor-in-Chief or to
one of the editors and indicate your specialities.
--Peter Chen (CSNET mailbox: chen@lsu)
(chen%lsu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa)
------------------------------
Date: 23 Apr 1984 12:32 EST (Mon)
From: "Daniel S. Weld" <WELD%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Nondeterminism and Creative Analogies
[Forwarded from the MIT bboard by SASW@MIT-MC.]
The Copycat Project:
An Experiment in Nondeterminism and Creative Analogies
Doug Hofstadter
AI Revolving Seminar
Wednesday 4/25 4:00pm 8th floor playroom
A micro-world is described, in which many analogies involving strikingly
different concepts and levels of subtlety can be made. The question
"What differentiates the good ones from the bad ones?" is discussed,
and then the problem of how to implement a computational model of the
human ability to come up with such analogies (and to have a sense for
their quality) is considered. A key part of the proposed system, now
under development, is its dependence on statistically emergent properties
of stochastically interacting "codelets" (small pieces of ready-to-run
code created by the system, and selected at random to run with probability
proportional to heuristically assigned "urgencies"). Another key element
is a network of linked concepts of varying levels of "semanticity", in
which activation spreads and indirectly controls the urgencies of new
codelets. There is pressure in the system toward maximizing the degree
of "semanticity" or "intensionality" of descriptions of structures, but
many such pressures, often conflicting, must interact with one another,
and compromises must be made. The shifting of (1) perceived boundaries
inside structures, (2) descriptive concepts chosen to apply to structures,
and (3) features perceived as "salient" or not, is called "slippage".
What can slip, and how, are emergent consequences of the interaction
of (1) the temporary ("cytoplasmic") structures involved in the analogy
with (2) the permanent ("Platonic") concepts and links in the conceptual
proximity network, or "slippability network". The architecture of this
system is postulated as a general architecture suitable for dealing not
only with fluid analogies, but also with other types of abstract perception
and categorization tasks, such as musical perception, scientific theorizing,
Bongard problems and others.
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End of AIList Digest
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