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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 086
AIList Digest Saturday, 7 Jul 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 86
Today's Topics:
Societies - New York SIGART,
AI Tools - YAPS & LISPs,
Mathematics - Curve Fitting,
Brain Theory - Direct Stimulation & Hypnosis,
Turing Test - Discussion,
Games - Chess,
Reviews - Robotics Industry Directory,
Robotics - Poetry
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Date: 5 Jul 84 12:28:38-PDT (Thu)
From: ihnp4!whuxle!otto @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: SIGART mailing list
Article-I.D.: whuxle.511
This notice is intended to those interested in AI who live and work in the
greater New York City area. My apologies to those who read this who are not
included in the above group. The distribution mechanisms of netnews are not
precise enough to allow me to target my message better.
**************
** NOTICE **
**************
The New York City chapter of SIGART (the ACM Special Interest Group in
Artificial Intelligence) is interested in adding names to its mailing list.
This chapter holds monthly meetings in Manhattan to discuss various aspects
of AI, and often has invited speakers to present new ideas.
If you would like to receive the monthly meeting notices, please send the
following to me via electronic or paper mail:
Your
name
US Mail mailing address
company
telephone number
list of topics for the chapter to focus on
Please send this information to me at one of the following addresses:
USENET: {ihnp4!}whuxld!otto
CSNET: otto.whuxle.btl
MAIL: George Otto, 1C-329A
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Whippany Road
Whippany, NJ 07981
By working together to make this organization responsive to our interests,
it can become a valuable addition to our professional lives.
George Otto
AI Systems Dept
AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany
------------------------------
Date: 5 Jul 1984 12:24:19-PDT
From: doshi%umn-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: Info. on >YAPS< production system.
Subject: Info. about the YAPS production system.
---- -----------------
I am looking for information about the YAPS. In particular,
(1) Can anyone please send me some short
(1-30 pages) coded examples about the actual usage.
And documentation, if possible.
(2) Does there exist a YAPS "primer" or any such
thing, which gives some good examples.
(3) Any other information (names, csnet addresses
etc.).
We have UNIX 4.1 & 4.2 .
If you have to send by surface mail, please send to :
Rajkumar Doshi
Computer Science Department
University of Minnesota
136 Lind Hall,
207 Church Street, S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
I will gladly re-pay the US postage promptly.
Thank you very much.
-Raj Doshi
------------------------------
Date: 6 Jul 1984 08:25:26-EDT
From: bac@Mitre-Bedford
Subject: Small Computer Lisps?
While everyone's on the topic of Lisps for various systems,
does anyone know of any decent Lisp implementations for CP/M
or MS-DOS (Z-80 or 8088 based systems)? All I know of is a
version called MULisp, from Microsoft, but I have no idea
whether it's useful, efficient, etc.
Is AI and Lisp going to remain tied to mainframe machines,
or will it ever reach the growing population of microcomputers?
Brant Cheikes
bac @ Mitre-Bedford
------------------------------
Date: Fri 6 Jul 84 11:52:00-MDT
From: purush <purushothaman@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Interlisp on Unix? -- partial answer
Interlisp on vax running Unix can be obtained by sending mail to
Interlisp@isib.arpa or by writing to
USC Information Sciences Institute
Interlisp-VAX Project
4676 Admirality Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90291.
A report of this effort is in the 1982 Lisp and Functional Programming
conference proceedings.
-purush
------------------------------
Date: Fri 6 Jul 84 10:32:28-PDT
From: BARNARD@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: best-fitting curve for 3 points
Maybe I'm missing something. Three points define a unique circle.
Finding the circle given the points is trivial. What's the problem?
In general, the theory of splines deals with the problem of fitting
a piecewise polynomial to a sequence of points. For example,
b-splines are piecewise cubics that can be used to connect points
with smooth, continuous curves (i.e., twice-differentiable curves).
------------------------------
Date: 2 Jul 84 9:11:00-PDT (Mon)
From: pur-ee!uiucdcs!ctvax!jmiller @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Direct Brain Stimulation
Article-I.D.: ctvax.45200003
As noted by others, we're talking about experiments by Penfield here.
Pretty much any intro psychology book should be able to point you in the
right direction, but be careful about taking them too seriously.
Followup experiments by others did not always replicate Penfields
findings, and these often failed in problematic ways -- people reported
hearing both sides of a telephone conversation, or doing things or being
places that could be disconfirmed in independent ways. The effects that
could most reliably be replicated were those that suggesting that
sensory pathways were getting activated by the stimulation: reports of
pure tones or flashes of monochrome light were very common. Penfield's
work was certanly interesting, but the current attitude is that there
was a little less there than first appeared.
Jim Miller
Computer Thought, Dallas
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jul 84 1227 EDT (Saturday)
From: Alex.Rudnicky@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Subject: Human Memory
Hypnosis does not enhance memory for past events. There is no proof
that it does. There never was. In all likelyhood there never will be.
You may find documentation for this assertion in the work of several
investigators (in particular, Martin Orne). For a review of the
literature try:
M. C. Smith Hypnotic memory enhancement of witnesses: Does it work?
Psychological Bulletin, 1983, 94(3), 387-407.
I quote from the abstract:
"In contrast to the myriad of anecdotal reports extolling the
virtues of hypnosis for this purpose [witness memory],
controlled laboratory studies have consistently failed to
demonstrate any hypnotic memory improvement."
Electrical stimulation of the brain was studied by Wilder Penfield, 30
to 40 years ago at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Penfield did
experiments with stimulation in the course of operations for epilepsy.
His work is described in most textbooks. You might enjoy reading
some of the protocols he collected in his book "The excitable cortex
in conscious man" (1958). In summarizing his findings, Penfield uses
the words "illusions" and "hallucinations" to describe his patients'
recollections.
Now I have a question:
It may be fun to speculate about the super-normal and the para-normal,
but what does it have to do with AI?
------------------------------
Date: 1 Jul 84 20:26:59-PDT (Sun)
From: hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!akgua!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!rochester
!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel @ Ucb-Vax.arpa
Subject: Re: The Turing Test - machines vs. people
Article-I.D.: gloria.290
For those of you who missed the start of this colloquy, here's the text
of Turing's original hypothetical conversation:
Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
Q: Add 34957 to 70764.
A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.
Q: Do you play chess?
A: Yes.
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6
and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?
A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate.
>> The point of the first answer is that no human is an expert on
>> everything, and that a program which hopes to pass the Turing
>> test had best not give itself away by being overly
>> knowledgeable.
This strains my credulity. Is it coincidence that the computer declines
to write a sonnet and accepts the other challenges? A real human, trying
to prove that he is not a computer program, would probably welcome the
opportunity to offer a poem.
And did Turing believe that one can be an "expert" poet in the same way
that one can be an expert arithmetician or chess-player? I hope not!
>> Did you notice that the answer to the second question is
>> incorrect? It should be 105721. [Aha! a sexist machine! It
>> assumes that women are no good with figures. Oops--I forgot.
>> Since you haven't read Turing's "Can a Machine Think?" you
>> won't understand what women have to do with this discussion.
>> Oh, well...]
This is unworthy of its author. Of course I read the article. My attack
was not against the details of the conversation (for that matter, the
third problem is ambiguous), but the premise of the Test. You may
remember that Turing called it a "Game" rather than a "Test." This
sort of situation arises _only_ as a game; if you really want to know
whether somebody is a person or a computer, you just look at him/it.
I should think that ELIZA has laid to rest the myth that a program's
"humanity" has anything to do with its intelligence. ELIZA's intel-
ligence was low, but she was a very human source of comfort to many
people who talked with her.
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
------------------------------
Date: Wed 4 Jul 84 12:06:15-PDT
From: M.MCLURE%LOTS-B@SU-SCORE.ARPA
Subject: chess game
Below is reproduced a game the Fidelity Prestige chess machine
recently played against me. I have a provisional rating of 1550
based on 15 games. Not great, but not terrible.
Prestige makes a very interesting move at 17 ... Ng3. I prefer
this game to the Blitz vs. Belle game of a few years ago where
Belle makes a 10-ply mating sacrifice giving up a rook.
Here, Prestige makes a 10-ply king position disruption sacrifice
giving up a knight. If White does not return the Knight, all sorts
of mating threats ensue at about the 10-12 ply level.
This is easily the most impressive micro chess game I've seen.
White - Cracraft/1550, Black - Prestige/1875
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cd4 4. Nd4 g6 5. c4 Bg7 6. Nc6 bc6
7. Qc2 Nf6 8. Bd3 d5 9. ed5 cd5 10. cd5 Qd5 11. o-o Bb7 12. f3 Rd8
13. Rd1 Qd4 14. Kh1 o-o 15. Nc3 Qc5 16. Bf4 Nh5 17. Bd2 Ng3 18. hg3 Qh5
19. Kg1 Bd4 20. Be3 Be3 21. Kf1 Bd4 22. Ke1 Qe5 23. Kf1 Qe3 24. Rde1 Kg1
25. Ke2 Qg2 26. Kd1 Qf3 27. Kc1 Bc3 White resigns.
The time control was 40 moves in 2 hours.
Stuart
[For a record of the first game in which a micro defeated a USCF-rated
master in a tournament game see David Welsh's letter in IEEE Spectrum,
July 1984, p. 8. Jerry C. Simon (rated 2245) was mated (that's chess
talk) in 55 moves by Novag's Constellation chess micro, which uses the
same 6502 8-bit processor as the Prestige machine. An earlier Spectrum
report that David Moody held the dubious honor of the first defeat was
incorrect. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Wed 4 Jul 84 14:59:37-PDT
From: M.MCLURE%LOTS-B@SU-SCORE.ARPA
Subject: Bit-Map Chess Article
I have an article that will soon be published in the
ICCA Journal (International Computer Chess Journal) and I would
like to offer it to AILIST for its readers.
The title is "Bit-map move generation in chess."
and it is 15262 bytes on TOPS-20. The article is in
[SU-SCORE]<G.MCLURE>BITMAP.TXT.
I've included a note at the top of the file that I would like kept in the
distributed version.
Stuart
------------------------------
Date: Tue 3 Jul 84 09:23:41-PDT
From: C.S./Math Library <LIBRARY@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: 1984 International Robotics Industry Directory
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The Math/CS Library has received the 1984 edition of the International
Robotics Industry Directory. This directory has expanded a great deal since
the first edition in 1981. The main part of the directory is an alphabetical
listing by company with a page of specifications for each product. There is
also a listing of research institutes which includes number of staff, director
addresses, and areas of research. A listing of consultants/systems houses
is included. The directory is located in our reference section.
Tabel of Contents: Applications supported matrix
Sensors supported matrix
Performance Characteristics matrix
Price range matrix
Industrial robots
special application sytems
automatic guided vehicles
actuators
controllers/electronics
distributors
end effectors
hydraulic/pneumatic
mechanical components and peripherals
consultants/systems houses
research institutes
glossary
index
Harry Llull
------------------------------
Date: 5 Jul 1984 10:43:28-EDT
From: kushnier@NADC
Subject: The Magazines
The Magazines
By Ron Kushnier
It seems for every topic
For every job or scheme
For each and every interest
There exits a magazine.
So I predict with robots
At least a choice of four
All touting ads and projects
Ariving at your door.
------------------------------
Date: 6 Jul 1984 08:31:44-EDT
From: kushnier@NADC
Subject: A Story
A Story
By Ron Kushnier
Into our home a robot comes
Its shape seems deja vu
It's something to do with Hans and Luke
With Leia and R2.
But it's purpose is not one of fright,
Nor Universal Glory
It is here to serve and be our friend
Which is quite a different story.
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End of AIList Digest
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