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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 112
AIList Digest Friday, 31 Aug 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 112
Today's Topics:
Books - AI Handbook,
LISP - VMS LISPs,
AI Tools - Metataxonomies,
Speech Understanding - Word Recognition,
Natural Language - No Crime Rate & DWIM
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Date: Wed 29 Aug 84 12:56:04-CDT
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Lib of CS intro offer: Handbook of AI Vols 1-3 for $5
In Sept issue of Scientific American.
Club members agree to buy 3 other books during the next year. Given that
one can buy books priced under 20$, it's a bargain, any way you look at it.
Having to send in their monthly reply card is a nuisance, of course, but
quickly buying 3 books cuts that short. And I have no doubt, that anyone
serious about CS can find 3 interesting books in their 'Recent Selections'
catalogue. Over the years, I bought dozens, which makes me 'a satisfied
customer', I guess. Other than that, I have no connections ....
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Date: 29 Aug 1984 12:50-EST
From: Todd.Kueny@CMU-CS-G.ARPA
Subject: VMS LISPs
> I would appreciate information about LISP interpreters for a VAX
> 11/780 running VMS. Thanks in advance.
We use something called PSL (Portable Standard Lisp) from Univ. of Utah.
It has both a compiler and interpreter and *opinion* seems to be a heck
of a lot faster and far more efficient than DEC COMMON LISP. We have
a version we created from Utah's Vax UNIX version; I think Utah will
have a VMS version of their own very soon.
PSL has a COMMON LISP compatability package, an object oriented
programming facility, and loads of other handy stuff. Unlike COMMON
LISP PSL has a fixed sized heap with a two state garbage
collector. A properly tuned PSL can be very fast (better
than C in many cases) and five or six can be
run at one time (while still doing other things). Three DEC COMMON
LISPs can bog down a VMS 780 system.
-Todd K.
Unilogic
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Date: Wed 29 Aug 84 09:31:47-MDT
From: Stan Shebs <SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Taxonomies
Some of the most recent KR systems attempt to provide meta-taxonomies;
I know of RLL/Eurisko, MRS, and AGE, all Stanford products. Am not
sure what LOOPS provides in the way of knowledge about representation
schemes (although one could build something to recommend whether a given
piece of information should be a logical assertion, an object, an instance
variable of an object, Lisp code, etc).
Meta-taxonomies are HARD. The ability to create a taxonomy of some body of
knowledge implies that one has both a deep and broad understanding of that
body. The creation of a meta-taxonomy implies that there is a similar
level of understanding for many issues in knowledge representation, which
is definitely *not* the case. We're still lacking adequate theories of
multiple inheritance, nor have we plumbed the depths of strange logical
systems. Looking at library science is an interesting idea; while I
imagine that many of the classification schemes are informal (probably
relying on human judgement), librarians have been classifying massive
databases (books) for a long time.
Moving farther afield, taxonomies in other AI areas are lacking. I asked
a while back about taxonomies for rule systems, and found that there was
about one paper, by Davis and King in a ca. 1976 MI. This, however, was
an informal taxonomy, and not particularly susceptible to mechanization.
Am still waiting for a tree that puts OPS5, Emycin, and Prolog on
different leaves...
stan
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Date: Wed 29 Aug 84 10:12-EDT
From: Aaron F. Bobick <AFB%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Understanding speech versus hearing words
About speech recognition:
From: Sidney Markowitz <sidney%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
It turns out that even to separate the syllables in continuous speech
you need to have some understanding of what the speaker is talking
about! You can discover this for yourself by trying to hear the sounds
of the words when someone is speaking a foreign language. You can't
even repeat them correctly as nonsense syllables.
What this implies is an approach to speech recognition that goes
beyond pattern recognition to include understanding of utterances.
This in turn implies that the system has some understanding of the
"world view" of the speaker, i.e., common sense knowledge and the
probable intentions of the speaker.....
Many psycho-lingists would dispute this. The problem with the foreign
language example is that you don't recognize WORDS, not that you don't
understand the utterance (for now let us define understanding as
building some sort of SEMANTIC model, the details don't matter).
Consider the classic: "Green ideas sleep furiously." I doubt one can
"understand" this in any plausible way yet it's encoding is easy.
Even if one removes grammar and is listening to a randomized listing
of Websters dictionary, one can easily parse the string into syllables
and words.
In fact, *except under noise conditions much worse than normal
conversation*, there is psycho-linguistic evidence that context does
not greatly affect word recognition by humans in terms of the parsing
of the input signal. ....
(I am over simplifying a little; there is also evidence that
context can help you make judgements about incoming words and
syllables. However, this may be a post-access phenomena, sort of a
surprise effect when an anomalous word or syllable is encountered; the
jury is still out. Regardless, it is certainly reasonable to consider
a context independent word recognition system. )
..... Therefore, it is clearly possible to consider speech
*recognition* as separate from understanding. Hearsay (I or II) does
not; some psychologists (and, by the way, many AI speech hackers) do.
Stuck in the middle again ...... aaron bobick (afb%mit-oz@mit-mc)
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Date: Thu 30 Aug 84 04:59:09-CDT
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Re: On having virtually no crime rate.
RE: "Saudi Arabia has virtually no crime rate," (Olympic commercial)
Every time I heard it, there was this little alarm going off in my head
saying: "Think about it. There is something wrong here." To which my
semi-automatic stress-reduction program (always running in the "background")
responded: "Don't think about it. This is just another unimportant question
which, at most, is going to mess up the priorities of other, more important
tasks you have to worry about."
Of course, now Wayne has found the "weak spot" in my 'semi-automatic ...'
Turning to Bantam for enlightenment, I find:
virtual [ML virtualis]
adj existing in effect though not in name or fact
virtually adv almost; for the most part
And, out of habit, I double-check in Webster (the Time-freeby with nearly
unreadable typeset) and get rewarded with:
virtual adj equivalent to, though somewhat different or deficient
- virtuality, n.
That didn't put me at ease at all, and I grabbed the "New American Computer
Dictionary" (by Ken Porter) .... well, excuse me, the computer was involved
in presenting me with Wayne's article, right ?
virtual Giving an appearance of being without actually; an important
concept in medium- to large-scale data-processing systems,
in which virtual techniques "trick" the computer system or
a program into "believing" that there are more resources
available than there actually are. For further discussion,
see 'virtual machine', 'virtual storage'
Aha, me thinks, the Saudis must have applied a new police technique, where
something or someone is doing some 'tricky' stuff ... but wait, '... being
without actually' ??? Wasn't it the other way around? Better check that
in German - and Langenscheidt says...:
virtual dem Wesen nach, eigentlich
well, that doesn't help much, so I do a 'reverse check' to see what I come
up with (an important technique. with often surprising results, remember
the first Russian automatic translations???)
eigentlich (genau) proper; (tatsaechlich) actual; (wirklich) true, real;
(dem Wesen nach) virtual;
adv properly; actually; really; (genau gesagt) properly
speaking; 'das ~e London' London proper; 'Ich bin ~ froh'
AmF I am sort of glad; 'was wollen Sie ~?' what do you want?
See what I mean? Is it 'real' now or 'virtual'? 'What do you want?'
Well, you have to endure my excursion into Spanish, too, but I spare you the
Latin.: 'Diccionario Larousse del Espanol Moderno' says:
virtual adj Posible, que no tiene efecto actual. || 'Fis' Que tiene
existencia aparente pero no real: 'imagen, objecto virtual'
virtualidad f. Posibilidad.
(dabbling in this 'foreign' mumble makes me wish that everyone had a Mac
so I could use the proper foreign characters, like 'Umlauts' in German, etc.
of course, there'd still be the 'minor' problem of making the main-frames
cooperate, of course .....)
What's the point of all this? Well, that's the ultimate test for AI.
You folks can go off now to write a program which will understand, when
the Arabs and I together throw our hands up into the air and say:
WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEANT TO SAY .....
But seriously now, folks ....
Maybe, DWIM is the real test of artificial intelligence, no more worries
about proper spelling, syntax, or semantics. No more error messages
from compilers, no more bugs in programs. For that matter, no more machines
with a habit of crashing. Why limit ourselves to require AI to be able to do
what we humans can do? Our 'REAL' intelligence is so bug-ridden that we
are on the verge of self-extinction as a result of our progress. What I'd
like to see is a Master-Robot of the world, programmed to DWIM (do what I mean)
with one overriding GOAL:
BUT NO MATTER WHAT I SAY OR DO - DON'T ALLOW ME TO SELF-DESTRUCT !!!
The idea that the human drive to survive has left us with 'defensive'
weapons which will most likely guarantee our ultimate and definite
demise from this universe makes me want to 'stop the world and get off'.
It makes me SO angry to know that most of this AI-stuff is being developed
to make better instruments of killing and destruction (looked at who's
doing the funding, lately?) - and so sad at the same time, knowing that
the last thing the people doing the developing want, is to help blowing
up the world, or any small part of it, for that matter. I am afraid that
the AI-community will find itself in a similar situation one day, as the
nuclear phycisists, asking themselves the question:
"But how could we have prevented it?" There is one thing to be learnt
from the Nueremberg trials after WW2: There is no sympathy earned with
this statement.
BTW, for all you Commie-hunters out there, I'm as suspicious as the next fellow
of Russian intensions, but I think that these days it's more likely that some
lunatic from some smaller country (no need to focus on anyplace in particular,
really) will light the match which will lead to the ultimate explosion.
What I am concerned about is, is the fact that we all cooperated in developing
the technology which makes the blast so effective and deadly. And ....
'being sorry' isn't going to do a damn bit of good !
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Well, Wayne, aren't you as sorry as I that you got me started?
I know that wasn't your intension, but ... so what?
... off and fix my 'semi-automatic...' so people like Wayne will have
a harder time messing with the priorities of things I need to do do ....
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End of AIList Digest
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