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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 165
AIList Digest Saturday, 1 Dec 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 165
Today's Topics:
Planning - Bibliography Wanted,
Cognition - Amnesia Before Age 5?,
Administrivia - Number of Internet Users,
News - AI in the News,
Humor - Software Productivity,
Seminars - User Interface Management System (CMU) &
Calculus of Partially-Ordered Type Structures (MIT)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 30 Nov 84 15:07:23 PST (Fri)
From: Dan Shapiro <dan@aids-unix>
Subject: Planning Bibliography wanted
Does anyone know of an annotated biblography in the area of AI
planning? My specific context is an autonomous land vehicle
project which involves generating a plan for traversing long
distances in essentially unrestricted terrain. Issues in route
planning, real time planning, planning under uncertainty, planning
with multiple goals, goal conflict resolution strategies, etc.,
are all relevant.
I would also be interested in a reference list on the topic of
spatial reasoning, in particular the representation and
manipulation of symbolic features in maps or processed images.
I am going to be compiling/extending annotated bibliographies in
these areas; once done, I'd be glad to distribute them to anyone
who is interested.
Dan Shapiro
(dan@aids-unix)
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 84 15:22:05 EST (Thursday)
From: Chris Heiny <Heiny.henr@XEROX.ARPA>
Subject: Amnesia before age 5????
"..no one can remember events before the age of five."
What's going on here, anyway??? Does this mean that no one remembers
(during any part of their life) any events that occurred prior to age 5;
or does it mean that prior to age 5, one can't remember events occuring
during ages 0..4.99. I personally can disprove the former: I remember
events that occurred when I was 3 & 4. An acquaintance disproves both:
at age 3 she remembered an event several weeks after it occurred, and at
18 still remembers both the event and the remembering of the event (is
this a meta-memory?).
I think someone's confused....I hope it's not me.
Chris
------------------------------
Date: Thu 29 Nov 84 14:10:35-PST
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Amnesia before age 5????
Granted, I was rather sweeping in my generalization. Kids certainly
do remember events, but after growing up very few can remember more
than one or two vague incidents from the early years. Even those
few memories are often the ones strengthened by parent's retelling
of the events. At any rate, >>I<< have only two or three conscious
memories from pre-kindergarten days, and not a great many more from all
of grade school.
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: 26 Nov 84 15:45 EST
From: WILLUT%EDUCOM.BITNET@Berkeley
Subject: Estimate on number of Internet users
Some belated facts related to estimates of Internet users:
BITNET currently has 328 machines at 117 sites (almost exclusively
universities), with 52 sites pending. A stats program run recently at
a non-peak time determined that 150 nodes were up and 6,000 users logged in.
Also, MAILNET includes 24 universities (most single machines, but some
multiple-node sites, such as Carnegie-Mellon) that exchange mail with the
MAILNET hub (the MIT-MULTICS machine) via dial-up and/or Telenet connections.
Using the proposed estimate of 100-200 users per university machine that's
35-70,000 users.
Candy Willut
EDUCOM Networking Activities
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 84 05:12:53 cst
From: Laurence Leff <leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Recent AI News
[The following message from Laurence Leff at SMU was delayed somewhat
by mailer troubles. He has offered to provide AIList readers with
references to AI articles in the non-AI press. Such reviews and
alerts are certainly welcome. -- KIL]
...
I currently provide this service to the AI group in the department and
it might be useful to others. The journals I scan include
Electronic Week
Electronic News
IEEE PAMI
IEEE System Man and Cybernetics
IEEE Computer
Communications ACM
Datamation
Infoworld
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Potentials
[Each notice] includes a citation (so people can find it) and usually
a sentence or two about contents. Very short articles (<= 1 paragraph)
are usually typed in verbatim.
As if we didn't know department:
From Wall Street Journal
COMPUTERS THAT THINK like people create demand for experts in short supply.
Interest in "Artificial Intelligence" systems is booming, say employers
and recruiters among firms in financial services, computer hardware and
software design, defense and communications. The systems principally
duplicate the thought processes of experts for trouble-shooting and cash
management. Demand for systems is "explosive" says Halbrecht Associates,
Stamford, Conn.
But Halbrecht's recruiter Daryl Furno says "there just aren't enough
people to go around" to design the systems. Most prospects have about five
job offers when they finish a project. Christian & Timbers, a Cleveland
recruiting firm, says qualified experts demand 10%-20% premiums over most
computer designers.
DM Data, a Scottsdale, Ariz., consulting firm, estimates that there are
nearly 5,000 jobs in the industry now, but there may be 50,00 jobs
by 1990.
CACM 1984 - Vol 27 No. 10 page 1044:
Combination of PERT with [heuristic] search.
Byte Vol 9 No 11 October 1984 page 39:
Announcements of Tektronix AI system and TIMM expert system.
Byte Vol 9 No 11 October 1984 page 207:
Ad for IBM PC Common Lisp.
Electronic News Monday October 1, 1984 pp. 37:
Japanese-English translation-software article.
Copied from Computer Industry Update September 1984
IBM Company Announcements:
Announced a version of the Lisp programming language for the VM operating
system. Lisp/VM is an integrated interactive invironment that provides a
collection of artificial intelligence programming tools. A structure
editor displays the structure of all objects including programs, data
and results. A variety of debugging tools are included. The price is
$6500.
The firm also unveiled five other internal research and development
projects in artificial intelligence: the YES/MVS, an expert system
which runs on mainframe computers that use the MVS operating system;
PRISM, a system shell written in PASCAL for developers who wish to
insert their own rules and inferences for expert systems; Scratchpad
II which incorporates a system and language to provide facilities for
scientists to manipulate algebra directly on the computer screen; PSC
Prolog, a version of the Prolog programming language that operates on
the 370 and interfaces with the LISP/VM and SQL/VM relational DBMS and
the CMS Command Executive language REXX; and HANDY, a user interface
to AI systems and a PC-based program that includes elements of
windowing, color animation, graphics, speech synthesis and video
programs.
Electronic Weeks November 12, 1984:
Describes efforts of Sperry ($20,000,000 worth) to become leader in AI. pp. 34
Electronics Week October 22, 1984:
Work by Kurzweill on solving the speech recognition techniques.
(Kurzweill was the developer of the text recognizer used to make a
reader for the blind.) pp. 83
Infoworld November 5, 1984:
Review of "Into the Height [Heart? --KIL] of the Mind"
The review is oriented towards those not knowledgeable in AI.
IEEE Transactions on System Man and Cybernetics July/August 1984
Volume SMC-14 Number 4:
Linguistic Representation of Default Values in Frames
R. R. Yager pp 630
Approximate Reasoning as a Basis for Rule-Based Expert Systems
R. R. Yager pp 636
Electronic News, Monday November 12, 1984:
Computer Thought ships ADA/ Interpreter Debugger on Symbolics 3600
Machine pp 43
Electronic News, October 29, 1984:
Article on Marketing AI systems pp 34
------------------------------
Date: Thu 29 Nov 84 12:40:33-PST
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Software Productivity
The November issue of IEEE Computer contains an Open Channel note fro
David Feinberg about the folly of programmer productivity metrics that
reward only lines of code and not lines of documentation. This
suggests many lines of thought.
A lines-of-code metric penalizes those who write APL one-liners -- a
good thing, no? We could increase the readability/maintainability of
programs if we passed them through a filter that would expand complex
expressions into simpler steps. We could then increase our
productivity even further by converting these simple steps into more
complex operations. The possibilities for bootstrapping are obvious,
although important research questions must be solved to eliminate
cycles in repeated transformations. Fortunately, we only need to find
one example of unlimited software growth (coupled with our supercomputer
technology) in order to guarantee our world pre-eminence in software
productivity.
The same concept can be extended to hardware development to guarantee
our lead in computer complexity. Progess in this direction has so far
been limited to computer support systems (e.g., F-15 aircraft), but
wafer-scale integration offers hope for further optimization.
This looks like a fruitful area for artificial intelligence research.
(Progress might be measured by published lines of proof or by reams
of suggestive hypotheses.) I suggest that DARPA institute a crash
project to develop a prototype optimizing preprocessor able to convert
x = y = 0;
into
register t;
t = 0;
y = t;
x = t;
if (x != y)
abend("Compiler and/or hardware error.");
Further breakthroughs will come quickly. For instance, we might
substitute
Ln (Lim (1+(1/z))^z) + sin^2(x) + cos^2(x)
z->INF
INF
- SUM (cosh(y sqrt(1-tanh^2(y))/(2^N)
N=0
for the constant 0 in the above program, providing that we can find
numerical methods of evaluating the limit and infinite summation
with adequate accuracy. All that we need for rapid progress is a
sufficiently complex bureaucracy to support research and manage
distribution of the results.
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: 29 Nov 84 1404 PST
From: Frank Yellin <FY@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: from the New Yorker
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The following is from the Palm Springs Desert Sun (and reprinted word
for word in the New Yorker).
"Controlling a plant," says Theodore J. Williams, a researcher
at Purdue University "takes a wider attention span than any one person
could possibly have." But with a distributed computer system, Mr.
Williams added, "You can increase profitability, increase
productivity, reduce raw materials and reduce emissions, because the
computer system is flexible, process, rather than an entire plant.
The system is flexible, allowess, rather than an entire plant. The
system is flexible, allowing anather than an entire plant. The system
is flexible, allowing an operator to rearrange a manufacturing process
from his seat at the console. "If you change your mind," said Robert
E. Otto, a technical consultant at the Monsanto Co., "you don't have
to rewire, you can just reprogram."
And because the systhe central computer. Then if something goes
wrong ing back to the central computer. Then if something goes wrong
ing back to the central computer. Then if something goes wrong wit
back to the central computer. Then if something goes wrong with the
main cocentral computer. Then if something goes wrong with the main
control l computer. Then if something goes wrong with the main
control room your plant is O.K."
------------------------------
Date: 28 November 1984 1433-EST
From: Staci Quackenbush@CMU-CS-A
Subject: Seminar - User Interface Management System (CMU)
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Name: Phil Hayes
Date: December 3, 1984
Time: 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Place: WeH 5409
Title: "Design Alternatives for User Interface Management
Systems Based on Experience with the COUSIN System"
User interface management systems (UIMSs) provide user interfaces to
application systems based on an abstract definition of the interface
required. This approach can provide higher-quality interfaces with a lower
construction cost. This talk examines a UIMS called COUSIN which provides
graphical interfaces to a variety of application systems running on a Perq
under the Accent operating system. The presentation will include a videotape
of a COUSIN interface.
The talk will also take a more general look at the design space for UIMSs.
Specifically, we will consider three design choices. The choices concern the
sharing of control between the UIMS and the applications it provides
interfaces to, the level of abstraction in the definition of the information
exchanged between user and application, and the level of abstraction in the
sequencing of information exchange. For each choice, we argue for a specific
alternative. COUSIN's design corresponds to the alternatives we argued for
in two out of three cases, and partially satisfies the third.
------------------------------
Date: Mon 26 Nov 84 16:37:16-EST
From: Susan Hardy <SH%MIT-XX@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Calculus of Partially-Ordered Type Structures (MIT)
[Forwarded from the MIT bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
A LATTICE-THEORETIC APPROACH TO COMPUTATION
BASED ON A CALCULUS OF PARTIALLY-ORDERED TYPE STRUCTURES
Hassan Ait-Kaci
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
Austin, Texas
DATE: Friday, November 30, l984
TIME: 2:00 p.m. - Talk
PLACE: NE43-512A
This talk will present a syntactic calculus of partially ordered
structures and its application to computation. A syntax of record-
like terms and a "type subsumption" ordering are defined and shown
to form a lattice structure. A simple "type-as-set"
interpretation of these term structures extends this lattice to
a distributive one, and in the case of finitary terms, to a
complete Brouwerian lattice. As a result, a method for solving
systems of @i(type equations) by iterated substitution of type
symbols is proposed which defines an operational semantics
for KBL -- a Knowledge Base Language -- so-named to reflect
the original aim of this research; to wit, attempting a proper
formalization of the notion of "semantic network".
HOST: Professor Rishiyur Nikhil
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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