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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 184
AIList Digest Saturday, 5 Jan 1985 Volume 2 : Issue 184
Today's Topics:
Symbolic Algebra - Package Request,
Expert Systems - Smalltalk Application,
AI Tools - Inexpensive Lisp Machines,
Mathematics - Fermat's Last Theorem,
Cognitive Science - Dictionary Project,
Anecdote - SAIL TV Story,
Opinion - 5th Generation Research,
News - Reading Machines,
Conferences - Upcoming Submission Deadlines,
Seminars - Representation and Presentation (CSLI) &
Rewrite Rules for Functional Programming (IBM-SJ)
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Date: Wed, 2 Jan 85 08:34 EST
From: D E Stevenson <dsteven%clemson.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Symbolic Algebra Package Request
I would like to obtain a symbolic algebra package which would run on
a VAX/Franz Lisp configuration. Preferably, I like one in the public
domain.
D. E. Stevenson,
Department of Computer Science
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29631
(803) 656-3444
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 85 11:43:21 PST
From: Jan Steinman <jans@mako>
Reply-to: Jan Steinman <jans%mako.uucp@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Smalltalk Expert Systems
Mike.Rychener@CMU-RI-ISL2:
Does anyone know of any successful AI applications coded in SmallTalk?
This was stimulated by the new Tektronix AI machine, whose blurb touts
its SmallTalk as useful for developing expert systems.
Take a look at the Troubleshooter for the Tektronix 4404. Although I am not
on the "inside" on this one, It is a rule based system written in Smalltalk.
One of the program's principles (Jim Alexander) is a Cognitive Scientist and
not, strictly speaking, a propgrammer, which attests to the ease with which
such things can be done in Smalltalk.
The Troubleshooter has two graphic and several text windows. The graphic
windows present a schematic and a parts layout, each having little probes that
move from point to point. A text window asks questions, such as "Is the
voltage at N19 high?"; the answers of such questions cause the probe(s) to
move to the next test point. Other text windows can be opened on a parts
database, troubleshooting advice, and the actual rules program, among others.
(Remember, the full power of Smalltalk is always available, which is good and
bad!) A window can be opened on a scope screen, which shows expected
waveforms at various points.
I have seen it; it works; it's fun! I fixed stereos, transceivers, and color
TVs before getting into computers and know that half the battle in
troubleshooting is often using the service literature! This application is
sort of a smart, graphics-based, hypertext service manual and would really be
useful. It is not simply an interesting bit of AI research!
I AM NOT A PART OF THIS PROJECT. Although I don't want to seem anti-social,
please contact your nearest Tek field office for a demo and more information;
do not contact me!
:::::: Jan Steinman Box 1000, MS 61-161 (w)503/685-2843 ::::::
:::::: tektronix!tekecs!jans Wilsonville, OR 97070 (h)503/657-7703 ::::::
------------------------------
Date: 2 Jan 1985 09:58:48-EST
From: kushnier@NADC
Subject: VILM
Todd,
We at NAVAIRDEVCEN are also interested in a Low cost portable LISP machine.
The MAC came up as a possible candidate. Could you please tell me more
about Portable Standard LISP (PSL) ?
We are currently considering implementing an EXPERT SYSTEM written in FORTH
which we would translate into MACFORTH. Unless an external high speed, high
capacity memory device can be utilized, the prospect of using LISP does not
look promising. Keep us informed on your progress.
Ron Kushnier
kushnier@nadc.arpa
------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 3-Jan-85 12:20:36-GMT
From: JOLY QMA (on ERCC DEC-10) <GCJ%edxa@ucl-cs.arpa>
Subject: Re: Fermat's Last Theorem.
Does the reference to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem (Vol 2 # 181)
have anything to do with the incorrect proof of Arnold Arnold which
was reported in the Guardian newspaper in October/November 1984 ?
Gordon Joly
gcj@edxa
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 85 15:12:10 est
From: hoffman%vax1@cc.delaware (HOFFMAN)
Subject: Re: Cognitive Science Dictionary
I think it would be a good idea and might have a good market. I would
hate to be the one doing the compiling, though.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 85 13:01:25 est
From: chester%vax1@cc.delaware (CHESTER)
Subject: Re: Cognitive Science Dictionary
A dictionary (with short definitions of terms) would have limited sales,
since it would only be useful to people who are already in the field or who
already have strong motivation to get in the field and are required to buy
it for a course.
An encyclopedia would be better, but I favor a format like that of The
Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, (Barr and Feigenbaum) or the Handbook of
Human Intelligence (Sternberg). Such a work would appeal to people who have
a moderate interest in the field and might give them suitable orientation
and motivation to join us.
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 21 Dec 1984 18:12-PST
From: imagen!les@su-shasta.arpa
Subject: TV and the 5th generation
[Forwarded from the Human-Nets Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.]
In response to your 20 Dec. comments on "Personal Assistants", I can
confirm that the TV story is apocryphal. I bought the Heathkit
television set for the Stanford AI Lab and it was completely assembled
within a few days after arrival, by gnomes not robots. Aside from its
use for monitoring "Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman!" it served as a
display for computer-synthesized color images.
A creative student (Hans Morovec) shortly built a remote control ray
gun that worked rather well. As I recall, that was a few years before
remote control became available on commercial TV sets.
As for the digs at the AI community by you and others, please do not
paint everyone with the same brush. In any research field, the
lunatic fringe is much more likely to catch headlines and certain
government grants than those who speak rationally. The Great Machine
Translation fiasco of the '60s was brought about mainly by the CIA's
slavering desire to leap ahead in an area where no one knew how to
walk yet.
An even greater fiasco was the series of "Command and Control" systems
assembled by the Air Force and others in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.
They wanted computers to run the military establishment even though
they hadn't mastered chess yet. The reason that these largely useless
projects kept going was that the people involved were having a good
time (and making good money) and the Congress never seemed to
understand what was going on.
As for AI and 5th generation computers, I know of very few people in
the AI community who believe in any of that nonsense. Nevertheless,
some will use it to pry larger grants out of the government or to sell
high-priced seminars to the gullible public.
What keeps happening, it seems, is that people take a few partially-
understood facts and principles then extrapolate a few light years
away and declare that it must be possible to do this new thing. As
long as such activities are rewarded, they will continue to
proliferate. Why settle for a trip to the beach when you can head
toward Andromeda?
Les Earnest
------------------------------
Date: 02 Jan 85 2300 PST
From: Richard Vistnes <RV@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Reading machines & news
I seem to remember someone a while ago asking about the availability
of machines that could `read' a page of text with a camera and produce
computer-readable text. In the latest issue of Fortune magazine
(Jan 7 '85, p.74) there's an article about speech recognition, and it
mentions that Kurzweil (formerly of MIT, I believe) let Xerox produce his
reading machine, and that this machine can read text in several
different fonts. Maybe someone at Xerox can supply more information.
- Richard Vistnes
------------------------------
Date: 02 Jan 85 1107 PST
From: Yoni Malachi <YM@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Upcoming conference submission deadlines
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
(details in file CONFER.TXT[2,2] at SAIL.)
7-Jan-85: IJCAI-85
10-Jan-85: VLSI-85
12-Jan-85: Theoretical Approaches to Natural Language Understanding
14-Jan-85: Logics of Programs 1985
15-Jan-85: Symposium on Complexity of Approximately Solved Problems
15-Jan-85: Workshop on Environments for Programming-in-the-Large
15-Jan-85: 1985 CHAPEL HILL CONFERENCE ON VLSI
18-Jan-85: Computational Linguistics
31-Jan-85: FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES AND COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
31-Jan-85: Conference - Intelligent Systems and Machines
4-Feb-85: CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE -- 1985
4-Feb-85: Sigmetrics '85
11-Mar-85: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN MACHINE TRANSLATION OF
NATURAL LANGUAGES
1-Apr-85: Logic, language and computation meeting
29-Apr-85: FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE (FOCS)
1-May-85: Expert Systems in Government Conference
You can get the file to your computer using FTP.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 2 Jan 85 17:16:47-PST
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Representation and Presentation (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
CSLI SEMINAR
``Representation and Presentation''
Benny Shanon, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Wednesday, January 9 at 4:00 pm in the Ventura conference room
A series of arguments, drawn on the basis of various aspects of
psychological phenomenology are marshalled against the representational-
computational view of mind. The argument from context marks the
unconstrained variation of meaning with context, hence the impossibility
of a full, comprehensive semantic representation; the argument from
medium points out that medium is an ineliminable contributor to meaning
and that a variety of psychological patterns do not allow for a
distinction between medium and message, hence they cannot be accounted
for by means of abstract, symbolic representations; the argument from
development notes that the representational view not only cannot
account for the problem of the origin in cognition, but that it leads
to unnatural and even paradoxical patterns whereby what is theoretically
simple is phenomenologically complex and/or developmentally late and
what is theoretically complex is phenomenologically simple and/or
developmentally early. On the basis of these arguments it is
suggested that cognition be viewed as a dialectic process between two
types of patterns: representational and presentational.
------------------------------
Date: 02 Jan 85 2347 PST
From: Yoni Malachi <YM@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - Rewrite Rules for Functional Programming (IBM-SJ)
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
2:00pm Monday, Jan. 7
Room 1C-012 (in Building 28 at IBM)
Ed Wimmers
IBM Research San Jose
What does it mean for rewrite rules to be "correct"?
We consider an operational definition for FP via rewrite rules. What would it
mean for such a definition to be correct? We certainly want the rewrite rules
to capture correctly our intuitions regarding the meaning of the primitive
functions. We also want there to be enough rewrite rules to compute the correct
meaning of all expressions, but not too many, thus making equivalent two
expressions that should be different. And what does it mean for there to be
"enough" rules? We develop a new formal criterion for deciding whether there
are enough rewrite rules and show that our rewrite rules meet that criterion.
Our proof technique is novel in the way we use the semantic domain to guide an
assignment of types to the untyped language FP; this allows us to adopt powerful
techniques from the typed lambda-calculus theory.
Host: John Backus
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End of AIList Digest
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