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AIList Digest Volume 3 Issue 142
AIList Digest Thursday, 10 Oct 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 142
Today's Topics:
Seminars - AI Meets Natural Stupidity (CSLI) &
Learning Expert Knowledge (UT) &
Interactive Modularity (UCB),
Seminar Series - Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (CSLI),
Conference - Logic in Computer Science
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Date: Wed 9 Oct 85 16:51:08-PDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar - AI Meets Natural Stupidity (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *THIS* THURSDAY, October 10, 1985
12 noon TINLunch
Ventura Hall ``Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity''
Conference Room by Drew McDermott
Discussion led by Roland Hausser, U. of Munich
McDermott discusses three `mistakes', or rather bad habits, which are
frequent in A.I. work. He speaks from his own experience and cites
several illuminating and amusing examples from the literature. In this
TINLunch I will be discussing his thoughts on treating reference in
A.I., which are discussed in the section entitled `unnatural
language'. --Roland Hausser
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Date: Tue, 8 Oct 85 16:01:56 cdt
From: rajive@sally.UTEXAS.EDU (Rajive Bagrodia)
Subject: Seminar - Learning Expert Knowledge (UT)
Machine Learning for
Acquiring Expert Knowledge
by
Bruce Porter
noon, Friday 11th, Pai 3.38
An important effort in Artificial Intelligence is the construction of
Expert Systems, but this effort is stymied by the problem of acquiring
knowledge to guide problem solving and reasoning. This talk reviews
efforts in Machine Learning to automate knowledge acquisition and
describes our current approach to the problem.
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Date: Wed, 9 Oct 85 16:48:25 PDT
From: admin@ucbcogsci.Berkeley.EDU (Cognitive Science Program)
Subject: Seminar - Interactive Modularity (UCB)
BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM
Fall 1985
Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237A
TIME: Tuesday, October 15, 11:00 - 12:30
PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center
DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4
SPEAKER: Ronald M. Kaplan,
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Center
for the Study of Language and Information,
Stanford University
TITLE: ``Interactive Modularity''
Comprehensible scientific explanations for most complex
natural phenomena are modular in character. Phenomena are
explained in terms of the operation of separate and indepen-
dent components, with relatively minor interactions. Modular
accounts of complex cognitive phenomena, such as language pro-
cessing, have also been proposed, with distinctions between
phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic modules, for
example, and with distinctions among various rules within
modules. But these modular accounts seem incompatible with
the commonplace observations of substantial interactions
across component boundaries: semantic and pragmatic factors,
for instance, can be shown to operate even before the first
couple of phonemes in an utterance have been identified.
In this talk I consider several methods of reconciling
modular descriptions in service of scientific explanation with
the apparent interactivity of on-line behavior. Run-time
methods utilize interpreters that allow on-line interleaving
of operations from different modules, perhaps including addi-
tional "scheduling" components for controlling the cross-
module flow of information. But depending on their mathemati-
cal properties, modular specifications may also be transformed
by off-line, compile-time operations into new specifications
that directly represent all possible cross-module interac-
tions. Such compilation techniques allow for run-time elimi-
nation of module boundaries and of intermediate levels of
representation. I will illustrate these techniques with exam-
ples involving certain classes of phonological rule systems
and structural correspondences in Lexical-Functional Grammar.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 9 Oct 85 16:51:08-PDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: Seminar Series - Commonsense and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (CSLI)
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
COMMON SENSE AND NON-MONOTONIC REASONING SEMINARS
Organized by John McCarthy and Vladimir Lifschitz
Computer Science Dept., Stanford University
A series of seminars on Common Sense and Non-monotonic reasoning
will explore the problem of formalizing commonsense knowledge and
reasoning, with the emphasis on their non-monotonic aspects.
It is important to be able to formalize reasoning about physical
objects and mental attitudes, about events and actions on the basis of
predicate logic, as it can be done with reasoning about numbers,
figures, sets and probabilities. Such formalizations may lead to the
creation of AI systems which can use logic to operate with general
facts, which can deduce consequences from what they know and what they
are told and determine in this way what actions should be taken.
Attempts to formalize commonsense knowledge have been so far only
partially successful. One major difficulty is that commonsense
reasoning often appears to be non-monotonic, in the sense that getting
additional information may force us to retract some of the conclusions
made before. This is in sharp contrast to what happens in
mathematics, where adding new axioms to a theory can only make the set
of theorems bigger.
Circumscription, a transformation of logical formulas proposed by
John McCarthy, makes it possible to formalize non-monotonic reasoning
in classical predicate logic. A circumscriptive theory involves, in
addition to an axiom set, the description of a circumscription to be
applied to the axioms. Our goal is to investigate how commonsense
knowledge can be represented in the form of circumscriptive theories.
John McCarthy will begin the seminar by discussing some of the
problems that have arisen in using abnormality to formalize common
sense knowledge about the effects of actions using circumscription.
His paper Applications of Circumscription to Formalizing Common Sense
Knowledge is available from Rutie Adler 358MJH. This paper was given
in the Non-monotonic Workshop, and the present version, which is to be
published in Artificial Intelligence, is not greatly different. The
problems in question relate to trying to use the formalism of that
paper.
The seminar will replace the circumscription seminar we had last
year. If you were on the mailing list for that seminar then you will
be automatically included in the new mailing list. If you would like
to be added to the mailing list (or removed from it) send a message to
Vladimir Lifschitz (VAL@SAIL).
The first meeting is in 252MJH on Wednesday, October 30, at 2pm.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 9 Oct 85 16:51:08-PDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@SU-CSLI.ARPA>
Subject: LICS Conference
[Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.]
LICS CONFERENCE
A new conference, LICS, (an acronym for ``Logic in Computer
Science'') will meet in Cambridge, Mass, June 16-18, 1986. The topics
to be covered include abstract data types, computer theorem proving
and verification, concurrency, constructive proofs as programs, data
base theory, foundations of logic programming, logic-based programming
languages, logics of programs, knowledge and belief, semantics of
programs, software specifications, type theory, etc. For a local copy
of the full call for papers, contact Jon Barwise (Barwise@CSLI) or
Joseph Goguen (Goguen@SRI-AI), members of the LICS Organizing
Committee.
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End of AIList Digest
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