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AIList Digest Volume 4 Issue 054
AIList Digest Friday, 14 Mar 1986 Volume 4 : Issue 54
Today's Topics:
Query - NL Interfaces,
AI Tools - Graphical Methods,
Bindings - Jim Hendler,
News - Herb's New Honour,
Policy - TI Press Release,
Review - Spang Robinson Report, March 1986,
Linguistics - Ambiguous Sentences & Associativity
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Date: Thu 13 Mar 86 13:12:43-PST
From: BORISON@SRI-KL.ARPA
Subject: NL Interfaces
Does anyone know of any companies that use Intellect or Ramis II/English
and who I could contact at these companies to learn how they're being used?
Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 13 Mar 86 08:48:15-CST
From: Donald Blais <CC.BLAIS@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Request for information
SPACE ADJACENCY ANALYSIS by Edward T. White
... has information on some of the 2-d paper schematics used
by architects. The book is in use for an architecture course
at the University of Hawaii.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 19:21:24 EST
From: Jim Hendler <hendler@brillig.umd.edu>
Subject: binding
Jim Hendler can now be found at
the University of Maryland, College Park
Computer Science Department
College Park, Md. 20742
(hendler@maryland Arpa)
------------------------------
Date: 13 Mar 86 08:56:08 EST
From: Guojun.Zhang@ML.RI.CMU.EDU
Subject: Herb's New Honour
[Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
According to a report from Pittsburgh Gazette, Prof. Herbert Simon received
the National Medal of Science from President Reagan yesterday afternoon at
White House. Congratulations to Dr. Simon!
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 86 12:03:37 EST
From: Frank Ritter <ritter@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA>
Subject: Re: TI press release
I find the direct quote (actually the whole press release) from TI's
press release objectionable. A summary would have been more appropriate,
and that it was direct from TI (the land of AI hype) I think violates the
spirit of AI-List.
Frank
------------------------------
Date: WED, 10 JAN 84 17:02:23 CDT
From: E1AR0002%SMUVM1.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: Spang Robinson Report, March 1986
Summary of The Spang Robinson Report Volume 2, Number 3, March 1986
Discussion of the prospectus' of Teknowledge and Intellicorp, two AI
corporations that have recently gone public:
Teknowledge has recorded losses for each year of operation through
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1985. As of December 31, 1985,
Teknowledge had an accumulated deficit of $9,173,100. It has licensed
its systems to over 175 customers. The tangible book value of Teknowledge
was $15,633,600 as of December 31, 1985. Teknowledge revenues for 1985
was $7,316,600 in 1985 and $4,378,500 in fiscal 1984. In 1985,
software services accounted for 45 percent of its revenue with products
and training providing 37 percent of the ratios. As of December 31, 1985,
the company raised $24,976,000 from private sale of securities and had
$12.5 million in working capital. Earnings of officers(including other
compensation such as commissions and housing allowances):
Frederick Hayes-Roth $195,402
JOhn W. Spencer, Vice President, Sales and Marketing $164,038
Lee M. Hecht, President, $141,700
Barry L. Plotkin, Vice President and General Manager of Knowledge
Engineering Services, $116,250
Earl D. Sacerdoti, Vice President and General Manager of Knowledge
Engineering Products and Training: $107,800
Intellicorp has reported a substantial loss for 1985, although it has
reported profits in most recent three quarters. They delivered 425
KEE systems to 100 customers. It received from Sperry Corporation
22 percent and 21 percent of its revenues in fiscal 1985 and the
first quarter of fiscal 1986. Intellicorp has fluctuated between $3.5 dollars
per share and $13.75 per share. Intellicorp runs BIONET in a cooperative
agreement with National Institutes of Health. They also offer a
package of ten software programs in the area of genetic engineering
research. There is a company called "Kee Incorporated" which advised
Intellicorp of a possible trademark infringement of the company's name.
Salaries:
Ralph Kromer, $115,000
Thomas P. Kehler, Executive Vice president, manager of Knowledge Systems
Divison, $110,000
kenneth Hass, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary $75,625
Carrol Gallivan, Vice President, Marketing $100,000.
__________________________________________________________________________
Article on the Dreyfus affair regarding the article that appeared in
the January 1986 issue of Technology Review.
__________________________________________________________________________
Discussion of the Expert Forecaster, PC product that brings the power
of Box-Jenkins forecasting systems to the PC.
__________________________________________________________________________
Discussion of Japanese AI: (Dollar Amounts based on a recent exchange
rate)
MITI is requesting funding of $25 million for basic computer R&D of which
most is earmarked for ICOT. This is 6 percent less than the amount
allocated to ICOT in the current budget.
Japan's Science and Technology Agency is requesting approximately
$43.4 million for computer research. Projects that are continuing
is a project on developing technologies to elucidate brain function,
a survey of knowledge-based systems for assisting in the design of
chemical substances, further research on a Japanese-English, English-Japanese
translation system. This system is now in operation at the Japan
Information Center of Science and Technology. STA is requesting
$665,000 for efforts to enlarge the dictionary and to improve the
translation system. They are asking $41.5 million
from the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute to continue its R&D on
an expert system for safety diagnosis in nuclear power plants.
The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is asking $720,00
for a project which aims at developing expert systems for use in
agriculture.
The Ministry of Labor is requesting money for CAI software for job
training.
NEC will develop and market four expert systems for control of large
general purpose computer systems. This is the first time that applications
as opposed to AI tools have been marketed in Japan. These systems will
be used for computer performance analysis, network failure analysis, database
design and JCL creation and checking.
__________________________________________________________________________
News:
IBM will be distributing Golden Common Lisp. Golden Common Lisp has over
5000 users.
TI has donated seven Explorers to UT Austin. UT Austin bought six Explorers.
Texas A&M bought eight Explorer work stations.
Silogic announced the availability of Knowledge Workbench for 68000
supermicrocomputers. It has a natural language processor, an expert
system shell and an enhanced Prolog environment. It also has a database
interface that allows the system to be used on top of relational databases.
Lathan Process Corporaiton is using the system to develop an expert
advisor to floor supervisors. It costs $8500.00 without the natural
language processor and $21000.00 with it.
Microsoft announced the latest update of muLisp. It is three times
faster than its competitors and allows the development of programs
up to 8000 lines long.
Intellisource introduced IntelliWare Platinum Label accounting system
which integrates an expert system with a natural language menu
system. It is based on TI's NaturalLink software.
ICAD, Inc. is creating a system to allow engineers to capture their
standards for design and increase the accuracy of their solutions.
Also Symbolics will announce a smaller AI computer which will cost about
$35,000.
Speech Systems Incorporated has a demonstrable technology to convert
speech into text. They are currently selling stuff to OEMs for
integration into their products
__________________________________________________________________________
New Bindings
Cornelius Willis is Director of Marketing for Level Five Research which
created Insight 1 and 2. He was formerly at Human Edge Software Corporation
of Palo Alto, CA
Quintus Computer Systems has appointed Doug Degroot, VP of Research and
Development
Teknowledge has named Robert Simon Southern Regional Sales Manager
Speech Systems Incorporated has named Edward Feigenbaum
Advisor to the President
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 9:51:04 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
Subject: punctuation and intonation
To elaborate on points made by Doug Ice and Andy Walker, sentences are
typically disambiguated in English with appropriate intonation. There
are tricks of punctuation to capture most of the tricks of intonation,
and though third-level or deeper nestings are awkward for punctuation,
they are also awkward for intonation.
There is a perverse kind of `rule of the game' in linguistics that
one should read ambiguous examples with flat intonation so as not to
force the audience interpretation one way or another. Seems to me
this is absurd. Unless the aim is to put them in the hapless position
of a machine being given the written sentence with poor or inadequate
punctuation.
Arguing on the other side, when readers find the appropriate intonation
for a poorly punctuated sentence they rely on the redundancy that pervades
language. Since machines are expected to cope with all sorts of ill-formed
input, poor punctuation being the least of it, we must provide means for
them to do the same. (In fact, most readers do a poor job of finding the
appropriate intonations when reading text . . . probably because they
become so narrowly focussed on the word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence
decoding task that they cut themselves off from the possibilities of
discourse structure, nonverbal communication, and knowledge-base-type
pretext and context, which their imaginations churn out for them on
a `parallel' track, if they only pay attention. Could there be a clue
here why machines are having trouble?)
Bruce Nevin bn@bbncch.arpa
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 86 12:32:00 EST
From: Col. G. L. Sicherman <dual!sunybcs!colonel@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Ambiguous sentences cont.
I missed the start of this.... Has anybody mentioned Pynchon's "You
never did the Kenosha kid"?
It appears in one of Lt. Slothrop's hallucinations during an experiment
involving drugs. It parses/puncutates in at least a dozen ways. I'd
give you a citation, but I don't have a copy of Gravity's Rainbow handy.
------------------------------
Date: Wed 12 Mar 86 11:10:08-PST
From: PHayes@SRI-KL
Subject: Associativity
English noun phrases aren't right-associative: natural languages are never that
easy. Consider for example 'pressure cooker balance weight adjustment screw'
(taken from T.Winograd ), which is a screw for adjusting the balance-weight
of a pressure-cooker. Similar examples can easily be cooked up.
Pat Hayes
[If hyphens were included, the phrase would be right-associative:
'pressure-cooker balance-weight adjustment screw'. The hyphen is
dropped for compound adjectives preceding a noun when the modifier
is 1) a proper name, 2) a well-recognized foreign expression, or
3) a well-established compound noun serving as a compound adjective.
(The hyphen can also be dropped if the compound is set apart by
quotation marks or other means.) Case 3 means that terms such as
high school are not hyphenated whereas high-level must be.
Pressure cooker and balance weight would seem to fall under case 3.
(I wish I were as certain of "image processing" and "pattern recognition"
when used as adjectives.) The difficulty for machine translation and
NL understanding is thus the recognition of compound nouns rather
than the associativity per se. -- KIL]
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End of AIList Digest
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