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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 250
AIList Digest Wednesday, 28 Oct 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 250
Today's Topics:
Queries - NIL & Literature Classification &
Parallel Logic Programming and Architectures,
Definitions - Cybernetics,
Education - Introductory Lisps and Prologs,
Neuromorphic Systems - Simulator Sources,
References - Chaos Theory
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 87 06:54:35 -0500
From: johnson <johnson@UDEL.EDU>
Subject: NIL (the lisp)
where can i get a copy (of the source code for) NIL (the lisp implementation)?
does anyone out there have a small (minimal) fast lisp in C with
free or at least royalty-free source code ?
thanks,
johnson@UDEL
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 87 15:53:00 GMT
From: mcvax!unido!uklirb!noekel@uunet.uu.net
Subject: Literature classification - (nf)
Hi everybody,
we're currently building a AI bibliography and are still searching for a
suitable classification/key word scheme. If there are any schemes that have
gained wide-spread use in the AI community I would be very interested to
learn about them. Obviously adopting such an existing scheme would be the
sensible thing to do since in this case it would be much easier to merge
our bibliography with others.
Hints and pointers are welcome. If I get buckets of answers, I'll summarize
to the net.
Thanks in advance
Klaus Noekel
Universitaet Kaiserslautern
Fachbereich Informatik
Postfach 3049
6750 Kaiserslautern
West Germany
UUCP: ...!mcvax!unido!uklirb!noekel
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 87 14:49:00 EST
From: Innes (I.A.) Ferguson <IAF%BNR.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu>
Subject: Parallel logic programming and architectures
I am currently in the process of trying to track down which schools
are doing graduate research in the area of parallel logic programming
and/or related machine architectures, and have come up with about a
dozen so far. If anybody attends or knows of any graduate schools doing
work in this area, I would very much like to hear from them.
If I get enough response, I'll make up a list and post it on the net.
Thanks in advance.
Innes A. Ferguson,
BNR Ltd., Ottawa, Canada
tel.: (613) 727-2586
NETNORTH: iaf@bnr
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 87 09:56:26 GMT
From: speedy!honavar@speedy.wisc.edu (A Buggy AI Program)
Subject: Cybernetics, some definitions
In article <3861@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP
(Stephen Smoliar) writes:
>In article <8300006@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu> goldfain@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>> On the other hand, whatever became of the term "cybernetics" that Norbert
>>Weiner coined long ago? I thought its definition was quite suitable for
>>denoting this research. ...
Some definitions (From "Cybernetic Medley" by Pekelis, MIR Publishers,
Moscow, 1986 - which by the way, is an eminently readable book):
"study of control and communication in machines and human beings" -
-- Norbert Weiner, USA.
"a science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are
capable of receiving, storing, and processing information so as to use
it for control"
-- Academician A. N. Kolmogorov, USSR.
"the art of securing efficient operation"
-- L. Couffignal, France.
"a general theory of causality which is interpreted accurately to the
part of isomorphism"
-- A. Markov, Associate fellow, USSR Academy of Sciences.
"a science concerned with the control of sophisticated dynamic systems,
which is theoretically based on mathematics and logic, and practically,
on the use of means of automation, electronic computers of primarily
control and data-processing types"
-- Axel Berg
"a science concerned with the laws of receiving, storing, transmitting,
and processing information in sophisticated systems of control"
-- Academician V. Glushkov, USSR.
"a science concerned with systems that have vitality, that is, which
behave so as to survive"
-- Stafford Beer, British mathematician
-- Vasant Honavar
(honavar@speedy.cs.wisc.edu)
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 87 06:02:22 GMT
From: rocky!wagner@labrea.stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Course
In my opinion, Prolog and AI are not that much interwoven as they are, just
because some people in a small room somewhere decided to use Prolog for their
(so-called) AI problems, but because Prolog is SUITABLE and ADEQUATE for this
class of problems for a number of reasons. One shouldn't argue that Prolog is
no good to be taught in an AI class because of bad experience with this type
of courses. If fact, requests for information on how to teach these courses
will hopefully improve them.
Juergen Wagner, (USENET) gandalf@portia.stanford.edu
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 87 20:44:38 GMT
From: devvax!jplpro!des@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (David Smyth)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Course
In article <1746@unc.cs.unc.edu> bts@unc.UUCP (Bruce Smith) writes:
>Turbo Prolog for an AI course? Why not FORTRAN, for that matter?
>Quoting (without permission) from Alan Bundy's Catalog of AI Tools:
>
> 2. AI programs tend to be very poorly constructed, ...
> ... FORTRAN provides a special mechanism
> for achieving this, the so-called GOTO statement.
>
> 3. FORTRAN provides a very efficient data structure, the
> array, which is particularly useful if, for example, one
> wishes to process a collection of English sentences each
> of which has the same length.
Well, I must admit that I tried exactly this: I used FORTRASH for
my homework assignments in my "Intro to AI" course. The professor's
response: "What is this? Some kind of a joke?"
I explained that SUCKTRAN with a stack is Turing equivalent, and
so there was nothing he could do in Lisp that I could not do in
SUCKTRASH. Besides, the Lisp system at school ran on one of those
dinosaurs that all the undergrads had to use, so it was predictably
unreliable and SLOW. I, on the otherhand, had acess to all these
neat-o bitchen machines at work with various FORTRAN viruses,
which both worked and had good response.
It did take me awhile to develop libraries I needed, like
variable length array support (Lisp, at some level, has to
be concerned about running out of contiguous space too, you know -
or didn't you %^)
Anyway, I passed. Probably got an A too.
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 87 20:30:31 GMT
From: decvax!necntc!ci-dandelion!bunny!mdf0@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
(Mark Feblowitz)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Course
With regard to the use of Turbo Prolog, I would like to make bring up the
standard argument against "experience polution." The notion that an
educational tool can afford to be non-standard or inferior because it is
"only for beginners" assumes that the beginner will be able to reformulate
his/her attitudes or habits when the appropriate time arrives.
For this reason, I recommend the use of a Prolog implementation that is
more compatible with C&M Prolog. My favorite Prolog for the PC is
Arity Prolog. It is what I consider to be a production quality Prolog
development environment. It:
is FAST,
links to assembly code or C
has a full virtual memory system
can run either compiled or interpreted
...
The compiler comes with a "lint" facility for static precompilation analysis
of typical Prolog programming errors.
There is a low-end interpreter for the beginner, and I believe that there
are educational discounts available (contact Arity Prolog to verify this).
Although I have encountered a few bugs, the folks at Arity have been
quite supportive in fixing these bugs.
I am looking forward to their upcoming version 5, which aparently has
an integrated editor and enhanced user-interface capabilities,
among other things.
Arity Prolog is located in Concord, MA, (617) 371-1243.
I am NOT a representative of, nor do I have any financial
interest in Arity Corp. I am merely a satisfied user of Arity Prolog.
Mark Feblowitz GTE Laboratories, Inc., 40 Sylvan Rd. Waltham, MA 02254
(617) 466-2947
CSNET: feblowitz@GTE-LABS.CSNET
UUCP: feblowitz@bunny.UUCP old UUCP: harvard!bunny!mdf0
--
Mark Feblowitz GTE Laboratories, Inc., 40 Sylvan Rd. Waltham, MA 02254
(617) 466-2947
CSNET: feblowitz@GTE-LABS.CSNET
UUCP: feblowitz@bunny.UUCP old UUCP: harvard!bunny!mdf0
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 87 09:28:32 est
From: Walter Hamscher <hamscher@ht.ai.mit.edu>
Subject: Suggestions for Course
It seems to me that your list of reasons for using Lisp or
Prolog in an AI class didn't include the single substantive
reason for using Lisp, which is that that its use of just a
couple of primitive data types to represent both data and code
make it particularly easy to writing specialized languages and
interpreters or compilers for them. Especially pattern-directed
invocation languages.
The reason for using Prolog is that it embeds one particular
pattern-directed invocation paradigm for writing AI programs and
makes that extremely fast, although clearly your experience with
DCG notation suggests that it too has the unity of code and data
that is helpful in constructing alternative interpreters.
The reason it is important to be able to build specialized
languages and interpreters is that those are what makes it
possible to build specialized representations appropriate for
different problems. And the engineering of appropriate
representations is fundamental to AI. (which is not to claim
that we know how to do it very well yet :-)
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 87 15:42:21 GMT
From: gatech!hubcap!steve@bloom-beacon.mit.edu ("Steve" Stevenson)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for Course
in article <10475@duke.cs.duke.edu>, gleicher@duke.cs.duke.edu
(Michael Gleicher) says:
Xref: hubcap comp.lang.prolog:357 comp.ai:845
One of the reasons to use prolog is to give my students another language model.
It also motivates the study of certain topics in resolution. The question of
what's right or wrong with the exact prolog used is less important in my mind
as long as the students see that TurboPascal is not the world.
--
Steve (really "D. E.") Stevenson steve@hubcap.clemson.edu
Department of Computer Science, (803)656-5880.mabell
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 87 22:17:49 GMT
From: joglekar@riacs.edu (Umesh D. Joglekar)
Reply-to: joglekar@hydra.riacs.edu (Umesh D. Joglekar)
Subject: Re: Introductory books on Lisp
Try .. ANATOMY OF LISP - By Allen
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 87 17:28:11 est
From: ah4h+@andrew.cmu.edu (Andrew Hudson)
Subject: Re: neuro sources
This is in response to a query for connectionist simulator code.
Within a month, one of the most comprehensive back propagation
simulators will be available to the general public.
Jay McClelland and David Rumelhart's third PDP publication,
Exploring Parallel Distributed Processing: A Handbook of Models, Programs,
and
Exercises will be available from MIT Press. C source code for the complete
backprop simulator, as well as others, is supplied on two MS-DOS format
5 1/4" floppy discs. The simulator, called BP, comes with the
necessary files to run encoder, xor, and other problems. It supports
multiple layer networks, constrained weight, and sender to receiver options.
The handbook and source code can be ordered from MIT Press at the address
below. The cost for both is less than $30. Why spend thousands more for
second best?
The MIT Press
55 Hayward Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Another version of the BP simulator which is not yet generally available
to the public has been modified to take full advantage of the vector
architecture of the Convex mini-supercomputer. For certain applications
this gives speed increases of 30 times that of a VAX 11/780. A study is
underway to see how well BP will perform on a CRAY XMP-48.
- Andrew Hudson
ah4h@andrew.cmu.edu.arpa
Department of Psychology
Carnegie Mellon
412-268-3139
Bias disclaimor: I work for Jay, I've seen the code.
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 87 15:45:21 GMT
From: ssc-vax!dickey@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Frederick J Dickey)
Subject: Re: The success of AI (misunderstandings)
In article <8710260721.AA26918@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, nick@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU writes:
> For a good intro to chaos theory, see the article by Farmer,
> Packard, et. al. in Scientific American December 86..
Recently, on popular book on chaos has been published. Its title is
"Chaos" and the author is Gleick. Sorry, I don't remember any more details.
It seems to be a good book, but I don't have any idea if professional
chaoticians would like it.
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End of AIList Digest
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