Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 277
AIList Digest Friday, 4 Dec 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 277
Today's Topics:
Seminars - Dynamical Connectionism (MIT) &
Ideonomy (MIT) &
Rapid Prototyping via Executable Specifications (SMU) &
On the Threshold of Knowledge (MIT) &
Belief and Knowledge with Self-Reference and Time (SUNY) &
Knowledge-Based Software Activity Management (AT&T) &
Reasoning Under Uncertainty (BBN),
Conferences - Intelligent Tutoring Systems &
CHI'88 Workshop on Analytical Models
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Monday, 9 November 1987 12:20-EST
From: Elizabeth Willey <ELIZABETH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU at XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - Dynamical Connectionism (MIT)
From: Peter de Jong <DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar [Extract - Ed]
[Forwarded from the IRList digest.]
DYNAMICAL CONNECTIONISM
Elie Bienenstock
Universite de Paris-Sud
Wednesday, 11 November
E25-406, 12:00
In connectionist models, computation is usually carried out in a space
of activity levels, the connectivity state being frozen. in contrast,
dynamical connectionist models manipulate connectivity states. For
instance, they can solve various graph matching problems. They also
have the typical associative memory and error-correcting properties of
usual connectionist models. Applications include invariant pattern
recognition; dynamical connectionist models are able to generalize
over transformation groups rather than just Hamming distance. It is
proposed that these principles underlie much of brain function; fast-
modifying synapses and high-resolution temporal correlations may
embody the dynamical links used in this new connectionist approach.
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 9 November 1987 12:20-EST
From: Elizabeth Willey <ELIZABETH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU at XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - Ideonomy (MIT)
Friday, 13 November 12:00pm E25-401
Ideonomy: Founding a 'Science of ideas'
In a book published in 1601, Francis Bacon urged that modern science
should have the equivalent of an 'ideonomic' character, as well as
being based on experimentation and induction. My talk concerns a
five-year effort to lay foundations for a science of ideas which I
call Ideonomy.
Whereas the field of Artificial intelligence is primarily aimed at the
automation of mind, cognitive science at the modeling of human
intelligence and thought, and logic at the formalization of reasoning,
ideonomy is preoccupied with the discovery, classification, and
systematization of universal ideas, with aiding and abetting man's use
of ideas, and with automating the generation of ideas. The ideonomist
holds that inattention to the latter things has hobbled the
development, and limited the success of the other fields; and that
properly all four subjects should be developed simultaneously and in
close coordination, being mutually necessary and synergistic.
At present ideonomy is divided into some 320 subdivisions, a few of
which are: the study of ignorance, the study of analogies, the study
of form, the study of causes, the study of questions, the study of
answers, the study of processes, and the study of cognitive and
heuristice principles. In each of these cases it seeks to identify:
the types (of these things), higher and lower taxa, examples,
interrelationships, causes, effects, reasons for studying, needed
materials and methods, fundamental concepts, abstract and practical
relations to other ideonomic divisions, and the like.
We can also characterize ideonomy in another way, such as:
the study of how elementary ideas can be combined, permuted, and
trnsformed as exhaustive groups of ideas;
A new language designed to facilitate thought and creativity;
An attempt to exploit the qualitiative laws of the universe.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1987 20:53 CST
From: Leff (Southern Methodist University)
<E1AR0002%SMUVM1.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu>
Subject: Seminar - Rapid Prototyping via Executable Specifications
(SMU)
December 2, 1987, 1:30 PM Science Information Center, Southern Methodist
University
Express: Rapid Prototyping and Product Development via Integrated,
Knowledge-Based, Executable Specifications
ABSTRACT
Express includes integrated, knowledge-based, executable specifi-
cations and related tools to support the software development life
cycle, both rapid prototyping and full-scale engineering development.
We are building a prototype of Express at the Lockheed Software
Technology Center.
Express uses and extends powerful technologies--knowledge-based--
in relevant ways for aerospace products--domain languages, etc.--
across the software development lifecycle. Express builds on Cordell
Green's Refine technology from Reasoning Systems and extends it in
ways useful for aerospace software development.
Express provides knowledge-base support for
- programming knowledge and
- domain knowledge.
Express will provide executable languages, which are
- brief, in comparison to conventional high-level languages, and
- easy to comprehend.
Express makes a knowledge-based technology usable
- by systems engineers and applications specialists
- who are not experts in knowledge-based systems and
- who may use the system infrequently.
We employ human-factors analysis and the following approaches:
- Object-oriented user's model
- Direct manipulation: The user in control
- Bit-mapped graphical displays
- Point-and-select capabilities.
BIOGRAPHY
John W. McInroy joined the Lockheed Software Technology Center in
Austin, Texas, in November, 1986. He performs research in human
interface for Express, a prototype of a knowledge-based software
development environment. He published work-in-progress at the Fall
Joint Computer Conference in October, 1987, with Phillip J. Topping,
W. M. Lively, and Sallie V. Sheppard. In 1986, McInroy performed
research in human interface for the Proto software development
environment at International Software Systems, Inc. (ISSI), in
Austin, Texas.
>From 1978-1986, McInroy worked at IBM in Austin, Texas. He patented
eleven inventions and published nineteen others. He developed
fundamental user interface concepts for the Common User Access
portion of IBM's Systems Application Architecture (SAA). Earlier,
he specified parts of the user interface for Reportpack on the IBM
Displaywriter.
McInroy received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of North Carolina. In both graduate education and
subsequent career, he has pursued interests in human interface
and in software engineering.
McInroy can be contacted at the following address:
John W. McInroy
Lockheed Software Technology Center
Org. 96-01/Bldg. 30E
2100 E. St. Elmo Rd. 512/448-9715
Austin, Texas 78744 CSNET: McInroy@Lockheed.com
------------------------------
Date: Monday, 9 November 1987 12:20-EST
From: Elizabeth Willey <ELIZABETH%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU at XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - On the Threshold of Knowledge (MIT)
NE43, 8TH FLOOR
THUR, 11/12, 4:00PM
ON THE THRESHOLD OF KNOWLEDGE
The Case for Inelegance
Dr. Douglas B. Lenat
Principal Scientist, MCC
In this talk, I would like to present a surprisingly compact, powerful,
elegant set of reasoning methods that form a set of first principles
which explain creativity, humor, and common sense reasoning -- a sort of
"Maxwell's Equations" of Thought. I'd like very much to present them,
but, sadly, I don't believe they exist. So, instead, I'll tell you what
I've been working on down in Texas for the last three years.
Intelligent behavior, especially in unexpected situations, requires
being able to fall back on general knowledge, and being able to
analogize to specific but far-flung knowledge. As Marvin Minsky said,
"the more we know, the more we can learn".
Unfortunately, the flip side of that comes into play every time we build
and run a program that doesn't know too much to begin with, especially
for tasks like semantic disambiguation of sentences, or open-ended
learning by analogy. So-called expert systems finesse this by
restricting their tasks so much that they can perform relatively narrow
symbol manipulations which nevertheless are interpreted meaningfully
(and, I admit, usefully) by human users. But such systems are
hopelessly brittle: they do not cope well with novelty, nor do they
communicate well with each other.
OK, so the mattress in the road to AI is Lack of Knowledge, and the
anti-mattress is Knowledge. But how much does a program need to know,
to begin with? The annoying, inelegant, but apparently true answer is:
a non-trivial fraction of consensus reality -- the few million things
that we all know, and that we assume everyone else knows. If I liken
the Stock Market to a roller-coaster, and you don't know what I mean, I
might liken it to a seesaw, or to a steel spring. If you still don't
know what I mean, I probably won't want to deal with you anymore.
It will take about two person-centuries to build up that KB, assuming
that we don't get stuck too badly on representation thorns along the
way. CYC -- my 1984-1994 project at MCC -- is an attempt to build that
KB. We've gotten pretty far along already, and I figured it's time I
shared our progress, and our problems, with "the lab." Some of the
interesting issues are: how we decide what knowledge to encode, and how
we encode it; how we represent substances, parts, time, space, belief,
and counterfactuals; how CYC can access, compute, inherit, deduce, or
guess answers; how it computes and maintains plausibility (a sibling of
truth maintenance); and how we're going to squeeze two person-centuries
into the coming seven years, without having the knowledge enterers'
semantics "diverge".
------------------------------
Date: 1 Dec 87 19:57:14 GMT
From: sunybcs!rapaport@ames.arpa (William J. Rapaport)
Subject: Seminar - Belief and Knowledge with Self-Reference and Time
(SUNY)
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
PRESENTS
NICHOLAS ASHER
Department of Philosophy
and
Center for Cognitive Science
University of Texas at Austin
REASONING ABOUT BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE WITH SELF-REFERENCE AND TIME
This talk will consider some aspects of a framework for investigating
the logic of attitudes whose objects involve an unlimited capacity for
self-reference. The framework, worked out in collaboration with Hans
Kamp, is the daughter of two well-known parents--possible worlds seman-
tics for the attitudes and the revisionist, semi-inductive theory of
truth developed by Herzberger and Gupta. Nevertheless, the offspring,
from our point of view, was not an entirely happy one. We had argued in
earlier papers that orthodox possible worlds semantics could never give
an acceptable semantics for the attitudes. Yet the connection between
our use of possible worlds semantics and the sort of reporesentational
theories of the attitudes that we favor remained unclear. This talk
will attempt to provide a better connection between the framework and
representational theories of attitudes by developing a notion of reason-
ing about knowledge and belief suggested by the model theory. This
notion of reasoning has a temporal or dynamic aspect that I exploit by
introducing temporal as well as attitudinal predicates.
Thursday, December 17, 1987
4:00 P.M.
Baldy 684, Amherst Campus
Co-sponsored by:
Graduate Studies and Research Initiative in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences
Buffalo Logic Colloquium
There will be an informal discussion at a time and place to be
announced. Call Bill Rapaport (Dept. of Computer Science, 636-3193 or
3180) or Gail Bruder (Dept. of Psychology, 636-3676) for further infor-
mation.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 11:49:20 1987
From: dlm%research.att.com@RELAY.CS.NET
Subject: Seminar - Knowledge-Based Software Activity Management (AT&T)
Title: Knowledge Based Software Activity Management:
An Approach to Planning, Tracking and Repairing
Software Projects
Speaker: Mark S. Fox
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics
Carnegie-Mellon University
Date: Thursday, December 17, 1987
Time: 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM Central Time
(10:00 AM to Noon Eastern Time)
Place: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Indian Hill Main Auditorium
Video & audio simulcast to: AT&T Bell Labs Holmdel Room 1N-612 (Capacity: 85)
AT&T Bell Labs Murray Hill Auditorium
AT&T Bell Labs Whippany Auditorium
This talk will be video-taped.
Sponser: William Opdyke (ihlpf!opdyke)
Holmdel: Wendy A. Waugh -homxc!wendy
Murray Hill: Deborah L. McGuinness allegra!dlm
Whippany: David Lewy - whuts!lewy
----------
Talk Abstract
The management of activities is a central part of many tasks
such as project management, software engineering and factory
scheduling. Successful activity management leads to better
utilization of resources over shorter periods of time. Over
the past eight years we have been conducting research into
the process of activity management, including:
1. activity representation
2. planning and scheduling of activities
3. chronicling and reactive repair of activities
4. display and explanation of activities
5. distributed activity management
This presentation will briefly review the projects underway
in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, describe the research
in each of the above areas, and demonstrate its application to
software engineering and project management.
----------
Speaker Bio.
Dr. Fox received his BSc in Computer Science from the
University of Toronto in 1975 and his PhD in Computer Science
from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. In 1979 he joined
the Robotics Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University as a
Research Scientist. In 1980 he started and was appointed
Director of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He
co-founded Carnegie Group in 1984. Carnegie-Mellon University
appointed him Associate Professor of Computer Science and
Robotics in 1987. His research interests include knowledge
representation, constraint directed reasoning and applications
of artificial intelligence to engineering and manufacturing
problems.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 1 Dec 87 16:11:42-EST
From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN@G.BBN.COM>
Subject: Seminar - Reasoning Under Uncertainty (BBN)
BBN Science Development Program
AI Seminar Series Lecture
REASONING UNDER UNCERTAINTY
Andee Rubin
Education Department, BBN Labs
RUBIN@G.BBN.COM
BBN Labs
10 Moulton Street
2nd floor large conference room
10:30 am, Tuesday December 8
Statistical reasoning is an important prerequisite for both ordinary and
scientific thinking. Yet statistical reasoning is seldom taught to
pre-college students, and when it is, the emphasis is often on formulaic
manipulation, rather than on the concepts that are the foundation of
reasoning about statistical matters.
To address these concerns, we have developed, with funding from the
National Science Foundation, a computer-enhanced curriculum in
statistical reasoning called Reasoning Under Uncertainty that
incorporates the ELASTIC (TM) software system. The course is designed to
help high school students develop statistical reasoning abilities by
using real world activities with which they have practical experience.
The ELASTIC (TM) software, implemented on a Macintosh computer, is a tool
for recording, representing, and manipulating statistical information.
It has standard capabilities such as the ability to represent different
types of variables and create appropriate graphs, including confidence
intervals. Its most experimental features are three interactive
programs: Stretchy Histograms, Sampler, and Shifty Lines, each of which
allows students to interact directly with statistical graphics in order
to achieve a deeper understanding of the underlying statistical
concepts.
The curriculum and software were field-tested in Belmont and Cambridge
High Schools in the spring of 1987. The talk will describe and
demonstrate the pedagogical principles underlying the course and
software, some results of the field test, and our plans for future
development.
------------------------------
Date: 26 Nov 87 02:58:31 GMT
From: mind!bjr@princeton.edu (Brian J. Reiser)
Subject: Conference - Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Updated Call for Papers
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEMS
1-3 JUNE 1988
MONTREAL, CANADA
Conference Objectives: ITS 88 will be a forum for presenting new
results in research, development, and applications of intelligent
tutoring systems. The aims of the conference are to bring together
specialists in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Education, to
share state of the art information among the attendees and to outline
future developments of ITS and their applications.
Topics of interest: The ITS 88 Conference will accept scientific and
techincal papers on all areas of ITS development, but will primarily
focus on the following areas:
Learning environments
Methodologies and architectures for educational systems
AI programming environments for educational use
Student modelling and cognitive diagnosis
Curriculum and knowledge representation
Evaluation of tutoring systems
Theoretical foundations of ITS
Knowledge acquisition in ITS
Design issues in building ITS
Practical uses of ITS
Empirical aspects of ITS
Program Committee Chairs are Prof. Gregor Bochmann of the University
of Montreal and Dr. Marlene Jones of the Alberta Research Council.
Program Committee: Ehud Bar-On, Dick Bierman, Jeffrey Bonar, Lorne
Bouchard, Jacqueline Bourdeau, Bernard Causse, Andy diSessa, Philippe
Duchastel, Gerhard Fischer, Jim Greer, Wayne Harvey, Lewis Johnson,
Heniz Mandl, Stuart Macmillan, Gordon McCalla, Vitoro Midoro, Riichiro
Mizoguchi, Andre Ouellet, Maryse Quere, Brian Reiser, Lauren Resnick,
John Self, Derek Sleeman, Elliot Soloway, Hans Spada, Georges Stamon,
Harold Stolovitch, Akira Takeuchi, Martial Vivet, Karl Wender, Beverly
Woolf, Massoud Yazdani.
Authors are requested to submit 5 copies (in English or French) of a
double-spaced manuscript of up to 5000 words by 15 December 1987 to:
Prof. Gregor Bochmann
Department d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle
Universite de Monteal
C.P. 6128, Succ "A"
Montreal CANADA
H3C 3J7
Authors will be notified of acceptance by February 29, 1988. Camera-ready
copies will be due April 10, 1988.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 87 11:29:34 pst
From: Keith Butler <keith@BOEING.COM>
Subject: Conference - CHI'88 Workshop on Analytical Models
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
CHI'88 Workshop on Analytical Models:
Predicting the Complexity of Human-Computer Interaction
In current practice, designs for human-computer interaction (HCI) can only
be evaluated empirically- after a prototype has been built in some form.
The empirical cycle is lengthy, expensive, and makes it difficult for HCI
designers to contribute timely revisions.
A more effective approach may be possible based on cognitive modeling and
perception research, currently underway at a number of sites. Cognitive
complexity models based on knowledge representation techniques, and computer-
based perceptual evaluations may provide tools to analyze HCI designs. These
tools would allow early evaluation of designs and design options before
actual implementation. The payoff of this approach could be great, but
substantial work remains before effective commercial application can be proven.
The Workshop on Analytical Models is scheduled as part of the CHI'88 Conference
in Washington, D.C. The one-day workshop will be held on Sunday, May 15, 1988.
The objective is to determine the current state of computational models for
perceptual and cognitive complexity, and then examine how such models might be
used as part of the HCI design process in industry and government. The goal of
the workshop is to provide guidance for further research, to stimulate thinking
about development, to facilitate the exchange of research findings, and to
encourage higher levels of activity.
Attendance at the workshop will be by invitation- limited to about twenty
people. People from two distinct backgrounds are sought: researchers who can
survey or critique a body of relevant work, and appliers of new technology to
HCI problems. The program committee, consisting of Keith Butler, Boeing
Advanced Technology Center, John Bennett, IBM Almaden Research Center, Peter
Polson, University of Colorado, and Tom Tullis, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics
Co., will invite researchers working on models that are relevant to HCI design
and representatives from industry and government who are concerned with HCI
and experienced with technology transfer. All attendees will participate in
roles such as speakers, discussants, panelists, or moderators.
Persons wishing to participate are requested to submit four copies of a
position paper. Researchers should provide a 2,000 word survey of work based
on their research. Representatives from industry and government should provide
a 1,000 word description of their organization's interest in HCI and their
experience with technology transfer.
Please send hard copies only to arrive by January 25, 1988 to:
Keith Butler For information:
Boeing Advanced Technology Center
PO Box 24346, M/S 7L-64 keith@boeing.com
Seattle, WA 98124 (206) 865-3389
Invitations will be mailed by February 23, 1988. Participants will also be
sent copies of selected papers along with a final agenda for the workshop.
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
********************
