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NL-KR Digest Volume 02 No. 56
NL-KR Digest (6/22/87 16:20:23) Volume 2 Number 56
Today's Topics:
Seminar - Potential Histories and Inertial Theories (SU)
Universal Plans: Emergent Goal Structures (SRI)
Default Reasoning and Stereotypes in User
Modelling (UPenn)
Mechanization of Programmer's Knowledge (MCC)
Partial Order Programming (MCC)
From CSLI Calendar, June 11, No.32
Program - Cognitive Science at Occidental College
Conference - Architectures for Intelligent Interfaces
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 87 19:05 EDT
From: Vladimir Lifschitz <VAL@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Seminar - Potential Histories and Inertial Theories (SU)
[Excerpted from AIList]
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard.]
Yoav Shoham asked me to send a nice little poem to this mailing list:
With logics that are monotonic
Relations are nice but platonic
It's when you permit
Just models that fit
That things become most erotonic
Yoav will also speak at our seminar on a related subject:
POTENTIAL HISTORIES AND INERTIAL THEORIES
Yoav Shoham
Thursday, June 4, 4:15pm
Bldg. 160, Room 161K
In previous talks I never managed to get to my solution to the
extended-prediction problem (which is my name for the problem
subsuming the frame problem, a name that, shall we say, never
quite caught). I'll describe the intuitive concept of a potential
history, which has a strong McDermott-like persistence flavor.
I'll then embed the concept formally within the logic of
chronological ignorance. I'll identify a class of theories, called
inertial theories, which extend causal theories, and yet which
a. are expressive enough to capture the notion of potential
histories, and b. have the "unique model" and easy computability
properties.
My intention is this time to go into some detail. I'm still
not sure I have enough material for an hour, and if I don't
I'll ask the audience some questions on TMS's.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 87 14:29 EDT
From: Amy Lansky <lansky@venice.ai.sri.com>
Subject: Seminar - Universal Plans: Emergent Goal Structures (SRI)
[Excerpted from AIList]
EXECUTING UNIVERSAL PLANS:
EMERGENT GOAL STRUCTURES & THEIR USES
Marcel Schoppers (MARCEL@ADS.COM)
Advanced Decision Systems
11:00 AM, MONDAY, June 15
SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228
``Universal plans'' are designed for execution in unpredictable state spaces,
refusing to over-commit to a specific future course of events, and deliberately
making no assumptions about how situations might follow one another. Instead,
plan synthesis becomes the goal-directed selection of reactions to possible
situations; plans become inherently conditional; and plan execution classifies
the current situation so as to respond with the selected reaction. Consequently
there is no inherent distinction between expected and unexpected events; the
concepts of success & failure are irrelevant for both synthesis and execution;
and "error recovery" needs no special mechanisms beyond those already present
for normal execution.
After introducing the Universal Plan representation, this talk will show how at
any given instant, plan predicates can be interpreted as goals of achievement
or of maintenance, and that this interpretation can be used to reconstruct a
four-fold typing of events (of success, failure, serendipity and sabotage). In
other words, intentions emerge from the interaction of plan with environment
(the environment has a large hand in determining the agent's goals at each
moment), and the notions of success and failure are not primitive but
perceived (relative to the agent's goals).
The Universal Plan representation also indicates precisely which conditions
must be monitored at each instant to enable detection of all events of each
type. Two benefits follow; I will only mention them briefly. First, we can
get complexity estimates for detecting all serendipity and sabotage events,
and can produce informed strategies to alleviate sensing costs. Second, the
goal structure at each moment in time contains all the information required
to choose an appropriate action, thus facilitating incremental synthesis.
VISITORS: Please arrive 5 minutes early so that you can be escorted up
from the E-building receptionist's desk. Thanks!
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 87 12:15 EDT
From: Marcella.Zaragoza@isl1.ri.cmu.edu
Subject: Seminar - Default Reasoning and Stereotypes in User
Modelling (UPenn)
[Excerpted from AIList]
SPECIAL SEMINAR
SPEAKER: Timothy Finin
Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
WHEN: Thursday, June 18, 1987, 10:00 am
WHERE: Doherty Hall 3313
TOPIC: DEFAULT REASONING AND STEREOTYPES IN USER MODELLING
This talk discusses the application of various kinds of default reasoning in
systems which must maintain a model of its users. In particular, we
describe a general architecture of a domain independent system for building
and maintaining long term models of individual users. The user modelling
system is intended to provide a well defined set of services for an
application system which is interacting with various users and has a need to
build and maintain models of them. As the application system interacts with
a user, it can acquire knowledge of him and pass that knowledge on to the
user model maintenance system for incorporation. We describe a prototype
general user modelling system (hereafter called GUMS1 which we have
implemented in Prolog. This system satisfies some of the desirable
characteristics we discuss.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 87 15:12 EDT
From: Ellie Huck <AI.ELLIE@MCC.COM>
Subject: Seminar - Mechanization of Programmer's Knowledge (MCC)
[Excerpted from AIList]
Please join the AI group for the following speaker:
ON THE MECHANIZATION OF PROGRAMMER'S KNOWLEDGE
Henryk Jan Komorowski
Harvard University
June 17 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium
What do programmers with experience in writing programs know and how
can this knowledge be mechanized so it can be used by a computer? This
talk presents an informal overview of the foundations of mechanical
support for software design. The goal of the mechanization is to
provide an intelligent assistant for the programmer that can uncover
flaws in the design rather than automatically generate programs. What
programmer knows is divided into knowledge of data structures,
recursive schemata, assimilation rules, and the process of designing a
program which is similar to extension of a theory. A prototype system
now implemented provides salient advice, despite its limited
knowledge-base.
June 17 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 87 15:50 EDT
From: Ellie Huck <AI.ELLIE@MCC.COM>
Subject: Seminar - Partial Order Programming (MCC)
[Excerpted from AIList]
Please join the AI Group for the following speaker:
PARTIAL ORDER PROGRAMMING
D. Stott Parker
UCLA Computer Science Department
June 19 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium
We introduce a declarative programming paradigm that describes
computation with partial orders. A partial order program corresponds
to a collection of constraints
u >= C(u)
where >= is a partial order on a domain of `objects' and `values',
u is an object, and C(u) is an object or a value.
Semantics of such a program consist of assignments of values to the
objects u that satisfy the inequalities. When C is a monotone and
continuous function, fixpoint semantics of the program may be
obtained easily and naturally.
The partial order programming paradigm has interesting properties:
(1) It generalizes various computational paradigms (logic,
functional, object-oriented, and others) in a clean way.
(2) It takes thorough advantage of known results for continuous
functionals on partial orders, providing a clear semantics
for the paradigm.
(3) It presents a framework that may be more generally acceptable
for dealing with `cognitive' computation problems, including
natural language processing and knowledge representation.
(4) It coincides with recent work on relaxation solution of a
variety of problems including consistent labelling, path
problems, and linear algebraic systems.
June 19 - 10:00
MCC Balcones Auditorium
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 87 13:01 EDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: From CSLI Calendar, June 11, No.32
[Excerpted from CSLI Calendar]
A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
This is the last CSLI Calendar and next week's seminar the last
regularly scheduled event of this academic year. The next Calendar
will be published in late September when the Thursday activities
resume. Several CSLI Monthlies will appear over the summer.
NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
A(nother) View of Situated Practice
Lucy Suchman
Intelligent Systems Laboratory
Xerox PARC
June 18
A central theme at CSLI has been the relation of representations to
the stuff that they purport to represent. The focus has been on
systems, particularly linguistic and computational ones. In this talk
I will look at the representation-to-represented theme in another
domain; namely, the domain of naturally-occurring human activities and
interactions. The problem is to understand the relationship of
various representations of action to what Jean Lave has called "the
specifically situated structuring" of practice. I will describe my
current view of this relationship and illustrate how the Interaction
Analysis Group at PARC approaches its study with a sample video
analysis.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 87 13:00 EDT
From: Saul P. Traiger <oxy!traiger@csvax.caltech.edu>
Subject: Program - Cognitive Science at Occidental College
[Excerpted from AIList]
Occidental College, a liberal arts college which enrolls approximately
1600 students, is pleased to announce a new Program in Cognitive
Science. The Program offers an undergraduate major and minor in Cognitive
Science. Faculty participating in this program include members of the
departments of mathematics, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.
The program is the result of one of the most exciting developments in
higher education today, namely the interaction among philosophers,
mathematicians, psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists. This
interaction is the result of common interests in cognitive science.
Computer architecture is now as likely to be discussed in a philosophy or
psychology seminar as it is in a computer science course. Shared
interests in cognitive science lead to the development and adoption of an
interdepartmental program in cognitive science at Occidental College.
The undergraduate major in Cognitive Science at Occidental College
includes courses in mathematics, philosophy, psychology and linguistics.
Instruction in mathematics introduces students to computer languages,
discrete mathematics, logic, and the mathematics of computation.
Philosophy offerings cover the philosophy of mind, with emphasis on
computational models of the mind, the theory of knowledge, the philosophy
of science, and the philosophy of language. Psychology courses include
basic psychology, learning, perception, and cognition. Courses in
linguistics provide a theoretical foundation in natural languages, their
acquisition, development, and structure.
For more information about Occidental College's Cognitive Science Program
please contact:
Professor Saul Traiger
Cognitive Science Program
1600 Campus Road
Occidental College
Los Angeles, CA 90041
ARPANET: oxy!traiger@CSVAX.Caltech.EDU
BITNET: oxy!traiger@hamlet
CSNET: oxy!traiger%csvax.caltech.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
UUCP: ....{seismo, rutgers, ames}!cit-vax!oxy!traiger
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 87 12:42 EDT
From: Sherman Tyler <wiley!sherman@lll-lcc.ARPA>
Subject: Conference - Architectures for Intelligent Interfaces
[Excerpted from AIList]
Call for Participation
Workshop on
Architectures for Intelligent Interfaces:
Elements and Prototypes
March 29 - April 1, 1988, Monterey, California
Sponsored by AAAI
Objective: The term ``Intelligent Interface'' characterizes the set
of computer-human interfaces which employ AI to enhance the
transactional nature of the interface. The goal of the workshop is to
explore ways in which AI techniques (e.g., knowledge representation,
inference mechanisms, and heuristic search) can be used to provide the
adaptability and reasoning capabilities required for a more
intelligent human-machine interaction.
Some possible areas for focused discussions might include:
* Models (user, system, task) - adapting the dialogue to the
current context of the interaction, considering the
particular user, the target system, and the high-level task
under execution;
* Channels of Communication - allowing users to communicate
intentions with a minimum of learning and effort, using
Natural Language, Graphics, and the integration of mixed
modalities of input;
* Planning - for recognizing user plans and their implied
goals, generating plans to meet those goals, and planning how
to best display the resulting information to communicate the
result of the executed action;
* Interface-Building Tools - using artificial intelligence
techniques to support developers in designing and
constructing interfaces.
Attendance: In order to provide an intellectually stimulating
environment conducive to interaction and exchange of ideas, the
attendance will be limited to approximately 35 participants. The
ideal participant is an individual who is actively addressing
theoretical, research, and/or implementation issues relevant to
Intelligent Interfaces (with a bias toward those who have dealt with
implementation issues at some level). Limited financial assistance
will be available for graduate students who are invited to
participate.
Review Process: The submitted abstracts and autobiographies will be
reviewed by the program committee. Invitation will be based upon
relevance of the work to the goals of the workshop, and on the basis
of significance, originality, and scientific quality.
Workshop Organization: The workshop organizers are J. Sullivan
(Lockheed AI Center) and S. Tyler (Lockheed AI Center). The program
committee consists of J. Mackinlay (Xerox PARC), R. Neches
(USC Information Sciences Institute), E. Rissland (University of
Massachusetts), and N. Sondheimer (USC Information Sciences Institute).
Submission: A detailed eight page abstract and a one page
biographical sketch (six copies of each) should be submitted by
September 1, 1987. Invitations for participation will be extended by
October 16, 1987, with complete papers due by December 18, 1987.
Publication of the proceedings is planned, therefore the quality of
the papers is important.
Submit abstracts to: Joseph W. Sullivan or Sherman W. Tyler,
O/90-06 B/259, Lockheed AI Center, 2710 Sand Hill Rd., Menlo Park, CA
94025, (415) 354-5200, wiley!joe@lll-lcc.arpa or
wiley!sherman@lll-lcc.arpa
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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