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NL-KR Digest Volume 13 No. 49
NL-KR Digest Mon Nov 14 23:35:04 PST 1994 Volume 13 No. 49
Today's Topics:
Query: CD-ROM for teaching psycholinguistics and cognitive sci.
CFP: DIALOGUE'95, Computational Linguistics, Jan 95, Russia
Response: Connectionist NLP reviews / surveys
Program: TWLT8: speech and language, Dec 94, Twente
CFP: LOPSTR'95 Logic Program Synthesis, Sep 95, Utrecht
Position: NLP Software Engineer, National University of Singapore
CFP: FLAIRS '95, Reasoning About Function, Apr 95, Melbourne Beach
Announcement: Thinking Computer Quest, Dec 94, San Marcos
* * *
Subcriptions: listserv-style administrative requests to
nl-kr-request@ai.sunnyside.com.
Submissions, policy, questions: nl-kr@ai.sunnyside.com
Back issues:
FTP: ai.sunnyside.com:/pub/nl-kr/Vxx/Nyyy
/pub/nl-kr/Vxx/INDEX
Gopher: ai.sunnyside.com, Port 70, in directory /pub/nl-kr
Email: write to LISTSERV@AI.SUNNYSIDE.COM, omit subject, mail command:
GET nl-kr nl-kr_file_list
Web: http://ai.sunnyside.com/pub/nl-kr
Editors:
Al Whaley (al@ai.sunnyside.com) and
Chris Welty (weltyc@cs.vassar.edu).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 94 10:15:08 GMT
From: "William Faeti" <wfaeti@psibo.unibo.it>
Reply-To: <wfaeti@psibo.unibo.it>
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: Query: CD-ROM for teaching psycholinguistics and cognitive sci.
I'm looking for informations about the existence of software
to support the teaching of both undergraduate and postgraduate
levels available on CD-ROM regarding psychology, psychiatry,
clinical psychology, educational science, neuroscience,
neuropsychology, psycholinguistics and cognitive science in general.
Is there anyone who can help me?
William Faeti
Universita' degli Studi di Bologna
Biblioteca del Dipartimento di Psicologia
E-mail: wfaeti@psibo.unibo.it
faeti@opac.cib.unibo.it
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: nl-kr@ai.sunnyside.com, elsnet-list@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
From: sharoff@artint.msk.su (Serge Sharoff)
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 16:15:11 +0200 (MSK)
Subject: CFP: DIALOGUE'95, Computational Linguistics, Jan 95, Russia
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* DIALOGUE'95 *
* international seminar *
* on computational linguistics and its applications *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Dear Colleagues,
We are happy to inform you about DIALOGUE'95, an international
seminar on computational linguistics and its applications. The
seminar organizers intend by this to revive and continue the
tradition of the inter-disciplinary DIALOGUE seminars which were
regular national annual events in USSR during 70s and 80s.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
* theoretical and cognitive linguistics
* automatic NL text processing
* syntax, semantics, pragmatics and their interaction
* text, dialogue and speech act
* models of national languages
* NL front-ends
* automatic understanding of NL text and model of object domain
* speech communication with computer
The workshop will be organized by the Kazan University in a lively
place nearby Kazan, Tatarstan, Russian Federation. The concrete date
and place of the workshop will be defined in the next information
letter.
The number of the participants is limited to 70-100. Every prospective
attendee is required to submit one page research summary including
relevant recent publications, regular and e-mail address, fax and
phone numbers.
Participants who wish to present their work are additionally required
to submit a short paper (3-5 pages, 6-10 kB) or a full paper (not
exceeding 12 double-line pages or 24 kB). Please send submissions
preferably via e-mail (in plain ASCII, LaTeX or uuencoded Winword
files) to both (Moscow and Kazan) addresses of the Program Committee
before January 1, 1995.
The first (or mentioned) author will be notified about the decision
of the Programm Committee by February 15, 1995.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Deadline for submission: January 1, 1995
Notification of acceptance or rejection: February 15, 1995
Final paper due: March 25, 1995
Workshop dates: May, 1995
Proceedings will be available in book format at the workshop. We have
made an application to the European Commission for a financial
support - in the case of positive decision we will propose partial
compensation of costs for those abroad participants who will need it.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Alexander S. Narin'yani, Program Chair (RRIAI)
Dmitrij A. Pospelov (Computer Center of RAS)
Alexander E. Kibrik (Moscow State University)
Rais G. Buharayev, (Kazan State University)
Natalya I. Laufer, secretary (RRIAI)
Serge A. Sharoff, secretary (RRIAI)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Rais G. Buharayev, Organizing Committee Chair
Valerij D. Soloviev
Dzhavdet Sh. Sulejnamov
Olga A. Nevzorova, secretary
Alik A. Gil'mullin
(All of Kazan State University)
Please send all the correspondence to:
dialog@artint.msk.su and dialog@univex.kazan.su
Dialogue'95
Russian Institute of Artificial Intelligence,
P.O.Box 111, Moscow, 103001, Russia
and
Dialogue'95
Laboratory of theoretic cybernetics,
Department of computational mathematics and cybernetics,
Kazan University, Ul. Lenina 18, Kazan, 42008, Russia
If you have questions about the conference, please send e-mail
letters to the above-mentioned addresses or call:
to Kazan: +7-(8432) 31-85-00 (off.) Olga Nevzorova
to Moscow: +7-(095) 154-64-58 (home) Natalya Laufer
--
Serge Sharoff, sharoff@artint.msk.su
"The remembering high the memory"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: comp-ai-nlang-know-rep@uunet.uu.net
From: J.A.Hammerton@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk (James A Hammerton)
Subject: Response: Connectionist NLP reviews / surveys
Date: 1 Nov 1994 18:55:51 GMT
A while ago, I posted an article requesting references for reviews/surveys in
connectionist natural language processing. Here is a summary of the
sources that were suggested, plus some that I found myself:
* "Connectionist Natural Language Processing(Readings from Connection
Science)", Noel Sharkey(Ed.), Intellect, 1992
Several people suggested this, and I had already seen this book when
I was deciding what to do for my final year project. It is certainly a
good collection of papers.
* "Connectionist Symbol Processing", Geoffrey Hinton(Ed.), MIT/Elsevier, 1990
This was also mentioned by several people. It is primarily a book on
connectionist knowledge representations, but has a paper on sentence
comprehension. Besides the papers on handling recursive data
structures with neural nets are highly relevant.
* "Connectionist and Symbols", S. Pinker & J. Mehler(Eds.)
I haven't yet tracked this down, so I haven't got the full details.
* "Distributed Representations and Nested Compositional Structure",
Tony A. Plate, PhD Thesis, Dept. of Computer Science, University of
Toronto, 1994.
This thesis has a review of connectionist models for higher level
cognitive processing, including discussion of several NLP systems. It
is available by FTP:
Ftp-host: ftp.cs.utoronto.ca
Ftp-filename: /pub/tap/plate.thesis.2up.ps.Z
Ftp-filename: /pub/tap/plate.thesis.ps.Z
* Apparently the journal "Mind and Language" has included many papers
on connectionism recently. The september issue(Vol 9, No. 3) includes:
"Generalization and Connectionist Language Learning", by
Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater.
I haven't yet followed this stuff up though.
* "Subsymbolic Case-Role Analysis of Sentences with Embedded Clauses",
by Risto Miikkulainen, Technical Report AI93-202, Dept. of Computer
Science, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, July 1993
I obtained this paper by ftp from the neuroprose archive. It has a
useful survey of connectionist sentence parsers, as well as proposing
an interesting architecture which addresses some shortcomings of
earlier work.
* "Subsymbolic Natural Language Processing: An Integrated Model of
Scripts, Lexicon, and Memory", Risto Miikkulainen, MIT Press, 1993
This book describes the author's 'DISCERN' system, an entirely
connectionist script processing system. As well as describing an
interesting NN based project, the book does have an extensive
discussion of related and earlier work in chapters 12-14.The extensive
bibliography(28 pages) at the end should provide a lot of useful
references to anyone working in the area. Also, the author provides
details of how to obtain DISCERN via FTP.
The following references were suggested to me, but I haven't yet
followed them up:
* Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (1991) Connectionism and the Mind. Oxford:
Blackwell.
* Clark, A. (1989) Microcognition. Explorations in Cognitive Science, ed. M.
Boden. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
* Elman, J. L. (1990) 'Finding structure in time'. Cognitive Science, 14(2):
179-211.
* Elman, J. L. (1993) 'Learning and development in neural networks: the
importance of starting small'. Cognition, 48(1): 71-99.
* Hinton, G. E., & Shallice, T. (1991) 'Lesioning an attractor network:
Investigations of acquired dyslexia'. Psychological Review, 98(1): 74-95.
* MacWhinney, B., & Leinbach, J. (1991) 'Implementations are not
conceptualizations: Revising the verb learning model'. Cognition, 40(1-2):
121-157.
* Pinker, S., & Prince, A. (1988) 'On language and connectionism: Analysis of
a parallel distributed processing model of language acquisition. Special
Issue: Connectionism and symbol systems'. Cognition, 28(1-2): 73-193.
* Plunkett, K., & Marchman, V. (1991) 'U -shaped learning and frequency
effects in a multi-layered perceptron: Implications for child language
acquisition'. Cognition, 38(1): 43-102.
* Plunkett, K., & Marchman, V. (1993) 'From rote learning to system building:
acquiring verb morphology in children and connectionist nets'. Cognition,
48: 21-69.
* Rumelhart, D. E., & McClelland, J. L. (1986) On learning the past tense of
English verbs. In D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland, & t. P. R. Group
(Ed.), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure
of cognition. Vol 2: Theoretical issues.: 2. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
I get the impression that connectionist approaches to NLP, is an
active area of research with some interesting developments going on.
Perhaps a section on it could be added to the Nat. Lang. and Neural
Net FAQs?
James
--
James Hammerton, PhD Student, School of Computer Science,
University of Birmingham | Email: J.A.Hammerton@cs.bham.ac.uk
"If I haven't seen farther it was because giants were standing on my shoulders"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: comp-ai-nlang-know-rep@uunet.uu.net
From: anijholt@cs.utwente.nl (Anton Nijholt)
Subject: Program: TWLT8: speech and language, Dec 94, Twente
Date: 1 Nov 1994 21:00:55 GMT
================================================
Twente Workshop on Language Technology 8 (TWLT8)
Speech and Language Engineering
================================================
Location: University of Twente
Enschede, the Netherlands
Date: December 1 and 2, 1994
Workshop organized under auspices of the Dutch
NWO Priority Programme on Speech and Language,
the Special Interest Group on Parsing Technologies
(SIGPARSE) of the Association of Computational
Linguistics (ACL) and the Centre of Telematics and
Information Technology (CTIT) of the University of
Twente.
* ***Program* ***
Day 1, December 1
-----------------
Registration from 10.00-10.55
Lectures start at 10.55
(order shown is not necessarily the order of
presentations)
Speech and Language Integration.
Loe Boves, University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands
The Wallstreet Journal Task: Unlimited Vocabular,
Speaker Independent, Article Dictation.
Christian Dugast, Philips, Aachen, Germany
Analysis of the Dutch Polyphone Corpus.
Paul van Alphen, PTT Research, the Netherlands
Spontaneous Speech Phenomena in Naive-User
Interactions.
Paolo Baggia, E. Gerbino, E. Giachin, & C. Rullent
CSELT, Torino, Italy
The Potential Role of Prosody in Automatic Speech
Recognition.
Louis ten Bosch, IPO, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Assessment of Speech Recognition Systems.
H.J.M. Steeneken, TNO Human Factors Research
Soesterberg, The Netherlands
The Role of Prosody in Human Speech Recognition.
James M. McQueen, MPI, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Day 2, December 2
-----------------
Lectures start at 0.900
(order shown is not necessarily the order of
presentations)
Prediction and Disambiguation by means of Data-
Oriented Parsing.
Rens Bod and Remko Scha
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The Speech-Language Interface in the Spoken
Language Translator.
David Carter & Manny Rayner, SRI International
Cambridge, U.K.
Generation of Spoken Monologues.
K. v. Deemter, J. Landsbergen, R. Leermakers &
J. Odijk, IPO, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Simple Speech Recognition with Little Linguistic
Creatures.
Marc Drossaers, University of Twente
Enschede, the Netherlands
Word Agent Based Natural Language Processing.
Hermann Helbig & Andreas Mertens
FernUniversitdt Hagen, Germany
SCHISMA: A Natural Language Accessible Theatre
Information and Booking System.
G.F. van der Hoeven et al., University of Twente
Enschede, the Netherlands
Phoneme-Level Speech and Natural Language
Integration for Agglutinative Languages.
Geunbae Lee et al., Pohang University
Hyoja-Dong, Pohang, Korea
On the Intersection of Finite State Automata and
Definite Clause Grammars.
Gertjan van Noord, Alfa-informatica RUG
Groningen, the Netherlands
An Efficient Head and Left Corner Parser in
its Environment.
G. Veldhuijzen van Zanten & R. op den Akker
University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands
Time-synchronous Chart Parsing of Speech Integrating
Unification Grammars with Statistics.
Hans Weber, University of Erlangen, Germany
=================================================
Location
The workshop will be held in the Vrijhof building of
the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands.
More information will be obtained after registration.
Registration
Regular registration fee is Dfl. 150,-. Students pay
Dfl. 50,-. This includes lunches, refreshments,
proceedings and an informal reception. Payment should
be done on site.
Registration Form
=========================================
Yes, I registrate for TWLT8: Speech& Language
Engineering on December 1 and 2, 1994; regular
registration fee Dfl. 150,-; student fee Dfl. 50,-.
Payment can be done on site.
Name:
Address: <use as many lines you need>
Student: yes no
Help with hotel accommodation: yes no
=========================================
For more information contact the organizing secretariat:
bijron@cs.utwente.nl or hoogvlie@cs.utwente.nl. The
secretariat provides also information about hotel
accommodation and can make reservations.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 1994 18:12:13 +0000
From: proietti@IASI.RM.CNR.IT (Maurizio Proietti)
Subject: CFP: LOPSTR'95 Logic Program Synthesis, Sep 95, Utrecht
To: distribution.@IASI.RM.CNR.IT@cs.rpi.edu; (see end of body)
Preliminary Call for Papers
LOPSTR'95
Fifth International Workshop on
Logic Program Synthesis and Transformation
20--22 September 1995, Utrecht, the Netherlands
LOPSTR'95 is the fifth in a series of annual workshops, after those in
Manchester (1991 and 1992), Louvain-la-Neuve (1993), and Pisa (1994). This
time the workshop will take place in Utrecht (the Netherlands) and it will be
run in parallel with {\bf PLILP'95}, the Seventh International Symposium on
Programming Languages, Implementations, Logics and Programs. LOPSTR and
PLILP will share invited lectures and sessions of common interest. The two
meetings will be organized by the Computer Science Department of Utrecht
University.
The aim of the workshop is to present recent work (including work in
progress) and discuss new ideas and trends in the following fields: program
synthesis, program transformation, program specialization, partial deduction
all in the context of logic programming. Papers pointing out the
relationships of the above topics with other topics in the field of automated
program development, such as: automated deduction, constructive type theory,
implementation techniques, inductive logic programming, meta-languages,
program analysis, program specification, query optimization in deductive
databases, software engineering, synthesis and transformation in the context
of other programming languages, are welcomed. Papers describing automated
systems for program development and overviews of recent work on the topics of
interest are also solicited.
Authors should submit 5 copies of an extended abstract to the
following address by May 25, 1995:
Maurizio Proietti
IASI-CNR
Viale Manzoni, 30
I-00185 Roma, Italy
Phone: +39 6 7716426, Fax: +39 6 7716461
E-mail: proietti@iasi.rm.cnr.it
The submissions should include a return postal address and an e-mail
address, if available. Submission of abstracts by e-mail is also accepted
(LaTeX or Postscript). Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection of
their abstracts for presentation at the workshop by July 20, 1995. The
accepted abstracts will be collected into preliminary proceedings which
will be available at the workshop. Extended abstracts can be completed into
full papers and submitted after the workshop by October 15, 1995.
Submitted papers will be reviewed for publication in the final proceedings
(which are expected to be published by Springer-Verlag). Authors will be
notified of acceptance or rejection of their papers for the proceedings by
December 1, 1995. Accepted papers must be received in camera-ready form
by January 15, 1996.
The extended abstract should be 5--8 page long (excluding references and
appendices). The following aspects will be relevant for the evaluation of the
submission: originality, clarity, significance, and correctness. In particular,
the abstract should clearly point out the relationships with published work
or submissions by the same authors and it should be understandable by a
broad audience. Proofs may be added in appendix, if needed.
Program Committee:
A. Bossi (U. Calabria, Rende, Italy), D. Boulanger (K.U. Leuven, Belgium),
Y. Deville (U.C. Louvain, Belgium), S. Debray (U. Arizona, Tucson, USA),
L. Fribourg (LIENS-CNRS, Paris, France), N. Fuchs (U. Zurich, Switzerland),
J. Gallagher (U. Bristol, UK), T. Mogensen (U. Copenhagen, Denmark),
M. Proietti (IASI-CNR, Roma, Italy, chair), H. Seki (NIT, Nagoya, Japan),
P. Tarau (U. Moncton, Canada), G. Wiggins (U. Edinburgh, UK)
Organizing Committee: Doaitse Swierstra, Jeroen Fokker, Erik
Meijer, Margje Punt (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
For more information please contact Maurizio Proietti or
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/Home.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: comp-ai-nlang-know-rep@uunet.uu.net
From: angela@coyote.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Angela Wee)
Subject: Position: NLP Software Engineer, National University of Singapore
Date: 7 Nov 1994 07:31:40 GMT
Reply-To: angela@nuscc.nus.sg
---------------------------------
INSTITUTE OF SYSTEMS SCIENCE
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
A CAREER IN IT RESEARCH
The Institute of Systems Science (ISS) is a leading Information
Technology (IT) Research and Development Centre in the Pacific
region with close to 100 research staff. Our objectives are
international and regional leadership in next generation technology
creation and spin-off. We are looking for dynamic, enthusiastic
and innovative individuals to join us in furthering their
career in the area of information technology research.
MULTI-LANGUAGE PROCESSING (MLP) PROGRAM
The mission of the MLP Program is to nurture a new language services
industry through developing advanced multilingual technology and
usable product prototypes, and conducting application-driven
natural language r&d projects inspired by industrial needs.
Duties :
* Assist in the research and implementation of practical natural
language applications
Requirements :
* Bachelor or Masters in Computer Science or Electrical & Electronics
Engineering
* Proficiency in C, C++ or Lisp
* Interest in natural language processing in general (English, Chinese
or Malay) and its applications
* Good knowledge of Artificial Intelligence techniques will be an
advantage
* Good work attitude and communication skills
Interested candidates, please send resume and supporting documents to :
Angela Wee
Institute of Systems Science,
Heng Mui Keng Terrace,
Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511
Fax: (65) 774 4998
email (Internet): angela@iss.nus.sg
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 23:31:44 -0500
From: Amruth Kumar <amruth@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: CFP: FLAIRS '95, Reasoning About Function, Apr 95, Melbourne Beach
CALL FOR PAPERS
---------------
"Reasoning About Function"
------------------------
track to be held during
Florida AI Research Symposium (FLAIRS 95)
at Melbourne Beach, Florida
on April 27-29, 1995.
Submission: 2000 word paper by ftp by November 15th
Notification to Authors: January 7th, 1995
Camera Ready Copy due: March 1st, 1995
The explicit representation and use of the function (purpose)
of an object, either as intended by its designer or as interpreted
by its user, is emerging as a focal point of problem solving in
fields as diverse as Device Invention, Redesign, Diagnosis,
Explanation Generation and Automatic Debugging. Explicit treatment
of function has proven to be very useful because of its potential
to organize and provide access to causal knowledge of the object
(eg., focuses on missing causality during redesign), because of the
improved focus it brings to the reasoning process (eg., discriminates
among suspects during diagnosis) and because of its utility in
addressing the scaling problem.
To date, function-based knowledge has been successfully
applied in several domains, a few of them being Software
Engineering, Human Physiology, Medicine, Architecture, Law,
and various fields of engineering such as Electrical,
Aerospace and Chemical Engineering.
This track is hoped to provide a forum for researchers to exchange
ideas, swap notes across domains, and present their experiences.
Papers of interest to this track are:
* Reasoning techniques that use function
* Representation formalisms for function
* Applications of function: reports, results
PS: If you are not sure whether your paper fits into the above topic,
please refer to the following reports for clarification. These are
reports from a previous workshop on "Reasoning About Function", held
at AAAI-93:
* AI Magazine, 15(1): Spring 94 issue, pp 64-65
* SIGART Bulletin 5(3): July 94 issue, pp 49-51
SUBMISSION DETAILS:
-------------------
Maximum Length: 2000 words
Submission: by anonymous ftp to the site
"ftp.cs.buffalo.edu",
in the directory users/amruth, by:
November 15th, 1994.
Note:
* Preferred formats are dvi and postscript. If you have
a different format, you may be asked to submit a hard
copy of the paper also.
* This paper should be a single self-contained file.
* DO NOT include your name/affiliation or any other
identifying information in the file.
* The name of the file should be the last name of the first
author.
* Once you have submitted your paper, please send mail to
amruth@ultrix.ramapo.edu
informing me about your submission, within 24 hours.
In this mail message, specify the name(s), address(es)
affiliation(s) and telephone/fax numbers of all the authors,
along with the name of the submitted file.
THIS STEP IS A MUST FOR SUBMISSION.
IMPORTANT DEADLINES:
--------------------
Notification to Authors: January 7th, 1995, by electronic
mail where possible.
Camera Ready Copy due: March 1st, 1995
This should be sent to the Program Chair, Dr. John H. Stewman.
For Further Information, Contact:
Amruth N. Kumar
(amruth@ultrix.ramapo.edu)
201-529-7712
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Alastair G. M. Milne" <milne@ics.uci.edu>
Subject: Announcement: Thinking Computer Quest, Dec 94, San Marcos
Date: 11 Nov 94 01:21:33 GMT
To: moderator.@ics.uci.edu@cs.rpi.edu;
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
INTERNATIONAL QUEST FOR THINKING COMPUTER
TO BE HELD AT CAL STATE, SAN MARCOS
(Human vs. Computers on December 16th)
[Please do not reply to the sender of this message]
The fourth annual Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence
will be held at the new San Marcos campus of California State University
on Friday, December 16th, 1994. The Loebner Prize pits humans against
computers in what the Wall Street Journal described as "a groundbreaking
battle." The first three competitions drew national and international
media coverage.
In the event, human judges converse at computer terminals and
attempt to determine which terminals are controlled by fellow humans and
which by computers. For the 1994 competition, conversation will be
restricted to certain topics. This year, as in 1993, all judges will be
members of the national press. The 1993 judges represented TIME
Magazine, Popular Science, PBS, the Voice of America, and elsewhere. The
contest has drawn media attention around the world, including coverage on
CNN television, PBS television, the New York Times (front page), the
Washington Post, the London Guardian, The Economist, the San Diego Union
Tribune (front page), Science News, and many periodicals in the computer
field, including Computerworld and AI Magazine (cover story).
"Surprisingly, in early competitions, some of the computers fooled
some of the judges into thinking they were people," said Dr. Robert
Epstein, Research Professor at National University, Director Emeritus of
the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, and the organizer and
director of the three previous contests.
The author of the winning software of this year's event will receive
$2,000 and a bronze medal. In 1995, Epstein said, the first open-ended
contest -- one with no topic restrictions -- will be conducted. When a
computer can pass an unrestricted test, the grand prize of $100,000 will
be awarded, and the contest will be discontinued.
The competition is named after benefactor Dr. Hugh G. Loebner of New
York City and was inspired by computer pioneer Alan Turing, who in 1950
proposed a test like the Loebner contest as a way to answer the question:
Can computers think?
A partial list of sponsors of previous competitions includes: Apple
Computers, Computerland, Crown Industries, GDE Systems, IBM Personal
Computer Company's Center for Natural Computing, Greenwich Capital
Markets, Motorola, the National Science Foundation, The Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, and The Weingart Foundation.
* All Computer Science professionals interested
in observing the event are invited to attend.
Please send your inquiries or RSVP
to jane_lynch@csusm.edu University Development Office
(619) 752-4406
before Dec 9th. ****
Official rules may be obtained via email by sending a message to
"loebner@coyote.csusm.edu"
with the words "send filename" in the subject of the message.
The files that can be requested are:
info-letter (a short introduction)
order-form (an order form for transcripts and diskettes)
press-release (this document)
official-rules (official rules and application)
technical-notes (technical notes for the contest)
all (all of the above documents)
Those without access to electronic mail can contact Dr. Robert Epstein,
Contest Director, 933 Woodlake Drive, Cardiff by the Sea, CA 92007-1024
Tel: 619-436-4400, Fax: 619-436-4490.
* The deadline for receipt of applications was November 1, 1994.
Advance notice of new guidelines for 1995: The 1995 event will be
an unrestricted Turing Test, requiring computer entries to be able to
converse for an indefinite period of time with no topic restrictions. In
1995, entries may be required to run on hardware located at the
competition site.
For further information: Complete transcripts and IBM-compatible
diskettes that play the 1991, 1992, and 1993 conversations in real-time
are available for purchase from the Cambridge Center for Behavioral
Studies (tel: 617-491-9020, fax 1072; e-mail: 76557.1175@compuserve.com).
Sponsorship opportunities are available.
* * * * ****
CONTACTS:
Dr. Robert Epstein
Contest Director
619-436-4400 (fax 4490)
repstein@nunic.nu.edu
Dr. Hugh G. Loebner
Prize Donor
201-672-2277 (fax 7536)
loebner@acm.org
* * * * ****
========================
Alastair G. M. Milne
milne@ics.uci.edu
FAX: (714) 240-6229 (not always available, though)
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
