Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA From: LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: AIList Digest V3 #11 Message-ID: <4527@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Fri, 1-Feb-85 14:22:27 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.4527 Posted: Fri Feb 1 14:22:27 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 12:06:30 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 412 From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws AIList Digest Friday, 1 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 11 Today's Topics: Business - Symbolics Stock Price, Symbolic Algebra - Laplace Transform Answer, Graphics - Special Issue of CG&A,n Expert Systems - Availability of Steamer Software, Publications - Recent Reports & Artificial Intelligence Abstracts & New-and-Trendy Word Collection, Seminars - Procedural Knowledge (SU) & Reasoning about Actions and Processes (CSLI) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 31 Jan 85 10:26:25 PST From: Marty Cohen Subject: Symbolics stock price At the AI conference at Denver in December, I heard that Symbolics had gone public. Their stock was then under $7 a share. It is now up to $12 a share. Any idea why the surge? (I expected it to rise, but not that fast.) ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 1-Feb-85 8:56:48-GMT From: GORDON JOLY (on ERCC DEC-10) Subject: re: $20 to the first person ... -------- We believe the answer to be (see Vol3 #10) s + ir / | 1 | pt 1 f(t) = ----- lim | e ------------------- dp 2 pi i r->inf | p cosh (A sqrt(p)) / s - ir where s is chosen so that all singular points of the integrand lie on the left hand side of the straight line Real(p) = s. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Jan 85 10:55 EST From: Paul Fishwick Subject: Special Issue of CG&A Forwarded From: Norm Badler on Tue 15 Jan 1985 at 11:15 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications is planning a Special Issue on Computer Graphics and Expert Systems. Papers addressing any relevant topic along the following general lines are invited: * expert systems used in computer-aided design, * expert systems using graphical displays as an essential part of reasoning or analysis systems, or * graphical interfaces to expert systems. Publication is scheduled for October 1985 The submission deadline is April 1, 1985. IEEE CG&A publishes color graphics in a magazine format, but all papers are reviewed. Republication (after revision) of very low circulation conference papers is also permitted. Please submit four copies of the paper, preferably in IEEE format, to: Dr. Norman I. Badler Associate Editor, IEEE CG&A CIS - Moore School D2 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 (Net address: Badler%UPENN@CSNET-Relay) (215) 898-5862 ------------------------------ Date: Friday, 1 February 1985, 07:32-PST From: Jim Hollan Subject: Availability of Steamer Software Some readers of this list may be interested in knowing that a tape of the source code for the Steamer training system can be obtained from the National Technical Information Service. This includes code for the basic Steamer system and an associated object-based graphics editor. Steamer was recently described (Hollan, Hutchins, & Weitzman, 1984) in the Summer issue of AI Magazine. It is written in Zetalisp and currently runs on Symbolics lisp machines. We would be interested in bug reports but do not have time to offer any support or information services. Send bug reports to hollan@nprdc. The charge for a 9-track 1600bpi tape is $240. The order number for the tape is AD-A146757. It can be obtained from National Technical Information Service 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield, Virginia 22161 Jim Hollan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jan 85 09:45:33 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Recent Reports Technical Reports from Carnegie Mellon University Masaru Tomita: An Efficient All-paths Parsing Algorithm for Natural Languages October 1984 Ellen Lowenfeld Walker, Takeo Kanade: Shape Recovery of a Solid of Revolution From Apparent Distortions of Patterns C. E. Thorpe: FIDO: Vison and Navigation for a Robot Rover ------------------------------ Date: 30 Jan 1985 02:29:36 EST From: BASKEYFIELDM@USC-ISI.ARPA Subject: Report - Knowledge-Based Command and Control ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE BASED MODELS FOR COMMAND AND CONTROL Dennis Cooper General Research Corporation P.O. Box 6770 Santa Barbara, CA 93160-6770 In the last two years, there has been a growing interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence. More specifically, an area known as "Expert Systems" or "Knowledge Engineering" has received much attention. Expert systems are computer programs that can perform at a human expert level in some narrow domain (e.g., infectious blood diseases, VAX 11/780 computer performance, etc.). Expert systems are currently being developed to deal with a variety of problems. In the last six years General Research Corporation has been developing technologies that support the definition and construction of decision-making models. The technology makes use of techniques drawn from the expert systems field. Our decision-making model have been principally applied to Army and Air Force analytical simulations and wargaming models of military combat. The emphasis is thus placed not on developing expert models of command and control but on developing fast, reasonable models of decision-making behavior. In this paper, we present a description of our still developing technology and illustrate its capabilities from examples taken from the TAC ASSESSOR model, CORDIVEM Cap design, and McClintic Theater model. We will also describe two artificial intelligence tools, TIMM and KATIE, which have facilitated knowledge-based model development. Requests for this paper should be directed to the author or I will provide a copy (as long as the number doesn't get outrageous): BASKEYFIELDM@USC_ISI.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Jan 85 14:31:31 cst From: Laurence Leff Subject: Recent Reports - University of Illinois University of Illinois Technical Report List Schang, Thierry "A Rule-Based Manager for the GPSI Environment" File 923 (Rule manager for an expert system environment) Challou, Daniel J. "Towards a Knowledge Based Data Restructing Aid" 924 system to assist in development in of data structures and type definitions Cohen, Seth M. "Object Identification Using Keyword Matching" File No 925 user interfaces for AI systems ------------------------------ Date: Fri 1 Feb 85 02:09:06-EST From: Wayne McGuire Subject: Artificial Intelligence Abstracts I perused recently the premier issue of Artificial Intelligence Abstracts, published by EIC/Intelligence in New York. Following is a brief description and review. Artificial Intelligence Abstracts will be published monthly, for an annual price of $295. The first issue is 62 pages long, and prints just over 300 abstracts. Document types abstracted include academic reports, association reports, conference papers, federal government reports, journal articles, news articles, newsletter articles, and patents. Some representative serials abstracted in the first issue: AI Magazine, Artificial Intelligence, Business Week, Byte, Cognitive Science, Computerworld, Datamation, The Economist, Electronic News, Electronics Week, Financial Times of London, High Technology, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, Journal of Logic Programming, MIS Week, The New York Times, Science, Scientific American, Signal, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Abstracts of the entire proceedings of the 1984 AAAI National Conference appear to be included in this issue. Abstracts are organized under the following major categories: Markets & Issues: Business & Economics, International News, Human Factors, General; Applications: Specialty Applications, Automation & Robotics, Knowledge-Based Systems; Research: Computer Architecture, Programming & Software, Sensors, Human Machine Interface, Cognitive Sciences. The publication is generously indexed, and abstracts can by accessed by author, subject, source (serial title), or industry or corporation topic. An Events & Meetings section in each issue provides basic information about forthcoming meetings and conferences related to artificial intelligence scheduled to occur during the next 12 months. Although the abstracts in this publication are uniformly useful (the attention to developments in supercomputing is particularly valuable), its coverage could be significantly broadened. The emphasis of AIA seems to be more on the popular and trade press, than on the academic, scientific, and technical literature. Computer & Control Abstracts, for instance, captures much important AI-related literature in all major languages from around the world which AIA's editorial policy apparently excludes or overlooks. AIA's coverage of cognitive science--the AI-relevant literature from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and educational research--is especially weak. Perhaps there is a need for a special new publication entitled Cognitive Science Abstracts which will do the job for which AIA lacks the interest or space. Any habitual reader of AIList Digest would, I suspect, find Artificial Intelligence Abstracts to be a worthwhile tool. A sample copy can be obtained by writing EIC/Intelligence at 48 West 38th Street, New York, NY 10018, or calling (800) 223-6275. AIList Digest readers might also want to examine EIC's Robomatix Reporter (which abstracts the robotics literature), CAD/CAM Abstracts, and Telecommunications Abstracts. -- Wayne McGuire ------------------------------ Date: 30 Jan 1985 1325-PST (Wednesday) From: Miriam Blatt Subject: new and trendy word collection [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] A friend of mine is looking for words to put in a dictionary she is working on. Some examples of words we have already suggested are "WYSIWYG" - what you see is what you get, and "RISC" - reduced instruction set computer. If you have some words to suggest, or think some may occur to you in the next few days, please save the form at the end of this message and mail it back. Here is the original letter: Hi, We are starting on a new, exciting project and we need your help. The project is a business dictionary - working title "Essential Terms: Today's Business Vocabulary - to be published by Franklin Watts (part of Grolier, they started as a children's house and now do adult books as well) and the help we need is a list of words. What will set our book apart from the ordinary business dictionary is its emphasis on new and trendy words and ironic usages for old words or terms. Some examples: "merged and purged" (what is done, via a computer program, when combining mailing lists to eliminate from the final list, duplicates and people who cannot tolerate direct mail advertising), "socks and stocks" (Sears financial centers in retail stores), "big blue" (IBM), "Kaufmanized" (the state of the financial markets after a pronouncement about the direction of interest rates by Salomon Brothers' economic guru, Henry Kaufman), "golden girdle" (the high tech belt that crosses central Florida) and "valium picnic" (slow day on the stock market). With the exception of the last term, we saw all of these expressions in print. However, to get more of them we need access to words that are so new, so particular, and so irreverent that they have not yet been published, and this is where we hope you can help. What are the fun, interesting terms in your work - field and/or industry? Would you please keep the attached form wherever it is most likely to be at hand when a word "flashes" into your conversation, for the next few days, and fill it with the words/terms and definitions that make "Today's Business Vocabulary" so lively? We appreciate the crucial nature of your help to our project, and will be happy to acknowledge your contribution in our introduction. Please circle February 8th on your calendar and leave a few minutes on that Friday to mail back the list. Thank you very much for your help. Rachel Epstein and Nina Liebman Name: Phone: Wish to be acknowledged: (Yes/No) For each word, give its meaning and origin. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 30 Jan 85 09:50:15-PST From: Paula Edmisten Subject: Seminar - Procedural Knowledge (SU) [Forwarded from the Stanford SIGLUNCH distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.] Procedural Knowledge SPEAKER: Michael Georgeff A.I. Center, SRI International and, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University DATE: Friday, February 1, 1985 LOCATION: Chemistry Gazebo, between Physical and Organic Chemistry TIME: 12:05 Active intelligent systems need to be able to represent and reason about actions and how those actions can be combined to achieve given goals. This knowledge is often in the form of SEQUENCES of actions or PROCEDURES for achieving given goals or reacting to certain situations. For example, knowledge about kicking a football, performing a certain dance movement, cooking a roast dinner, solving Rubik's cube, or diagnosing an engine malfunction, is primarily knowledge about procedures for accomplishing these tasks. In this talk we describe a scheme for explicitly representing and reasoning about procedural knowledge based on the notion of PROCESS. The knowledge representation is sufficiently rich to describe the effects of arbitrary sequences of tests and actions, and the inference mechanism provides a means for directly using this knowledge to reach desired operational goals. Furthermore, the knowledge representation has a declarative semantics that provides for incremental changes to the system, rich explanatory capabilities, and verifiability. The scheme also provides a mechanism for reasoning about the use of this knowledge, thus enabling the system to choose effectively between alternative courses of action. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 30 Jan 85 17:26:40-PST From: Emma Pease Subject: Seminar - Reasoning about Actions and Processes (CSLI) [Excerpted from the CSLI Newsletter by Laws@SRI-AI.] ``Reasoning About Actions and Processes'' Room G-19 Michael Georgeff, CSLI 2:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7, Redwood Hall, Stanford Active intelligent systems need to be able to represent and reason about actions and how those actions can be combined to achieve given goals. For example, knowledge about kicking a football, performing a certain dance movement, cooking a roast dinner, solving Rubik's cube, or diagnosing an engine malfunction, is primarily knowledge about sequences of actions or procedures for achieving these goals. Within AI, there have been two approaches to this problem, with a somewhat poor connection between the two. In the first category, there is some work on theories of action, or what an action is. This research has focused mainly on problems in natural language understanding concerned with the meaning of action sentences. Second, there is work on planning, i.e., the problem of constructing a plan by searching for a sequence of actions that yields a given goal. Surprisingly, there is almost no work in AI about the execution of pre-formed plans -- yet this is the almost universal way in which humans go about their day-to-day tasks, and probably the only way other animals do so. In this talk we aim to set the foundation for a theory of action that: (1) provides a suitable semantics for simple action sentences in natural language, (2) provides a method of practical reasoning about how to achieve given goals based on procedural knowledge, and (3) serves as a basis for planning. The first of these aims is met by defining a suitable declarative semantics for action, and the second by providing a suitable operational semantics. The third rests on both of these, but in addition requires that we have a means of searching the space of possible world histories. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************