AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA (AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws) (09/09/85)
AIList Digest Monday, 9 Sep 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 120 Today's Topics: Queries - Source Licenses for Common Lisp & Semantic Net Graphics & Krypton & Children's Story Generator, AI Tools - Prolog and Lisp, Psychology - Misperception of Probability, Public Service - Trojan Horses ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 5 Sep 85 15:23 MST From: May@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA Reply-to: May%pco@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: Source Licenses for Common Lisp We are interested in porting Common Lisp to our large system hosts and are looking for software houses who are interested in selling source licenses for Common Lisp that is written in either Pascal or, preferably, C. If you know of any, please send whatever information you can to me and I will post the responses here in the list. Thanks. Bob May May%pco @ cisl-service-multics ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Sep 85 21:18:31 edt From: Brad Miller <miller@rochester.arpa> Subject: Wanted: Graphics Software for 3600 (Semantic Nets) I'm doing a semantic parser, and just for hacks, want to display the output graphically as a Semantic Net. Anyone out there hack anything similar for the Symbolics FLAVOR system? (or the TI explorer, or LMI, or any other degenerate case of MIT's LM) I'm a novice to this sort of graphics, so anything likely (say a program that displays ATNs) would be fine! I just want to get a better grasp on this stuff than the provided examples give.... Brad Miller miller@ur-seneca.rochester.arpa University of Rochester CS dept. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Sep 85 09:29:00 EDT From: "CUGINI, JOHN" <cugini@nbs-vms> Subject: Krypton In the October 1983 issue of IEEE's Computer, there was an article called "Krypton: A Functional Approach to Knowledge Representation" by Ronald Brachman, Richard Fikes, and Hector Levesque. It described work in progress. Does anyone out there know what became of this effort? Any follow-up articles, etc?? John Cugini <Cugini@NBS-VMS> Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology National Bureau of Standards Bldg 225 Room A-265 Gaithersburg, MD 20899 phone: (301) 921-2431 ------------------------------ Date: 7 Sep 85 21:04:13 EDT From: Steve.Hoffmann@CMU-CS-K Subject: Children's story generator [Forwarded from the CMU bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] Can anyone give me a reference to a story-generation program, I believe from Schank's group at Yale, which tells stories about such characters as Joe Bear and Irving Bird? Also, any pointers to other story generation would be appreciated. Thank you. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1985 08:14 EDT From: Hewitt@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Prolog and Lisp I would like to respond to the message from Andy Freeman who sent the following: From: Carl E. Hewitt <HEWITT@MIT-MC.ARPA> Prolog (like APL before it) will fail as the foundation for Artificial Intelligence because of competition with Lisp. There are commercially viable Prolog implementations written in Lisp but not conversely. [...] I believe that the Prolog implementations on Common Lisp will be just as efficient as the stand-alone Prolog implementations. However, it is not possible to make a commercially viable Common Lisp implementation on Prolog. This means that any good software written for a stand-alone Prolog system will soon appear on the Lisp Systems but NOT vice versa. Therefore the stand alone Prolog systems will always have impoverished software libraries by comparison with the Common Lisp systems and will not be commercially viable in the long run. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 4 Sep 85 21:17:20-PDT From: Donald Henager <HENAGER@SU-SUSHI.ARPA> Subject: Misperception of Probability [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The October issue of Science 85 has an interesting article on people's mistaken view of probability. It starts with the results of an experiment in which people were drilled about the advantages of seat belts, then agreed that seat belts were great, and then drove away without their seat belts fastened. It goes on to say: "If you think the apparent irrationality of Slovic's subjects frustrated him, imagine how people in the nuclear power business must feel. [This is] the same general public whose concern for the safety of nuclear reactors -- which have claimed a total of three lives in accidents in the last 30 years -- brought the industry to a virtual standstill. It's the same general public that smokes billions of cigarettes a year while banning an artificial sweetner because of a one-in-a-million chance that it might cause cancer; the same public that eats meals full of fat, flocks to cities prone to earthquakes, and goes hang gliding while it frets about pesticides in food, avoidsthe ocean for fear of sharks, and breaks into a cold sweat on airline flights. "In short, we the general public are irrational, uninformed, super- stitious, even stupid. We don't understand probability, are biased by the news media, and have a fear of some technologies that borders on the primeval." It's an interesting article about how people think about probability and in particular points out some catchy statistics about what is and isn't dangerous to your life span. If you can get a copy, read it. Don [Although I have retitled this message "Misperception of Probability", articles by Amos Tversky (and cited by Paul Cohen) have stressed that people seem to base judgements on prototype similarity rather than on probability, even when the "priors" needed for probabilistic reasoning are presented as the major component of a problem specification. Given that people >>want<< to reason in this manner, the misperception involved may be that of the scientific community in assuming that people are trying to reason probabilistically and that they are getting it wrong. There may be valid epistemological reasons (as well as computational ones) for prototype-based pattern recognition and reasoning. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: 05 Sep 85 14:37:38 EDT (Thu) From: Marshall D. Abrams <abrams@mitre.ARPA> Subject: WARNING !! [A Trojan Horse Bites Man] [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] [Forwarded from the Info-Atari bboard by MRC@SIMTEL20.] [Forwarded to the Info-Atari bboard by Malpass@LL-SST.] Today's Wall St. Journal contained the following article. I think it is of enough potential significance that I'll enter the whole thing. In addition to the conclusions it states, it implies something about good backup procedure discipline. In the hope this may save someone, Don Malpass ****************************************** (8/15/85 Wall St. Journal) ARF! ARF! Richard Streeter's bytes got bitten by an "Arf Arf," which isn't a dog but a horse. Mr. Streeter, director of development in the engineering department of CBS Inc. and home-computer buff, was browsing recently through the offerings of Family Ledger, a computer bulletin board that can be used by anybody with a computer and a telephone to swap advice, games or programs - or to make mischief. Mr. Streeter loaded into his computer a program that was billed as enhancing his IBM program's graphics; instead it instantly wiped out the 900 accounting, word processing and game programs he had stored in his computer over the years. All that was left was a taunt glowing back at him from the screen: "Arf! Arf! Got You!" "HACKERS" STRIKE AGAIN [...] Several variations of the "Arf! Arf!" program have made the rounds, including one that poses as a "super-directory" that conveniently places computer files in alphabetical order. [...] Al Stone, the computer consultant who runs Long Island based Family Ledger, [says] "Don't attempt to run something unless you know its pedigree," he says. That's good advice, because the computer pranksters are getting more clever - and nastier. They are now creating even-more-insidious programs that gradually eat away existing files as they are used. Appropriately enough, these new programs are known as "worms". ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************