LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA (02/10/85)
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA>
AIList Digest Saturday, 9 Feb 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 17
Today's Topics:
Games - Cubic,
Machine Translation - German to English Translator,
Information Science - Sublists & DDC & Telesophy Project &
Xerox Notecards & Online Dictionary,
News - Recent Articles & AI on TV,
Culture - AI Sociology & The Sirens of Titan
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Date: 06 Feb 85 0936 PST
From: Yoni Malachi <YM@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: The game Cubic
The work you refer to was done by Oren Patashnik who is now a Computer Science
PhD student at Stanford. I forwarded the message to him.
------------------------------
Date: Fri 8 Feb 85 09:09:20-PST
From: Mark Kent <KENT@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: German to English translator?
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
This may be silly, but I feel that somewhere there must exist a German to
English translator program. Nothing fancy (no Artificial Intelligence
required) but just a word for word literal translation. The resulting
phrases need not make sense.
This could be used as follows: suppose you had a book on disk in German,
and you were going to translate it to English (and you are fluent in both
German and English) then it would save a lot of typing if most of the
words were already in the english file. Even if some phrases were garbage,
it would be easy to kill the line(s) and type the desired phrase.
Anyone know of such a program on any system?
Thanks,
-mark
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 85 12:57 EST
From: Ed Fox <fox%vpi.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Sublists - response to Laws msg of 30 Jan and request for
wishes
Ken Laws mentioned the fact that people wish to have portions of the
AILIST digests sent to them. This is essentially a filtering operation,
related to the SDI (selective dissemination of information) problem
being handled by many information retrieval systems.
At VPI we are presently involved in a research project related to this,
and welcome comments and involvement. The idea is to study electronic
mail messages and digests like AILIST, and to implement means to allow
people to find useful information either in new issues or retrospectively
by searching past issues. We will build an intelligent automatic analysis
system that will create knowledge representations for AILIST messages, and a
search system to allow users to find messages in the collection. Users
will be able to define profiles, describing what they are interested in,
and each new digest will then be split up so that most relevant items
are presented first, and least relevant items are either discarded or
made to appear later in a ranked list. Users will also be able to ask
specific questions and be given a list of messages that are possibly
relevant.
To make this realistic, we need user profiles and questions, and
in order to see if automatic methods perform properly, need users to
indicate which messages are indeed relevant to each question. We welcome
specific questions and interest statements. Perhaps more important at
this time, however, would be to have wish lists like:
find messages that announce seminars or conferences
recognize RFPs or contract work requests
list papers cited about a specific topic
extract bibliographic items or newspaper extracts relating to ...
Later on we will have a crude version of the planned system running
and will be better able to handle specific queries and possibly let
people try to use it.
This investigation relates to retrieval for offices, or for mail
or conferencing systems. Please send comments, wishes, suggestions,
etc. to fox.vpi@csnet-relay
Thanks, Ed Fox.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 85 21:01:29 PST
From: Richard K. Jennings <jennings@AEROSPACE>
Subject: DDC
For those of you with a clearance and a certified "need to know",
the Defense Documentation Center (DDC) serves as a repository of
DoD technical (and I suppose other) information. Both DoD agencies &
their contractors are encouraged to use it, and they provide a suite
of bibliographic services as does NASA. NASA libraries are open to
the public, and in the Bay area Ames (at Moffett) is a treasure trove.
Taxes support these services, so use them.
Rich.
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Date: 1 Feb 85 23:59:08 GMT
From: bambi!schatz@topaz (Bruce R. Schatz)
Subject: description of Telesophy Project
[Forwarded from the WorkS list by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The following project may be of interest to readers of net.works :
Telesophy literally means "wisdom at a distance". The goal of the
Telesophy Project is to build a system which makes obtaining
information as transparent as telephony makes obtaining sound. The
system could be viewed as a "WorldNet" browser, which lets one
navigate an underlying information space. The information units in
the space can contain any type of data and the system hides their
actual physical location. In addition to these retrieval facilities,
there are also storage facilities for generation of new items from
old. The system thus supports the notion of an Information
Community, permitting the users to browse for AnyThing AnyWhere and
share their findings with others.
These notions are old desires, undoubtably familiar to the readers of
this newsgroup. What is new is that these problems seem finally
about to break because of coming mass availability of new technology.
In particular, because of the speed and transmission characteristics
of optical fibers, it is now feasible to consider the idea of
building what is logically a single computer physically distributed
over a wide area. This potentially worldwide single computer
provides the hardware upon which an operating environment permitting
the transparent fetching and manipulation of uniform objects can be
built.
My dream is a worldwide information community, a greatly generalized
USENET. I work for Bell Communications Research, the central
research organization for the local telephone companies (like Bell
Labs before the divestiture). The fiber optic telephone network of
the near future will likely obtain end-to-end speeds much closer to
gigabits/second than the current kilobits. To utilize this, I have
been investigating the architecture of a Telesophy System. Thus far,
a long paper has been written describing the underlying philosophical
and technological issues. I am now actively seeking colleagues to
help build a first version on a local-area network of Apollo
workstations. For more information, please contact me at one of the
following addresses (a fuller description has been posted to
net.jobs):
Bruce Schatz
physical: Bell Communications Research
435 South Street, Room 2A275
Morristown, New Jersey 07960
phone: (201) 829-4744
USENET: bellcore!bambi!schatz
ARPAnet: bellcore!bambi!schatz@BERKELEY
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Date: Sat 2 Feb 85 13:14:20-EST
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Xerox NoteCards
[Forwarded from the Human-Nets Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.]
Apropos the recent discussion about idea processors and general
purpose personal assistants appears below a message from Info-Mac
about Xerox NoteCards. Can anyone here offer any further information
about this product?
Date: 24 Jan 1985 7:05:38 EST (Thursday)
From: Mark Zimmerman <mex101@mitre>
Subject: Xerox NoteCards on Mac?
To: info-mac@sumex
I just saw a demo of Xerox's NoteCards system and want to tell
people about it, so we can start working on a version for the Mac!
NoteCards is like an extension of the desktop metaphor: your
screen has windows on electronic index cards, each of which can
contain text, pictures, etc., and links to other cards. Links
can be of various types: references/sourcing, argumentation,
proof, refutation, consequences, etc. Cards can be filed in boxes,
which can contain other boxes, etc. One can display graphically the
links between cards, to get an overall view of the information, or
zoom in to look at all the gory details when needed.
Esther Dyson wrote about NoteCards in the 31 Dec 84 issue of her
newsletter, RELease1.0 ... see that for further impressions.
Perhaps if there are experts at Xerox PARC or elsewhere listening
they can correct/extend my comments.
The Mac's TE and windowing should do a fair fraction of the work
for a Mac version/analog of NoteCards ... I am dreaming about
writing up a first hack at it in MacFORTH.
NoteCards is sort of a multidimensional ThinkTank (or rather,
ThinkTank is a 1-dimensional shadow of NoteCards) ... it looks
likely to be a great tool for gathering/organizing/presenting
complicated data. (Besides other features described above, one
can ask NoteCards to search along various types of links to find
various items, reorganize links, embed pointers to other cards
within the text/picture on a card, etc.)
Best, Zimmermann at MITRE
------------------------------
Date: 11 Dec 84 08:05:34 EST
From: Don <Watrous@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Online dictionary server at SRI-NIC
[Forwarded from the Rutgers BBoard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
[I have only recently regained access to this bboard, so this message
has been delayed for a couple of months. It describes a software
system that I had not run across before. -- KIL]
If you have Arpanet-Access privs, you can now access an online copy
of Webster's 7th dictionary. The program's name is WEBSTER. It can
be used to get definitions or to check spelling. Note: escape and
question mark work!
Don
[I have reproduced most of the associated help file below. -- KIL]
Invoke the [Rutgers] program by "@WEBSTER word-to-define" or
@WEBSTER<return>
Word:
If the word is found, Webster will then provide the complete dictionary
entry for the word including definitions, pronunciation, and derivation.
If the specified word was not found, Webster will try to find close
matches, as if you spelled the word wrong. The possibilities are
numbered and typed out. To select one of them, you can just give its
number.
Additionally, Webster can match words using wildcards. The character
"%" in a word mean match exactly one character, so "w%n" matches "win",
"won", "wan", etc. The character "*" matches ZERO OR MORE characters,
so "a*d" matches "ad", "and", "abound", "absentminded", and so on.
Any number of wildcards can be used, and in any arrangement.
<escape> and "?" are used the same way in Webster as in most programs.
<escape> tries to complete what you have typed so far, and "?" lists
those words that match your partial word.
If what you have given is a unique abbreviation for a word, <escape>
will typed out the rest of the word. If what you typed is ambigious,
it beeps and does nothing.
For example,
Word: plur? Maybe you mean:
-----
1. plural 2. pluralism 3. plurality 4. pluralization
5. pluralize 6. pluri- 7. pluriaxial
Word: pluri? Maybe you mean:
------
1. pluri- 2. pluriaxial
Word: pluria<escape>xial
--------------
Where the underlined parts are typed by the user, and rest by Webster.
Note that wildcards and <escape>/? can be used together, for example
Word: plu*x<escape>
-------------
Word: pluriaxial
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Date: Thu, 7 Feb 85 04:44:08 cst
From: Laurence Leff <leff%smu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Recent Articles
Fribourg, Laurent Oriented equational clauses as a programming language
J. Logic Programming 1(1984) 2 165-177
Tseitlin, GE Structured programming in symbolic multiprocesing
Cybernetics (19) 1983 no 5 614-625
Oscar E. Lanford Computer Assisted proofs in analysis Mathematical Physics
VII Phys. A 124 (1984) no 1-3 465-470
Science 85, March
Machinations of Thought Pages 38-45
General Article on AI with emphasis on discussion of question "Could a machine
think?"
The Black Knight of AI Page 46-51
Article about Richard Dreyfus, who is a philosopher who is arguing that
machines cannot think and there is something called intuition that
cannot be captured by a computer.
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Date: Wed, 6 Feb 85 10:28:34 pst
From: Craig Cornelius <cwc@diablo>
Subject: AI article in Science 85
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The newest issue of Science 85 contains two articles on AI, with
vignettes on two Stanford profs: Bruce Buchanan and Terry Winograd.
It's interesting reading.
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Date: Fri 8 Feb 85 03:03:38-CST
From: Werner Uhrig <CMP.WERNER@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: AI on TV (in NEW TECH on PBS)
KLRU, the local PBS affiliate, has recently started a very interesting
program at 5pm Sunday afternoons, titled NEW TECH.
Last Sunday, Feb 3, mainly concentrated on projects of Kurzweil Enterprises.
one of the 3 Kurzweil companies seems to concentrate on text-readers, and the
work being discussed mentioned a reader under development and test which can
read over 100 fonts at amazing speeds.
A second company is producing electronic musical equipment, and Mr. Moog of
Moog-synthesizer fame has recently joined Kurzweil. Stevie Wonder was
extensively featured as he serves as kind of a "guinea-pig" for the company.
He is using model #1 of their synthesizers to produce his music and his
recent song "The Woman in Red" was produced by him on this equipment. Given
that Stevie is blind, being able to produce all his own sound-tracks and
mixing the results is a considerable feat. Special I/O devices for the
use of the handicapped are being developed thanks to Kurzweil's support
of Stevie Wonder. Another song by Wonder used in the feature was:
"Having Computer Fun".
I noted down a reference to "CompuServe" and "The Source Public Area 125 Dired"
but I only remember now that something is being discussed in these 2
commercial online electronic media, relevant to the musical equipment.
If you have a video-recorder, this show is definitely worth recording while
you're out having fun in the park (-:
PS: my TV-program for Thursday, Feb 7, showed as topic for the Donahue-show
"Computer Sub-culture". well, it wasn't on, postponed it seems due
to more a more "urgent" topic: the New York subway-vigilante.
I am trying to find out when this topic will be discussed.
thought some of you fellow-TV-junkies might be interested
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Date: Wed 6 Feb 85 10:03:24-PST
From: C.S./Math Library <LIBRARY@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: A Sociological Look at AI Research
[Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.]
The following is the introduction to an article by James Fleck which appeared
in Sociology of the Sciences, Volume VI, 1982, pp.169-217. The title of the
article is Development and Establishment in Artificial Intelligence.
In this paper, I discuss the role played by scientific establishments in the
development of a particular scientific specialty, Artificial Intelligence, a
computer-related area which takes as its broad aim, the construction of computer
programs that model aspects of intelligent behaviour. As with any discussion
of a scientific specialty, the identification of what is involved is not
unproblematic, and the above serves as an indication rather that a definition.
While the term Artificial Intelligence is used in a variety of ways, there is
a discernable group (perhaps approaching the degree of commonality to be called
a community) of researchers who recognize the term as descriptive of a certain
sort of work, and who, if they themselves are not willing to be directly
labelled by the term, can locate themselves with respect to it.
Unfortunately, there is little or no commonly available literature that
systematically charts the scope of this area. It is worthwhile, therefore,
to consider the distinctive socio-cognitive characteristics of research in
AI as a prelude to a fairly specific discussion of the social and institutional
processes involved in the development of the area, thus providing a basis
for exploring the usefulness and applicabiligy of the concept of establishment.
The article includes an interesting chart showing the movement of AI researchers
during the 1960's and 1970's among the main centers of AI research: SRI, CMU,
Stanford, and MIT. If you are interested in this article, I have a copy
of it in the Math/CS Library.
Harry Llull
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Date: Mon 4 Feb 85 18:42:28-EST
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: _The Sirens of Titan_
I recently read for the first time Kurt Vonnegut's _The Sirens of
Titan_, and came across the following spooky, dystopian view of AI:
Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't
anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't
efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And
these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that
existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than
others.
These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what
their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a
purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures
were filled with disgust and shame.
And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would
make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve
higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the
purpose still wasn't high enough.
So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.
And the machines did everything so expertly that they were
finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the
creatures could be.
The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't
really be said to have any purpose at all.
The creatures thereupon began slaying each other because they
hated purposeless things above all else.
And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying.
So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines
finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell Publishing
Co., 1959 (1976 printing). Pp. 274-275.
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End of AIList Digest
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