LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA (11/12/84)
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI> AIList Digest Monday, 12 Nov 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 153 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Language Degeneration, Algorithms - Malgorithms, Project Report - IU via Dialectical Image Processing, Seminars - Spatial Representation in Rats & Human Memory Capacity & Design of Computer Tools & Artificial Intelligence and Real Life ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Nov 84 14:54:08 est From: FRAWLEY <20568%vax1%udel-cc-relay.delaware@udel-relay.ARPA> Subject: Language Degeneration I'd like to make a few comments on Briggs' statements on language degeneration and Sanskrit, English, etc. The idea that a language degenerates stems from the 19th century biological metaphor which has been refuted for at least 100 years. Language is not alive; people are. We in linguistics know that "language death" is a metaphor and has almost nothing to do with the language as a system; it has everything to do with the sociocultural conditions on speaking and the propagation of cultural groups. How can it be reasonably said that a language degenerates if it is abused? What do you mean by "abused"??? If "abused" means "speaking in short sentences," then everyone "abuses" the language, even the most ardent pedants. Language indeed changes, but it does not degrade. Briggs says that violations of the prototype are degenerations. This is true by definition only. And this definition can be accepted only if one also adheres to a Platonic notion of language history, wherein the pure metaphysical Ursprache is degraded by impure shadowy manifestations in the real world. Maybe Briggs is a Platonist, but then he's not saying anything about the real world. Popular use does NOT imply a reversion or "reversal" of progress in language change. There is no progress in language change: a change in one part of the system over time which complicates the system generally causes a simplification in another part of the system. So, Hoenigswald said that languages maintain about 50% redundancy over time. What is the "sophisticated machinery" Briggs talks about? I suspect that he means that he thinks that language which have a lot of morphology and are synthetic are somehow "more sophisticated" than "our poor unfortunate English," which is analytic and generally free of morpho-syntactic markings. Honestly, the idea that a synthetic language is "better" than a degraded analytic English is another remnant of the 19th century (where neo-Platonism also reigned). The evolution of analytic languages from synthetic versions (i.e., pure to degraded) is not only charged with moral claims, but it is also wrong. 1. Finnish has retained its numerous case markings over time, as has Hungarian. 2. Colloquial Russian has begun to add case markings (instrumental in the predicate nominative). 3. English is losing overt marking of the subjunctive: are we therefore less able to express subjunctive ideas? Is English becoming (GOOD GOD!) non-subjunctive, non-hypothetical.... If Briggs is right, then he himself is contributing to the degradation by his very speech to his friends. (I, of course, don't believe this.) Finally, if Briggs is right about the characteristics of natural language, then any natural language can be a bridge, not necessarily Sanskrit. And this claim is tantamount to saying only that translation is possible. Bill Frawley Address: 20568.ccvax1@udel ------------------------------ Date: 11 Nov 1984 18:02:20 EST From: MERDAN@USC-ISI.ARPA Subject: balgorithms Here are couple balgorithms that I encountered on a single microprocessor project. Neither of these balgorithms appeared the slightest bit bad to their authors, and one of them was insulted when I pointed out how bad his approach really was. Balgorithm #1 Problem Perform error correction for a 15,11 Hamming code on an 8 bit micro (Intel 8008). Original solution Implement a feedback shift register with error trapping logic as with a BCH code. Approximately 600 bytes of tricky code was required. Better solution Use the classic error dectection matrix method. I believe about 100 bytes of obvious code was required. Balrgorithm #2 Problem Calculate horizontal and vertical parity for a sequence of 5 bit char- acters and tack them on at end of the sequence. Original solution Pick up each character and count the number of 1s by masking out each bit with a separate mask, packing the resultant bit into a 5 bit word on the fly. About 1500 bytes of very buggy code resulted. Better solution Treat the sequence in blocks of 5 characters. For each block prestore a pattern assuming that parity is even. Pick up each character, determine its parity (the load did this on the 8008), and clear the pattern for that character. Or the patterns together, producing the result. About 150 bytes of mostly straight line code resulted. Even better solution Don't calculate parity in software but let the UART hardware generate and check the parity. Comment In both cases I feel that the justification for the original solution was that programmer wanted to do some tricky coding just to prove that he could do it rather than understand the problem first. This tendency does not seem to be going away as fast as we all would like it. Thanks Terry Arnold ------------------------------ Date: 13 Oct 1984 11:40-EDT From: ISAACSON@USC-ISI.ARPA Subject: Project Report - IU via Dialectical Image Processing (DIP) [Forwarded from Vision-List by Laws@SRI-AI.] Just read the summary of DARPA IU effort which I find very interesting. By coincidence, we submitted this week to DARPA a summary of our current efforts in "Dialectical Pattern Processing". Although phrased in broader terms, much of this effort is also directed toward IU. We enclose a copy of the report in the possible interest of the vision-list readership. -- JDI 10/7/84 DARPA Research Summary Report I M I Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri Project Title: Dialectical Pattern Processing Overview. Earlier work [1] has demonstrated unusual low-level intelligence features in dialectical processing of string patterns. This effort extends dialectical processing to 2-D arrays, with applications in machine-vision. I M I Corporation is an innovator in Dialectical Image Processing (DIP), a new subfield in very low- level vision (VLLV) research. Dialectics is an elusive doctrine of philosophy and (non-standard) logic that can be traced from Plato to Hegel and beyond, but that has never lent itself to be grounded in precise formalisms or in computing machines. Certain influential philosophies hold that the universe operates in accord with dialectical processes, culminating in the activity of thought processes. This effort builds on the fact that [1] discloses the first and only machine implementation of dialectical processes. Objectives. A broad long-term objective is to test a working- hypothesis that states that dialectical processes are fundamental ingredients, in addition to certain others, in autonomically emergent intelligences. Intelligences that bootstrap themselves in a bottom-up fashion fall into this category. More immediate objectives are (1) to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a small number of VLSI chips to host a dialectical image processor, and (2) to evaluate the type of intelligence inherent in networks of dialectical processors, with emphasis on learning. Approach. A mix of activities includes software simulation of dialectical networks for image processing; VLSI-based hardware design for dialectical image processors; and assessment of the learning capabilities inherent in the above-mentioned systems. Current Status & Future Plans. Consideration of the possibility of dialectical processing began in the early Sixties. By now, theoretical foundations have been laid and dialectical processing has been amply demonstrated in strings and in 2-D arrays (see Fig. 1 & Fig. 2 below) to the point where it appears to support a viable new computer-vision technology. Feasibility studies in the design of VLSI-based DIPs have shown that reasonably large DIPs (100x100 pixels) will fit into a single card and can be readily implemented, at least for experimentation. Scant resources limit the scope of some and preclude others of the activities listed below, which are considered important to the advancement of this technology. * Run software simulations of DIP on better equipment (e.g., Lisp machine or BION workstation) and attempt to extend effort to 3-D. * Implement in VLSI hardware a prototype of a moderate size DIP. * Attempt to specialize other vast parallel networks (e.g., Hillis' Connection Machine [2] or Fahlman's Boltzmann Machine) into dialectical image processors. * Specialize a network of dialectical processors to support low-level machine learning by analogy and metaphor. Fig. 1 - DIP Analysis of a Plane Silhouette [Graphics will be sent by US Mail] Fig. 2 - Selected Steps from DIP Analysis of a Tank Silhouette [Graphics will be sent by US Mail] Resources and Participants. Available resources are limited. The list of participants includes: Joel D. Isaacson, PhD, Principal Investigator; Eliezer Pasternak, MSEE, Project Engineer; Steve Mueller, BS/CS, Programmer; Ashok Jain, MS/CS, Research Assistant (SIU-E). Products, Demonstrable Results, Contact Points. Certain products and results are proprietary and included in patent applications in progress. Software simulation of DIP can be readily demonstrated. A version written in Pascal for the IBM PC/XT is available on request. Point of contact: Dr. Joel D. Isaacson, I M I Corporation, 20 Crestwood Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63105, Phone: (314) 727-2207, (ISAACSON@USC-ISI.ARPA). References [1] Isaacson, J. D., "Autonomic String-Manipulation System," U. S. Patent No. 4,286,330, August 25, 1981. [2] Hillis, W. D., "The Connection Machine," Report AIM-646, The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT, Sept. 1981. Acknowledgements Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under ONR Contract No. N00014-82-C-0303. The P.I. gratefully acknowledges additional support and encouragement received from the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Nov 84 13:23:13 pst From: chertok@ucbcogsci (Paula Chertok) Subject: Seminar - Spatial Representation in Rats BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Fall 1984 Cognitive Science Seminar -- IDS 237A TIME: Tuesday, November 13, 11 - 12:30 PLACE: 240 Bechtel Engineering Center DISCUSSION: 12:30 - 2 in 200 Building T-4 SPEAKER: C. R. Gallistel, Psychology Department, University of Pennsylvania; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences TITLE: ``The rat's representation of navigational space: Evidence for a purely geometric module'' ABSTRACT: When the rat is shown the location of hidden food and must subsequently find that loca- tion, it relies strongly upon a spatial representation that preserves the metric properties of the enclosure (the large scale shape of the environment) but not the nongeometric characteristics (color, lumi- nosity, texture, smell) of the surfaces that define the space. As a result, the animal makes many ``rotational'' errors in an environment that has a rotational symmetry, looking in the place where the food would be if the environment were rotated into the symmetrically interchangeable position. It does this even when highly salient nongeometric properties of the surfaces should enable it to avoid these costly rota- tional errors. Evidence is presented that the rat notes and remembers these nongeometric properties and can use them for some purposes, but cannot directly use them to establish positions in a remembered space, even when it would be highly advanta- geous to do so. Thus, the rat's position- determining system appears to be an encapsu- lated module in the Fodorian sense. Con- siderations of possible computational rou- tines used to align the currently perceived environment with the animal's map (it's record of the previously experienced environment) suggest reasons why this might be so. Old evidence on the finding of hid- den food by chimpanzees suggests that they rely on a similar module. This leads to the conjecture that the module is universal in higher vertebrates. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Nov 84 22:51:11 pst From: Misha Pavel <mis@SU-PSYCH> Subject: Seminars - Human Memory Capacity & Design of Computer Tools [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] ************************************************************************* Two talks by T.K. Landauer: ************************************************************************* Some attempts to estimate the functional capacity of human long term memory. T. K. Landauer Bell Communications Research, N.J. Time: Wednesday, November 14, 1984 at 3:45 pm Place: Jordan Hall, Building 420, Room 050 How much useful (i.e retrievable) information does a person's memory contain? Not only a curiosity, even an approximate answer would be useful in guiding theory about underlying mechanisms and the design of artificial minds. By considering observed rates at which knowledge is added to and lost from long-term memory, and the information demands of adult cognition, several different es- timates were obtained, most within a few orders of magnitude of each other. Obtaining information measures from performance data required some novel models of recognition and recall memory that also will be described. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PSYCHOLOGICAL INVENTION: some examples of cognitive research applied to the design of new computer tools. T. K. Landauer Bell Communications Research, N.J. Time: Friday, November 16, 1984 at 3:15 pm Place: Jordan Hall, Building 420, Room 100 Computers offer the possibility of designing powerful tools to aid people in cognitive tasks. When psychological research is able to determine the factors that currently limit how well hu- mans perform a particular cognition-based activity, the design of effective new computer aids sometimes follows directly. Illus- trative examples will be described in information retrieval and text-editing applications. In the former, insights leading to in- vention came from systematic observations of the actual linguis- tic behavior of information-seekers, in the latter from correla- tions of task performance with measured and observed differences in individual characteristics. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Nov 84 16:25:11 EST From: "Paul Levinson" <1303@NJIT-EIES.MAILNET> Subject: Seminar - Artificial Intelligence and Real Life "Artificial Intelligence and Real Life" Abstract of talk to be given by Paul Levinson at the New School for Social Research, November 12, 1984, 8 PM, 66W12th St., NYC. Part of the 1984-1985 Colloquium on Philosophy and Technology, sponsored by the Polytechnic Institute of New York and the New School. Talk begins by distinguishing two types of "AI": "auxiliary" or "augmentative" intelligence (as in mainframes extending and augmentating the social epistemological enterprise of science, and micros extending and augmenting thinking and communication on the individual level), and "autonomous" intelligence, or claims that computers/robots can or will function as self-operating entities, in independence of humans after the initial human programming. The difference between these two types of AI is akin to the difference between eyeglasses and eyes. Augmentative intelligence on the mainframe scientific level will be assessed as reducing intractable immensities of data, or allowing human cognition to process ever larger portions and systems of information. Just as the telescope equalizes human vision to the vast distances of the universe, so computers on the cutting edges of science make our mental capacities more equal to the vast numerosity of data we encounter in the macro and micro universes. The social and psychological as well as cognitive consequences of micro computers and the type of instant, intimate, intellectual and personal communication they allow across distances will be compared to the Freudian revolution at the turn of the century in its impact upon the human psyche and the way we perceive ourselves. Critics of these two types of computers such as Weizenbaum will be seen as part of a long line of naive and failed media critics beginning at least as far back as Socrates, who denounced writing as a "misbegotten image of the spoken original," certain to be destructive of the intellect (Phaedrus). "Expert systems" and "human meat machines" claims for autonomous intelligence in machines will be examined and found wanting. Alternative approaches such as Hofstadter's "bottom-up" ideas will be discussed. A conception of the evolution of existence in the natural cosmos as progressing in a subsumptive way from non-living to living to intelligent material will be introduced, and this model along with Hofstadter-type critiques will lead to the following conclusion: the problem with current attempts at autonomous intelligence is that the machines in which they're situated are not alive, or do not have enough of the characteristics necessary for the sustenance of the "living" label. Put otherwise, the conclusion will be: in order to have artificial intelligence (the autononous kind), we first must have artificial life; or: when we indeed have created artificial intelligences which everyone agrees are truly intelligent and autonomous, we'll look at these "machines" and say: My God (or whatever)! They're alive. Practical and moral problems that may arise from the creation of machines that are more than metaphorically autonomous of their human producers will be examined. These machines will most likely be in the form of robots, since robots can move in the world and interact with environments in the direct ways characteristic of living organisms. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************