[net.ai] Seminar - AI and APL

westlake%AEROSPACE@sri-unix.UUCP (06/12/84)

From:  Philip Westlake <westlake@AEROSPACE>

                       APL Users Group Meeting

The Aerospace Corporation APL Users Group is honored to present:
        Dr. Zdenek V. Jizbz and Ms. Phuong T. Nguyen
        of Chevron Oil Field Research Co., La Habra, California

Speaking on: "Artificial Intelligence and APL with Nested Arrays"

        Wednesday, June 13, 1984
        1:00 pm
        A1/1062
        The Aerospace Corporation

The Chevron Oil Field The Chevron Oil Field Research Company of La Habra,
California has been doing some research on Expert Systems implemented in
nested array APL and they are pleased with the rapid progress that they have
achieved in a relatively short time due to the power of nested array APL.
A vector of nested vectors can be matched to a tree structure.  The utility
of this relationship, however, is relatively limited because nodes and
branches are implicit (not explicit).  By adding a convention similar to that
of polish notation, modes can be made explicit.  A special type of nested
vector called a scalar tree will be defined.  The following powerful
properties of scalar trees will be illustrated:

        1. The possibility to separate syntactic constructs from semantics

        2. The ability to form AND/OR trees of arbitrary complexity, and
           application of DeMorgan's law to such trees with a single
           one-character APL primitive function.

        3. The simplicity of building (primitive) inference engines in
           just a few lines of APL code.

There will be three lectures lasting about 50 minutes each.  Dr. Jizba will
be giving the first two lectures and Ms. Nguyen will be giving the third
lecture.

Lecture 1       Define Artificial Intelligence. Describe basic idea of
                Expert Systems.  Compare LISP to APL with nested arrays.
                Define tree structures, and describe the specific concept
                of an APL scalar tree.  Show how recursuve functions are
                used to operate on nested arrays.

Lecture 2       Introduce Predicate Calculus, and illustrate how it can be
                implemented using APL nested structures.  Describe
                Production rules, and Inference Engine in APL implementation.
                Describe DRIVER function that allows English-like
                communication with user.

Lecture 3       (PTN) Understanding a sentence.  Kinds of sentences. Global
                and local dictionaries.  Meaning.  Syntactic sentences.
                History trace.  Handling of misspelled words and phrases.

U.S. Citizenship required in order to attend the presentation.