leff%smu@csnet-relay.UUCP.UUCP (01/27/87)
January 1987 Canadian Artificial Intelligence No. 10
Letter about progress on Japanese Fifth Generation.
The DELTA database machine, which earlier was described
as being non-functional and abandoned, was in fact fast
but had ease of use problems. A new version is under development.
The operating sytem/programming environment for the Personal Sequential
Interface by Mitsubishi is 160,000 lines and took 80 man years to develop.
19 Japanese companies have formed the Artificial Intelligence Joint
Research Society to train researchers and undertake joint development efforts.
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Review of AI research at Queen's University.
They have developed a language for called Nial and a tool kit. They
are working on database models and interfaces, fuzzy logic, inference
engines, natural language parsing, window packages, rule systems,
built in editing, and educational environments.
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A review discussion the issue of "What is AI" with a list
of those efforts that could be considered artificial intelligence.
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Reports on the Seventh European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-86)
and the International Workshop on User Modelling.
Some of the expert systems demonstrated at ECAI-86 include
- a system to monitor the operation of a steam condensor at a thermal power
plant
- a system to process alarms in the vacuum distillation tower of a refinery
Some of the papers covered
- a system to keep a consulting session with an expert system on target
- a review of machine translation research. Pre and post-editing
translation editing aids are quite successful. Three of the more
advanced systems are METAL (University of Texas), MU (Kyoto University)
and Eurotra (European Community). The latter is supposed to
cover nine Europ[ean languages.
- The UCLA system has an intelligent tutor for UNIX. After several
minutes of processing on an Apollo the system was able to have the
following dialogue:
User: I tried to remove a file with the "rm" command. The file was
not removed, and the error message was "permisssion denied" I
checked and I own the file
Acqua: To remove a file, you need to be able to write into the directory
containing it. To remove a file, you do not need to own it.
- Paul Jacobs developed a new natural language generator called KING.
- Professor Prini predicted that Europe's stable growth rate is a good
opportunity for Artificial INtelligence, particularly in dealing with
a software production capacity shortage that is due soon.
- Harold Kahn demonstrated computer generated pictures. His later works
demonstrated quite a bit of realism including one of the Statue of
liberty complete with Rococo festivity of the 18th century
- Clive Sinclair preicted that intelligent androids would be widely used
by the year 2010.
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Reviews of "Implementing Mathematics with the Nuprl Proof Development
system" by R. L. Constable This text is aimed at mathematics and
computer science undergraduates.
Also Readings in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering"
by Charles Rich and Richard C. Waters.