leff%smu@csnet-relay.UUCP.UUCP (01/02/87)
Volume 2 Number 12, December 1986 Summary of Spang Robinson Report AI at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporaiton (MCC) Summary of organization and some of the projects of MCC. In Douglas Lenat's attempt to encode "common sense" he will develop 20 megabytes of data, searchable by conventional technology, in 200 man-years. MCC is working on Proteus, a shell with specific truth-maintenance capabilities. __________________________________________________________________________ Maxell, a manufacturer of microcomputer disk products, is providing two software products free of charge in their boxes of disks. The first is a rule-based expert system that handles 400 rules, but which lacks math in the rules and confidence factors. The other is a free-form text searcher from Thunderstone called Logic-Line 1 with an integrated thesaurus. [Thunderstone advertised several products including this one in the March 1986 Byte among others. Logic-line1 was advertised as "a major breakthrough in sub-cognitive mathematics" which "distills the DNA/RNA like analog to any writer's thought processes." q. v. LEFF] __________________________________________________________________________ New products: Fuji Xerox - CSRL, a Battelle Memory Lab program running on the Xerox 1100 Fuji Xerox - a sytem for Smalltalk 80 Japan IBM - a Stock Portfolio Selection system for PC's Mitsubishi - intelligent Dialog System Mitsubishi - Meltran J/E English-Japanese translation system Toshiba - English-Japanese system Okidata - PENSEE, an English-Japanese system Toshiba - Image Processor System Sharp - Prolog interpreter/compiler for IX-5 and IX-7 __________________________________________________________________________ Other short notes Intelligent Technology Incorporated has been selling Carnegie's Knowledge Craft and Language Craft in Japan and the far east as well as training other companies people to be knowledge engineers. Nisshou Iwai, Marubeni and Nomura computers are investing in this company. ... AIR has been selling GCLISP for the PC 9801 and will be selling it for the 286 based computers. ECC sells it for FM16B. MuLISP is also popular in Japan. Japan Univac is selling CAI systems for nuclear power operators and for teaching people LISP. Nihon LAD is working on an application system called LPS (logic program synthesis) Computer Applications Corp is working on a software maintenance expert system and oen for estimating system size. There are one hundred fielded systems based on Teknowledge's products alone. Teknowlege had at least 300 more in advanced statges of development. MONY and Harvard Tax and Investment Planners are using Plan Power, a financial planning expert sytem to save 50 per cent time. Inference and American Cimflex will be developing AI based computer-integrated manufacturing products. Votan is developing voice recognition systems that can handle 100 decibel backgorund noises as found in manufacturing environments. CL publications has purchased AI Expert. Boole and Babbage are selling an expert system to work with their DASD RESPONSE Manager. __________________________________________________________________________ Review of Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence which is for the nonspecialist. It has historical information and info on the people who pioneered the field.