FAWCETT@RED.RUTGERS.EDU.UUCP (09/09/86)
The first speaker of this year's Machine Learning Seminar series at Rutgers will be Andrew Jennings of Telecom Australia, speaking on "AI in Communication Networks". Dr. Andrews will speak in Hill-423 at 11 AM on THURSDAY, September 18th (NB: this is NOT the standard day for the ML series). The abstract follows: Andrew Jennings (Arpanet address: munnari!trlamct.oz!andrew@seismo.CSS.GOV) Telecom Australia AI in Communication Networks Expert systems are gaining wide application in communication systems, especially in the areas of maintenance, design and planning. Where there are large bodies of existing expertise, expert systems are a useful programming technology for capturing and making use of that expertise. However will AI techniques be limited to retrospective capturing of expertise or can they be of use for next generation communication systems? This talk will present several projects that aim to make use of AI techniques in next-generation communication networks. An important aspect of these systems is their ability to learn from experience. This talk will discuss some of the difficulties in developing learning in practical problem domains, and the value of addressing these difficulties now. In particular the problems of learning in intractable problem domains is of great importance for these problems and some ongoing work on this problem will be presented. The projects discussed include a system for capacity assignment in networks, a project to develop AI systems for routing in fast packet networks and a system for VLSI design from a high level specification.