AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA (AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws) (12/20/85)
AIList Digest Friday, 20 Dec 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 191 Today's Topics: Queries - LISP Tools for the MicroVax II & Security Applications & Intensional and Higher-Order Logic & Experience with the TI Explorer, AI Tools - TI Superset of Common LISP & Object-Oriented Programming, Psychology - Dreams & Lateral Thinking, AI Tools - Equational Logic Programming Language ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 11:41:14 GMT From: Topexprs%cs.ucl.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk Subject: LISP Tools and Environments for the MicroVax II I'd like to know about any LISP based, KBS development environments for the Microvax II. I'm looking for something that runs under microVMS, is up and running OK, more or less debugged, reasonably documented, and available now; is this too unrealistic? All useful pointers would be appreciated, also approx. prices etc. I'm used to LOOPS etc., so I'm not too keen on going to far down market. Please reply to HWB1.ARE @ CAM.PHX @ UCL-CS.ARPA Thanks, Hal Blackburn. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 07:43 CST From: Sankar Virdhagriswaran <Araman@HI-MULTICS.ARPA> Reply-to: Sankar Virdhagriswaran <Araman@HI-MULTICS.ARPA> Subject: AI technology application to computer security Is anyone out there aware of applications of AI technology for computer security issues. I am aware of the pseudo object oriented models being used in developing completely secure systems. Is there more of this kind of research. I will collect the responses and post it in the net thanks in advance send replies to Araman -at hi-multics ------------------------------ Date: 19 Dec 85 10:25:00 EDT From: "CUGINI, JOHN" <cugini@nbs-vms.ARPA> Reply-to: "CUGINI, JOHN" <cugini@nbs-vms.ARPA> Subject: intensional and higher-order logic Anyone doing any work on using intensional or higher-order logic in knowledge representation? Any references (books, articles) would be appreciated - thanks. John Cugini <Cugini@NBS-VMS> ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 08:50:48 pst From: Rolf Pfeifer <pfeifer%ifi.unizh.chunet%ubc.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Experience with the TI Explorer How does the TI Explorer compare with other LISP Machines (e.g. Symbolics, LMI, or XEROX)? In particular: - availability of software - compatibility with Symbolics (effort to transport programs developed on Symbolics (or LMI) to the Explorer) - subjective experiences after having used it (heavily) for some time - support environment for AI applications development - getting to know the Explorer (e.g. how useful are their utilities they have apparently designed to support a new user?) - performance - other Comments of any sort welcome. Thanks. --Rolf Pfeifer, University of Zurich, Switzerland cernvax!unizh!pfeifer ------------------------------ Date: Tue 17 Dec 85 16:14:14-PST From: Christopher Schmidt <SCHMIDT@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> Subject: Re: Superset of Common LISP... [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] What TI's developing is a set of 4 4"*4" boards that implement an MIT CADR including a number of chips almost at wafer scale. The design differs from general purpose hardware only in the same way that a CADR does and doesn't really implement "Common Lisp" per se. When they say a "superset of Common Lisp" they mean MIT Lisp Machine Lisp plus an additional package that implements Common Lisp. This is rather like saying that a Shopsmith with the belt-sander attachment is a $1500 belt-sander that happens to come with a free Shopsmith. Whatever. The processor is called a "Hummingbird" and TI gives a talk on it locally every six months or so though they seem to have been by invitation. --Christopher ------------------------------ Date: Wed 18 Dec 85 20:51:44-EST From: Randy Haskins <rh%MIT-EECS@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> Subject: Object-Oriented Programming Re: AIList Digest V3 #189 > Flavors: (send window-1 :expose) > CORBIT: (expose window-1) > > What is seen as a message in Flavors is a function in CORBIT. So it is > not the object, but the message which is functional. [...] > > Koenraad De Smedt, DESMEDT@HNYKUN52 (bitnet) I have a hard time seeing the advantage to such a system, but then, I was brought up on object-oriented programming. The advantages of smart-objects/ dumb-messages is that functions that you write can be more generic. I have written a fair number of utilities in ZetaLisp for both ZL machines, and it's unbelievably quick and easy. One of the functions I use a lot is called GET-OBJECTS-NAMED which follows. (DEFUN GET-OBJECTS-NAMED (LST STRING &OPTIONAL (MSG :NAME)) (DELETE NIL (MAPCAR #'(LAMBDA (OBJ)(IF (STRING-SEARCH STRING (SEND OBJ MSG)) OBJ)) LST))) (The actual function I wrote is much more general, but this is the part that deals with Flavor instances pretty well.) Since :NAME is a fairly common operation for most objects to support (processes, most streams, zmacs-buffers), this function writes itself. Another example is the fact that the PRINT function will see if its argument is willing to handle a :PRINT-SELF method and will do that instead of trying to deal with the object. The same is true for DESCRIBE; I could go on for hours, but this article's already long enough. Besides, I have to get back to my ZL-style Flavors I'm implementing in MacLisp. Random ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 85 15:55 CDT From: Randy_Boys <boys%ti-eg.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Response to query regarding dreams, the unconscious, and revelations In response to a posting of 29-Nov-85 (G. Joly - Subconscious Reasoning: Discovery and Invention) My background is in physiological psychology and I was a staff member at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas' Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory for five years, doing sleep research most of the time. I have been working in the field of AI for three years now, always trying to find avenues to blend my knowledge of cognitive and computer science. I'm not sure that the following is very helpful to the progress of either field, but I was compelled to respond to Gordon and Ken's comments regarding "exceptional" insights that seemed to be associated with dream state cognition. Subconscious reasoning (if there is such a thing) is NOT the same as dream state cognition. The cortex is active during REM sleep (I'm not going to go into the REM = dream state issue) but may not be "processing" anything more than random phasic events (similarly, I'm not going into the nature or genesis of the dream state). Dreams do, however, exist and often reflect "subconscious" elements. To assume that there is some particular significance to this "window on the subconscious," as opposed to anything that may exist for "conscious" cognition, would be stretching the state of our knowledge (not that this should slow down the theorists!). In light of the fact that 2 billion people dream 4-5 times every night of their life and that only a few (and usually highly personal) dream "revelations" are cited, my response to postulations about dreams and discovery is "so what?" I do not believe that this is an area of cognition that is well enough understood to direct our inquiries into AI. Randy Boys boys@ti-eg p.s. - after 30 years of heavily funded research, science can tell us what sleep is not, but not what it is. Yes, you guessed it...the same is true of dreaming. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Dec 85 12:12:43 GMT From: gcj%qmc-ori.uucp@cs.ucl.ac.uk Subject: 42 The term ``lateral thinking'' has been in the English language for a some time. de Bono opposes lateral thinking to vertical thinking in the following sense. Vertical thinking is the logical straight- forward part of the mind, which is responsible for pattern recognition, concerned with addition and gradual modification. Lateral thinking is more concerned with making the best possible use of the information that is already available, rearranging it so that it is snapped out of the established pattern. This is a paraphrase of de Bono's words, and it would take much more space to give a really good account. The proposal that I want to suggest is that de Bono's model fits into a plan for the hopes of AI research. The vertical part of thought processes could be carried out by a machine but the lateral (creative, humorous) part could not. In mathematics, the notion exists of ``factoring out'' onto a sub- space, ie projecting down into a lower dimensional region. Perhaps a defintion of machine intelligence could be that part of the mind this left after the process of factoring out lateral subspace. Gordon Joly, gcj%qmc-ori@ucl-cs.arpa ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 85 9:14:41 EST From: Robert Strandh <strandh@hopkins-eecs-bravo.ARPA> Subject: Equational Logic Programming Language EQUATIONAL LOGIC AS A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE Michael J. O'Donnell Robert I. Strandh The University of Chicago The Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science Department of Electrical Engineering Ryerson Hall and Computer Science 1100 East 58th Street Barton Hall Chicago, Illinois 60637 Baltimore, Maryland 21218 odonnell@uchicago.csnet strandh@hopkins.arpa A processor for an Equational Logic Programming Language is available for distribution to Berkeley UNIX 4.2BSD VAX installations. To get a general idea of the capabilities of the interpreter, see "Programming With Equations", by Christoph M. Hoffmann and Michael J. O'Donnell, ACM ToPLAS, v. 4, no. 1 (January 1982) pp. 83-112. A user's manual is included in "Equational Logic as a Programming Language", by Michael J. O'Donnell, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1985). The main novelties of the interpreter are 1) strict adherence to simple semantics based on logical consequences of the given equations; 2) "lazy evaluation" (outermost evaluation) applied to all operators; 3) an implementation based on table-driven pattern matching, so that there is no run-time penalty for large sets of equations. A first experimental version was distributed in 1983. Recently, Robert Strandh has replaced the table-driven interpreter written in Pascal by compiled VAX machine code, producing an order-of-magnitude improvement in performance. Preliminary timings indicate a performance between interpreted and compiled Franz LISP. The entire interpreter system, including source files, occupies about 3.5 megabytes. ARPANET users may acquire a copy on line by executing ftp hopkins then logging on as "anonymous'' with password "anonymous", and executing the ftp commands: cd pub get equations.tar The copying process will take an hour or more. After copying the interpreter, please send a message indicating where you have installed it. Others may acquire a 1600 BPI tape copy, in "tar" format, by writing to Michael J. O'Donnell. Once the distribution file has been acquired, it should be processed by the command tar x (for the tape) tar xf equations.tar (for the tar file) Then, the instructions 2-4 in the file README should be followed. The system is in the public domain, and may be copied freely. We request notification from each site installing a copy. To defray the costs of distribution, we also request a donation of $50 to The University of Chicago for each tape, and of $5 to The Johns Hopkins University for copies taken on the ARPANet. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************