AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA (AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws) (11/06/85)
AIList Digest Wednesday, 6 Nov 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 163 Today's Topics: Seminars - CommonLoops (SU) & The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover (UTexas SIGART) & IEEE Seminar on AI (SMU) & Mental Representations (UCB) & AI in Design and Manufacture (UPenn) & Predicting the Effects of a Therapy (MIT) & Tools for Building Expert Systems (Rutgers) & Very High-Level Programming Environment (CSLI), Conference - ACL 1986 Annual Meeting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri 1 Nov 85 16:42:00-PST From: Susan M. Gere Reply-to: m.susan@sierra Subject: Seminar - CommonLoops (SU) EE380--Seminar on Computer Systems Title: CommonLoops--A Graceful Merger of Lisp and Object Oriented Programming Speaker: Daniel G. Bobrow From: Xerox PARC Time: Wednesday, November 6 at 4:15 p.m. Place: Terman Auditorium CommonLoops merges the facilities of object oriented programming and Lisp. This talk will briefly describe the relevant features of the two styles of programming, and describe the unique properties of this merge. These include a uniform syntax for function calling and sending messages; a merger of the type space of Lisp and the class hierarchy of objects; a generalization of method specification that includes ordinary Lisp functions at one extreme, and fully type specified functions at the other; and a "metaclass" mechanism that allows tradeoffs between early binding and ease of exploratory programming in the implementation of objects. Short Biography: Daniel Bobrow is a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Xerox PARC. His research interests include programming languages, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and cooperative computing. He received his PhD from MIT, started the Artificial Intelligence Department at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and since at Xerox has helped to develop a number of systems, including KRL, GUS, PIE, LOOPS, COLAB, and CommonLoops. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 5 Nov 85 15:21:35-CST From: David Throop <AI.THROOP@R20.UTEXAS.EDU> Subject: Seminar - The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover (UTexas SIGART) SIGART, the Special Interest Group on ARTificial Intelligence, has its monthly program meeting WEDNESDAY, 6 Nov, at JIMS restaurant at I-35 and 183 (Anderson). We meet for drinks at 6:30 and dinner to start at 7:00. Charge is $2 for members and $5 for non members (plus food and drinks). The speaker will be Dr J S Moore, speaking on: Applications of the Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover to the Verification of Computer Hardware and Software J Strother Moore The Boyer-Moore Theorem Prover is computer program that proves theorems about recursive functions. The primary application of the program is to prove formulas that establish the correctness, reliability, or security of computer hardware and software. The proof techniques used by the system include rule driven simplification, generalization of the conjecture to be proved, and mathematical induction. Each time a formula is proved the theorem-prover builds it into an evolving knowledge base which is used to structure subsequent proofs. Thus, the human user of the system can improve the system's performance by having it prove key lemmas first. As the theorems get harder the user's role in the process more and more resembles that of the mathematician who sketches proofs before an assistant who fills in the often large gaps. In this talk I will informally explain how the system works and how it is used. I will also discuss some applications of the system, including its use in finding security flaws in the formal specifications of computer software, its proof of the invertibility of the RSA public key encryption algorithm, and the correctness proofs for a general purpose microcoded CPU. ------------------------------ Date: 31 Oct 1985 09:12-CST From: leff%smu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Subject: IEEE Seminar on AI (SMU) The following is the program for the Special Event of the Dallas IEEE Computer Society and Dallas Section of the ACM Artificial Intelligence Satellite Symposium Knowledge-Based Systems and Their Applications presented by Texas Instruments Incorporated Date: Wednesday, November 13, 1985 8:30 am - 4:00 pm Place: Infomart, 1950 Stemmons Freeway Room 7011 Agenda: Welcome and Opening Remarks 8:30 - 8:45 am o Edward E. Feigenbaum Stanford 8:45 - 9:45 AI: An Overview. Knoweldge Engineering & Expert Systems o RAndall Davis MIT 10:00 - 11:00 am Problem Solutions with Expert Systems: Approach, Tools Available, How to Begin o Bruce G. Buchanan Stanford 11:00 - 12:00 pm Knowledge Based Systems: Problem Selection, Knowledge Acquisition, Validation o Mark Fox CMU 1:00 - 2:00 pm Knowledge-Based Systems: Applications in the Induatrial Environment o Harry Tennant, Host TI Inc. 2:00 - 3:00 pm Applications Abstracts by Representatives from AErospace,. Manufacturing, Military, Industrial Control Engineering, and Education o Harry Tennant, Moderator 3:00 - 4:00 pm Presenter's Roundtable - Live Closing Remarks 4:00 [TI is also sponsoring a satellite presentation at Stanford. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 12:05:18 PST From: admin%cogsci@BERKELEY.EDU (Cognitive Science Program) Subject: Seminar - Mental Representations (UCB) BERKELEY COGNITIVE SCIENCE PROGRAM Fall 1985 Cognitive Science Seminar - IDS 237A Tuesday, November 5, 11:00 - 12:30 240 Bechtel Engineering Center Discussion: 12:30 - 1:30 in 200 Building T-4 ``On the Intentional Contents of Mental States About Fictions'' Edward Zalta Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at C.S.L.I. Acting Asst. Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University In this seminar, I present a theory of intentional objects some of which seem to serve nicely as the contents of mental states about stories and dreams (no matter how bizarre they may be). The theory yields a way of understanding utterances about particular fictional characters and particular dream objects. For the purposes of the talk, it will make no difference whether one construes the theory ontologically as a theory about what the world has to be like or has to have in it in order for us to characterize properly such mental states, or whether one construes the theory as just a canonical notation for specifying the contents of (or mental representations involved in) such states. Either way, one is left with a domain over which operations may be defined to explain how we get from one state to the next, and so the theory should be of interest to cognitive scientists. The philosophical basis of my work lies in a theoretical compromise between the views of Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong, and it is consistent with classical logic. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Nov 85 15:24 EST From: Tim Finin <Tim%upenn.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - AI in Design and Manufacture (UPenn) Professor Robin Popplestone Department of AI at Edinburgh University will give a lecture on Applying AI Techniques to Design and Manufacturing Today: Monday, November 4 at NOON in Towne Building, Room 303 I discuss the representation of mechanical engineering designs in a logic programming context, and the exploration of a space of different possible designs. Designs are represented in terms of modules, which are basic concrete engineering entities (eg. motor, keyway, shaft). Modules interact via ports, and have an internal structure expressed by the part predicate. A taxonomic organisation of modules is used as the basis for making design decisions. Subsystems employed by the design system include the spatial relational inference mechanism employed in the RAPT robot Language, the Noname geometric modeller developed at Leeds Univeristy and the Press symbolic equation solver. The system is being implemented in the POPLOG system. An assumption based truth maintenance system based on the work of de Kleer is being implemented to support the exploration of design space. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 16:49 EST From: Brian C. Williams <WILLIAMS@OZ> Subject: Seminar - Predicting the Effects of a Therapy (MIT) Thursday 7, November 4:00pm Room: NE43- 8th floor Playroom The Artificial Intelligence Lab Revolving Seminar Series "Predicting the Effects of a Therapy in a Physiological Network" Bill Long Clinical Decision Making Group, LCS If the physician gives Inderol to the patient to decrease angina, what will happen to the blood pressure? Or more generally, is there anything the physician should watch out for when giving drug X to this patient? An important aspect of the Heart Failure Program is helping the user answer such questions. The program assists in diagnosis by using the patient information to constrain a physiological model to represent the state of knowledge about the patient. That model can then be used to find likely therapies to correct dangerous states and to reason about the possible effects of those therapies. The problems with predicting the effects of the therapies include accounting for multiple causal pathways, accounting for the effects of feedback, reasoning about pathways that take widely differing amounts of time, reasoning when there is uncertainty about the patient state, and reasoning even though there is interpatient variation. In attempting to deal with these problems, we have developed an algorithm based on techniques of signal flow analysis that handles some of these problems well and others acceptably and has the right properties to provide understandable justifications for the conclusions it reaches. The talk will focus on the criteria that are being used in developing this methodology, the algorithm itself, the effectiveness of the approach, and the remaining problems. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Nov 85 17:02:55 EST From: Smadar <KEDAR-CABELLI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Subject: Seminar - Tools for Building Expert Systems (Rutgers) III Seminar Title: Issues in the Selection of Knowledge Engineering Environments and Tools for Building Large Expert Systems Speaker: Susan Man Date: Tuesday, November 12, 1985, 11:00am - 12:00pm Place: Hill Center, room 423 Susan Man, a Ph.D. student in our department, will present results of a study on knowledge representation and programming paradigms (done in conjunction with an independent study under Chris Tong). This is her abstract: One of the first decisions that must be made by designers of expert systems is the choice of the knowledge engineering environment and tool to be used for the development of the system. In this talk, we attempt to identify some features of programming environments and knowledge engineering tools that are important in building large expert systems. We first look at features in programming environments on Lisp machines such as the Symbolics 3600's and the Xerox 1100's. We then compare three knowledge engineering tools that are suitable for the development of large-scaled expert systems. The knowledge engineering tools studied are (1) Zetalisp, (2) KEE (from Intellicorp), and (3) S.1 (from Teknowledge). In discussing and comparing the features offered by these knowledge engineering environments and tools, we are particularly interested in their abilities to accommodate various programming methodologies and to provide useful support utilities. Programming methodology, which encompasses the issues of knowledge representation and programming paradigm, impact directly on the ability of the knowledge engineering tool to model precisely and efficiently complex domain tasks and problem solving behaviors. Support utilities offer facilities such as editing, debugging, and explanation and are important factors in reducing the time and effort required in building a large expert system. ------------------------------ Date: Tue 5 Nov 85 14:37:04-PST From: Terry Winograd <WINOGRAD@SU-CSLI.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Very High-Level Programming Environment (CSLI) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] COMING ENVIRONMENTS MEETING (11/11) - Steve Westfold (Kestrel) A Very-High-Level-Language Programming Environment Kestrel Institute is doing research on a programming system based on a very-high-level specification/programming language. The language is based on logic and set theory. It is a wide-spectrum language encompassing both an inference model of computation and a state-change model. Compilation is done by transformation and step-wise refinement into the target language (initially Lisp). A central part of the system is the ability to define new language constructs and domain languages, and facilities for manipulating and transforming them. Most of the system is written in the system language. The underlying structure of the environment is a database of objects, sets, sequences and mappings. There is an object hierarchy which is used primarily for factoring applicability of mappings. Language statements (parse structures and annotations) are represented in the database. We identify the representation of statements with the meta-level description of those statements. Thus, meta-level inference on descriptions results in statement manipulation such as transformation. Usually the programmer need not be aware of the representation because of a quotation construct that is analogous to lisp backquote, but is more powerful and can be used for testing and decomposing statements as well as constructing them. Among the ways that the user may view portions of the database are as prettyprinted language statements, as objects with properties, and as graphs of boxes and arrows. The database may be edited using any of these views. The system enforces constraints stated as implications (universally quantified) with an indication of the triggers for enforcement and of the entities to change to make the constraint true. We have a context tree mechanism for keeping different states of the database. It is somewhat smart in that it does not save undo information for database changes that are "internal" to the current state. It would have wider application if it were able to work on subsets of the database rather than the database as a whole. We have recently built a prototype for a project management system. It deals with system components and their versions and bugs, and tasks and schedules. This work is at a fairly early stage and not my area so I wouldn't want to talk much about the details of it, although someone else at Kestrel might. However, it does provide good examples of the utility of the language-defining and constraint capabilities in a domain other than program synthesis. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Oct 85 16:47:40 est From: walker@mouton (Don Walker) Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS; ACL 1986 Annual Meeting CALL FOR PAPERS 24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 10-13 June 1986, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA SCOPE: Papers are invited on all aspects of computational linguistics, including, but not limited to, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, and syntax; understanding and generating spoken and written language; linguistic, mathematical, and psychological models of language; phonetics and phonology; speech analysis, synthesis, and recognition; translation and translation aids; natural language interfaces; and theoretical and applications papers of every kind. REQUIREMENTS: Papers should describe unique work that has not been submitted elsewhere; they should emphasize completed work rather than intended work; and they should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. Authors should send eight copies of an extended abstract up to eight pages long (single-spaced if desired) to: Alan W. Biermann ACL86 Program Chair Department of Computer Science Duke University Durham, NC 27706, USA [919:684-3048; awb%duke@csnet-relay] SCHEDULE: Papers are due by 6 January 1986 . Authors will be notified of acceptance by 25 February. Camera-ready copies of final papers prepared on model paper must be received by 18 April along with a signed copyright release statement. OTHER ACTIVITIES: The meeting will include a program of tutorials and a variety of exhibits and demonstrations. Anyone wishing to arrange an exhibit or present a demonstration should send a brief description to Alan Biermann along with a specification of physical requirements: space, power, telephone connections, tables, etc. CONFERENCE INFORMATION: Local arrangements are being handled by Kathy McKeown and Cecile Paris, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027; 212:280-8194 and 8125; mckeown and cecile @columbia-20.arpa. For other information on the conference and on the ACL more generally, contact Don Walker (ACL), Bell Communications Research, 445 South Street, MRE 2A379, Morristown, NJ 07960; 201:829-4312; walker@mouton.arpa or walker%mouton@csnet-relay or bellcore!walker@berkeley. Program Committee: Alan W. Biermann, Duke University Kenneth W. Church, AT&T Bell Laboratories Michael Dyer, University of California at Los Angeles Carole D. Hafner, Northeastern University George E. Heidorn, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center David D. McDonald, University of Massachusetts Fernando C.N. Pereira, SRI International Candace L. Sidner, BBN Laboratories John S. White, Siemens Communication Systems LSA SUMMER LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE: ACL-86 is scheduled just before the 53rd LSA Institute, which will be held at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York from 23 June to 31 July. The 1986 Institute is the first to focus on computational linguistics. During the intervening week, a number of special courses will be held that should be of particular interest to computational linguists. For further information contact D. Terence Langendoen, CUNY Graduate Center, 33 W. 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036; 212:921-9061; tergc%cunyvm@wiscvm.arpa. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************