[ont.events] UW A.I. Semi., Prof. Holte on "Incremental Design of Efficient Enumerative Systems".

ylfink@water.UUCP (ylfink) (09/17/86)

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR

                    - Friday, September 19, 1986.

Professor   Robert   C.  Holte  of  Brunel  University,
Uxbridge,  England  will  speak  on  ``The  Incremental
Design of Efficient Enumerative Systems''.

TIME:                3:30 PM

ROOM:              MC 3008

ABSTRACT

Enumerative  (generate  and test) systems are notorious
for  their  inefficiency.   This talk will consider the
prospects  of incrementally improving the efficiency of
an   enumerative   system   by  adding  more  and  more
"knowledge".    This   method   of  building  efficient
enumerative  systems  will be compared with the current
(incremental)  method  of building knowledge-based sys-
tems.

Additional knowledge will not produce significant gains
in efficiency unless it can be effectively exploited by
the  enumerative  system.  Specific details of the sys-
tem,  decided  in  the initial design stage (called the
"generative  structure"  of  the  enumerative  system),
determine  which  sorts of knowledge it can most effec-
tively  exploit.  In other words, the incremental addi-
tion  of  knowledge will only result in increased effi-
ciency  if the initial design of the enumerative system
is  biased  to  be  "receptive" to the specific sort of
knowledge  which will later be added.  Suitably biased,
an  enumerative system can be incrementally improved to
have  an efficiency (and even an appearance) comparable
to that of a constructive system.

The  primary  example  will  be Michael Wharton's (York
University,  Ontario) development of a relatively effi-
cient  enumerative  system  for  grammar inference (cf.
Information and Control 33:253-272, 1977).

The  talk  will conclude with a brief discussion of the
use   of   this  design  method  to  build  cooperative
problem-solving (e.g. CAD) systems.