rik%cs@UCSD.EDU (Rik Belew) (10/21/88)
AI GENEALOGY
Building an AI family tree
Over the past several years we have been developing a collection of
bibliographic references to the literature of artificial intelligence
and cognitive science. We are also in the process of developing a
system, called BIBLIO, to make this information available to
researchers over Internet. My initial work was aimed at developing
INDEXING methods which would allow access to these citations by
appropriate keywords. More recently, we have explored the use of
inter-document CITATIONS, made by the author of one document to
previous articles, and TAXONOMIC CLASSIFICATIONS, developed by editors
and librarians to describe the entire literature.
We would now like to augment this database of bibliographic information
with "cultural" information, specifically a family tree of the
intellectual lineage of the authors. I propose to operationalize this
tree in terms of each author's THESIS ADVISOR and COMMITTEE MEMBERS,
and also the RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS where they work. It is our thesis
that this factual information, in conjuction with bibliographic
information about the AI literature, can be used to characterize
important intellectual developments within AI, and thereby provide
evidence about general processes of scientific discovery. A nice
practical consequence is that it will help to make information
retrievals from bibliographic databases, using BIBLIO, smarter.
I am sending a query out to several EMail lists to ask for your help
in this enterprise. If you have a Ph.D. and consider yourself a
researcher in AI, I would like you to send me information about where
you got your degree, who your advisor and committee members were, and
where you have worked since then. Also, please forward this query to
any of your colleagues that may not see this mailing list. The
specific questions are contained in a brief questionnaire below, and
this is followed by an example. I would appreciate it if you could
"snip" this (soft copy) questionnaire, fill it in and send back to me
intact because this will make my parsing job easier.
Also, if you know some of these facts about your advisor (committee
members), and their advisors, etc., I would appreciate it if you could
send me that information as well. One of my goals is to trace the
genealogy of today's researchers back as far as possible, to (for
example) participants in the Dartmouth conference of 1956, as well as
connections to other disciplines. If you do have any of this
information, simply duplicate the questionnaire and fill in a separate
copy for each person.
Let me anticipate some concerns you may have. First, I apologize for
the Ph.D. bias. It is most certainly not meant to suggest that only
Ph.D.'s are involved in AI research. Rather, it is a simplification
designed to make the notion of "lineage" more precise. Also, be
advised that this is very much a not-for-profit operation. The results
of this query will be combined (into an "AI family tree") and made
publically available as part of our BIBLIO system.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, please let me know. Thank
you for your help.
Richard K. Belew
Asst. Professor
Computer Science & Engr. Dept. (C-014)
Univ. Calif. - San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093
619/534-2601
619/534-5948 (messages)
rik%cs@ucsd.edu
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AI Genealogy questionnaire
Please complete and return to:
rik%cs@ucsd.edu
NAME:
Ph.D. year:
Ph.D. thesis title:
Department:
University:
Univ. location:
Thesis advisor:
Advisor's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Committee member:
Member's department:
Research institution:
Inst. location:
Dates:
Research institution:
Inst. location:
Dates:
Research institution:
Inst. location:
Dates:
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AI Genealogy questionnaire
EXAMPLE
NAME: Richard K. Belew
Ph.D. year: 1986
Ph.D. thesis title: Adaptive information retrieval: machine learning
in associative networks
Department: Computer & Communication Sciences (CCS)
University: University of Michigan
Univ. location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Thesis advisor: Stephen Kaplan
Advisor's department: Psychology
Thesis advisor: Paul D. Scott
Advisor's department: CCS
Committee member: Michael D. Gordon
Member's department: Mgmt. Info. Systems - Business School
Committee member: John H. Holland
Member's department: CCS
Committee member: Robert K. Lindsay
Member's department: Psychology
Research institution: Univ. California - San Diego
Computer Science & Engr. Dept.
Inst. location La Jolla, CA
Dates: 9/1/86 - present