Europe
Artificial Intelligence at Schlumbergers
Schlumberger is a large, multinational corporation concerned primarily with the measurement, collection, and interpretation of data. For the past fifty years, most of the activities have been related to hydrocarbon exploration. The efficient location and production of hydrocarbons from an underground formation requires a great deal of knowledge about the formation, ranging in scale from the size and shape of the rock's pore spaces to the size and shape of the entire reservoir. Schlumberger provides its clients with two types of information : measurements, called logs, of the petrophysical properties of the rock around the borehole, such as its electrical, acoustical, and radioactive characteristics; and in terpretations of these logs in terms of geophysical properties such as porosity and mineral composition. Since log interpretation is expert skill, the emergence of expert systems technology prompted Schlumberger's initial interest in Artificial Intelligence. Our first full- scale attempt at a commercial-quality expert system was the Dipmeter Advisor. Following these initial efforts, Schlumberger has expanded its Artificial Intelligence activities, and is now engaged in both basic and applied research in a wide variety of areas.
Physical Object Representation and Generalization: A Survey of Programs for Semantic-Based Natural Language Processing
This article surveys a portion of the field of natural language processing. The main areas considered are those dealing with representation schemes, particularly work on physical object representation, and generalization processes driven by natural language understanding. The emphasis of this article is on conceptual representation of objects based on the semantic interpretation of natural language input. Six programs serve as case studies for guiding the course of the article. Within the framework of describing each of these programs, several other programs, ideas, and theories that are relevant to the program in focus are presented.
Letters to the Editor
Bennett, Martin, Meltzer, Bernard
The second example is of another distinguished scholar who, in a passionate contribution to the debate, stated that ... May I also take this opportunity to praise the staff Western governments, were thereby displaying a full sense of I look forward to the continuing success of the Association social responsibility, and anybody who disagreed with this in all its activities. On the surface this appears Yours sincerely, to be at least logical, until one reflects that it would not Marten E. Bennett be particularly difficult with this kind of argument to prove Gzllingham, Kent, UK that Hitler displayed a sense of social responsiblity, since one has no reason to believe that he was not sincere in believing that Jews, communists, Western capitalists and others would destroy his country if not checked. There is really not much excuse these days for anyone The background to it is the "Marietta affair." University of Cambridge, "Defended to Death," edited by movement protested on the conference site, and after some Gwyn Prins and published by Penguin Books). I came away from the meeting wondering why apparently comments.
Partial Evaluation, Programming Methodology, and Artificial Intelligence
This article presents a dual dependency between AI and programming methodologies. AI is an important source of ideas and tools for building sophisticated support facilities which make possible certain programming methodologies. These advanced programming methodologies in turn can have profound effects upon the methodology of AI research. Both of these dependencies are illustrated by the example of anew experimental programming methodology which is based upon current AI ideas about reasoning, representation and control. The manner in which AI systems are designed, developed and tested can be significantly improved in the programming is supported by a sufficiently powerful partial evaluator. In particular, the process of building levels of interpreters and of intertwining generate and test can be partially automated. Finally speculations about a more direct connection between AI and partial evaluation are presented.
Alexander Lerner: A Biographical Sketch
In 1939, he defended a thesis on a new method of calculating A special session entitled "Future Directions In Artificial He was awarded the title Candidate of Intelligence in Washington, D.C. in August. The session, Technical Sciences by the Moscow Institute of Energetics, chaired by Jack Minker, was held to honor Soviet cyberneticist where he worked as a lecturer until the USSR entered World Alexander Yankelovich Lerner's seventieth birthday. He was then commissioned to work at an iron and Minker described Dr. Lerner's contributions to science. The two years of practical work at the Patrick Winston gave a technical presentation, followed by plant led to his book Construction of Industraal Automatic questions from the audience. Electrzcal Drives, published in 1950, together with E.A. Following the session, 228 attendees signed a letter wishing Rosenman. After the war he was appointed head of the Dr. Lerner a happy birthday, and 233 attendees signed USSR's newly established Central ...
Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project
Buchanan, Bruce G., Shortliffe, Edward H.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is largely an experimental science—at least as much progress has been made by building and analyzing programs as by examining theoretical questions. MYCIN is one of several well-known programs that embody some intelligence and provide data on the extent to which intelligent behavior can be programmed. As with other AI programs, its development was slow and not always in a forward direction. But we feel we learned some useful lessons in the course of nearly a decade of work on MYCIN and related programs. In this book we share the results of many experiments performed in that time, and we try to paint a coherent picture of the work. The book is intended to be a critical analysis of several pieces of related research, performed by a large number of scientists. We believe that the whole field of AI will benefit from such attempts to take a detailed retrospective look at experiments, for in this way the scientific foundations of the field will gradually be defined. It is for all these reasons that we have prepared this analysis of the MYCIN experiments.
The complete book in a single file.
Artificial Intelligence Prepares for 2001
Artificial Intelligence, as a maturing scientific/engineering discipline, is beginning to find its niche among the variety of subjects that are relevant to intelligent, perceptive behavior. A view of AI is presented that is based on a declarative representation of knowledge with semantic attachments to problem-specific procedures and data structures. Several important challenges to this view are briefly discussed. It is argued that research in the field would be stimulated by a project to develop a computer individual that would have a continuing existence in time.
The Nature of AI: A Reply to Schank
A fifth answer is also advanced, but is immediately withdrawn. The Innovative Answer: "It also usually means getting fact, there are enough opinions for four men. Roger Schanks, and disagree with the other three. As & hank points out, this is unsatisfactory because it leads Schank hoped that his article would start a debate on to a shifting definition of AI. the issues he raised. Another of these answers, the learning answer, can also What are Schank's four views? Anyone who attempts to clarify a In answer to his question "What is AI all about?", he vague term, like AI, is allowed a certain amount of license in claims to see only two possible answers. The Scientific Answer: "that AI is concerned with highlighting other uses, but there are limits to this license.
Artificial Intelligence Needs More Emphasis on Basic Research: President's Quarterly Message
AI NEEDS MORE EMF'HASIS ON BASIC RESEARCH Too few people are doing basic research in AT rela-language processing seems misguided to me. There is too tive to the number working on applications The ratio of much emphasis on syntax and not enough on the semantics. This is unfortunate, between existing AI formalisms and English miss the point. Even the applied goals press in English what we already know how to express in proposed by various groups in the U.S., Europe and Japan computerese. Rather we must study those ideas expressible for the next ten years are not just engineering extrapolations in natural language that no-one knows how to represent at from the present state of science.
Distinguished Service Award: IJCAI 1983
The award will be presented at the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to be held in Karlsruhe, West Germany, from 8 to 12 August, 1983. The IJCAI Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by the IJCAI Trustees to honor senior scientists in artificial intelligence for contributions and service to the field during their careers. The Award carries a stipend of $1,000 and covers expenses of the recipient's attendance at IJCAI. This will be the second IJCAI Distinguished Service Award; the first was presented to Bernard Meltzer in 1979. Arthur Samuel is one of the pioneeers in AI.