Publication 29, Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm.

Artificial Intelligence 6:361-371

Tech. rep., Groupe d’Intelligence Artificielle, Universit´e d’Aix-Marseille.

In researc which lan uac; assumed knowled way it use of provide impreci recent h into a is to e. In that on re of th is used the cons s, to na se acous years, utomati (r,et a nost e need e lan u (pragma traints ke sens tic sit there has c speech u computer of this s to pro are (its s tics). It and expec e of the i nal that i been a nderstan to und recent a vide th yntax an will th tations nherentl s human rroat increase in dine, the purpose of erstand the spoken ctivity, it has been e computer with a d semantics) and the en be able to make which this knowledfre y vaf ue, sloppy and soeech. Syntactic constraints and expectations are based on the patterns formed by a Riven set of linguistic objects, e. .

"A five-year interdisciplinary effort by speech scientists and computer scientists has demonstrated the feasibility of programming a computer system to “understand” connected speech, i.e., translate it into operational form and respond accordingly. An operational system (HARPY) accepts speech from five speakers, interprets a 1000-word vocabulary, and attains 91 percent sentence accuracy. This Steering Committee summary report describes the project history, problem, goals, and results." Amsterdam: North- Holland.

Proceedings of the international conference on computational linguistics, Pisa, Italy.

A theorem prover for part of arithmetic in described which proves theorems by representing them in the form of a diagram or network. The nodes of this network represent 'ideal integers', i.e. objects which have all the properties of integers, without being any particular intoger. The links in the network represent relationships between 'ideal integers'. The procedures which draw these diagrams make elementary deductions based on their built-in knowledge of the functions and predicates of arithmetic. This theorem prover is intended as a model of some kinds of human problem-solving behaviour. Also found at EdinburghIn IJCAI-73: THIRD INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, 20-23 August 1973, Stanford University Stanford, California.

IJCAI-73, pp. 344–351

Selected quotes:"The Science Research Council has been receiving an increasing number of applications for research support in the rather broad field with mathematical engineering and biological aspects which often goes under the general description Articial Intelligence (Al). The research support applied for is sufficient in volume, and in variety of discipline involved, to demand that a general view of the field be taken by the Council itself.""To supplement the important mass of specialist and detailed information available to the Science Research Council its Chairman decided to commission an independent report by someone outside the Al field but with substantial general experience of research work in multidisciplinary fields including fields with mathematical, engineering and biological aspects."-----"Most workers in Al research and in related elds confess to a pro nounced feeling of disappointment in what has been achieved in the past twenty-five years. Workers entered the feld around 1950, and even around 1960, with high hopes that are very far from having been realised in 1972. In no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised.""In the meantime, claims and predictions regarding the potential results of Al research had been publicised which went even farther than the expectations of the majority of workers in the field whose embarrassments have been added to by the lamentable failure of such inflated predictions.""These general statements are expanded in a little more detail in the rest of section 3, which has been influenced by the views of large numbers of people listed in section 1 but which like the whole of this report represents in the last analysis only the personal view of the author. Before going into such detail he is inclined, as a mathematician, to single out one rather general cause for the disappointments that have been experienced: failure to recognise the implications of the 'combinatorial explosion'."See also: BBC TV - June 1973 - Lighthill Controversy Debate at the Royal Institution with Professor Sir James Lighthill, Professor Donald Michie, Professor Richard Gregory and Professor John McCarthy.Also in Lighthill, J., Sutherland, N. S., Needham, R. M., Longuet-Higgins, H. C., and Michie, D. (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence: A Paper Symposium. Science Research Council of Great Britain.

Amsterdam: North-Holland.