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Computer-Based Medical Consultations: MYCIN

Classics

This text is a description of a computer-based system designed to assist physicians with clinical decision-making. This system, termed MYCIN, utilizes computer techniques derived principally from the subfield of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI). MYCIN's task is to assist with the decisions involved in the selection of appropriate therapy for patients with infections.

MYCIN contains considerable medical expertise and is also a novel application of computing technology. Thus, this text is addressed both to members of the medical community, who may have limited computer science backgrounds, and to computer scientists with limited knowledge of medical computing and clinical medicine. Some sections of the text may be of greater interest to one community than to the other. A guide to the text follows so that you may select those portions most pertinent to your particular interests and background.

The complete book in a single file.


Reasoning from incomplete knowledge in a procedural deductive system

Classics

The first section discusses the importance of having systems that understand the concept of knowledge, and how knowledge is related to action. Section 2 points out some of the special problems that are involved in reasoning about knowledge, and section S presents a logic of knowledge based on the idea of possible worlds. Section 4 integrates this with a logic of actions and gives an example of reasoning in the combined system. Section 5 makes some concluding comments.


A preferential, pattern-seeking semantics for natural language inference

Classics

Syntax, Preference and Right Attachment Yorick Wilks, Xiuming Huang & Dan Fass Computing Research Laboratory New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM, USA 88003 ABSTRACT The paper claims that the right attachment rules for phrases originally suggested by Frazier and Fodor are wrong, and that none of the subsequent patchings of the rules by syntactic methods have improved the situation. For each rule there are perfectly straightforward and indefinitely large classes of simple counterexamples. We then examine suggestions by Ford et a!., Schubert and Hirst which are quasi-semantic in nature and which we consider ingenious but unsatisfactory. We offer a straightforward solution within the framework of preference semantics, and argue that the principal issue is not the type and nature of information required to get appropriate phrase attachments, but the issue of where to store the information and with what processes to apply it. We present a prolog implementation of a best first algorithm covering the data and contrast it with closely related ones, all of which are based on the preferences of nouns and prepositions, as well as verbs.



Les grammaires de metamorphose

Classics

After examining the simplest statements thaรฏ can be based on a verb, a noun and an adjective, we go on to more complex statements involving articles, relative clauses and nรฉgations. Emphasis is laid on the systematic transformation ofa sentence into a semantic formula, h appears that such semantic formulae can be interpre ted correctly only in a logical system wit h three truth-values. Moreover one must suppose that the elementary relations associรขted wit h the verb s, nouns and adjective s range not on individuals, but on sets of individuals.


Some methods of controlling the tree search in chess programs

Classics

Research in computer chess has been active for over three decades. Over that period, computer chess has fallen from the position of being a prominent research application in artificial intelligence to a peripheral area. In this paper, we take a retrospective look at what has been accomplished, in order to understand where the field is today and where it is headed tomorrow. Whereas the past has often been clouded by engineering passing as science, misspent effort for short-term gains, and research results with little applicability to other domains, there is evidence that computer chess is emerging from the shadow of its past and may now be recapturing some of its lost stature in the research world.



Notes on a schema for stories

Classics

Northwestern students who are interested in changing their major, or simply sampling the computer science field, can take individual introductory courses.


Semantics and speech understanding

Classics

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. .


Search Strategies for the Task of Organic Chemical Synthesis

Classics

A computer program has been written that successfully discovers syntheses for complex organic chemical moleculeB. The definition of the search space and strategies for heuristic search are described in this paper. It is not growing like a tree... ...In small proportions we just beauties see; - Ben Jonson. Introduction The design of application of artificial intelligence to a scientific task such as Organic Chemical Synthesis was the topic of a Doctoral Thesis completed in the summer of 197I. Chemical synthesis in practice involves i) the choice of molecule to be synthesized; ii) the formulation and specification of a plan for synthesis (involving a valid reaction pathway leading from commercial or readily available compounds to the target compounds with consideration of feasibility regarding the purposes of synthesis); iii) the selection of specific individual steps of reaction and their temporal ordering for execution; iv) the experimental execution of the synthesis and v) the redesign of syntheses, if necessary, depending upon the experimental results. In contrast to the physical synthesis of the molecule, the activity in ii) above can be termed the'formal synthesis'. This development of the specification of syntheses involves no laboratory technique and is carried out mainly on paper and in the minds of chemists (and now within a computer's memory!). Importance and Difficulty of Chemical Synthesis The importance of chemical synthesis is undeniable and there is emphatic testimony to the high regard held by scientists for synthesis chemists.