This article describes a theory of reasoning about uncertainly, based on a representation of states of certainly called endorsements. The theory of endorsements is an alternative to numerical methods for reasoning about uncertainly, such as subjective Bayesian methods (Shortliffe and Buchanan, 1975; Duda hart, and Nilsson, 1976) and Shafer-dempster theory (Shafer, 1976). The fundamental concern with numerical representations of certainty is that they hide the reasoning about uncertainty. While numbers are easy to propagate over inferences, what the numbers mean is unclear. The theory of endorsements provide a richer representation of the factors that affect certainty and supports multiple strategies for dealing with uncertainty.

Various groups of ascertainable individuals have been granted the status of "persons" under American law, while that status has been denied to other groups. This article examines various analogies that might be drawn by courts in deciding whether to extend "person" status to intelligent machines, and the limitations that might be placed upon such recognition. As an alternative analysis, this article questions the legal status of various human/machine interfaces, and notes the difficulty in establishing an absolute point beyond which legal recognition will not extend.

The third national conference promotes research in the field of AI by bringing together individuals from government, industry, and academia and by providing a published record of the conference as proceedings.

When I took on the job of programme chairman of IJCAI-83 the trustees presented me with a list of problems with the way IJCAI programmes had traditionally been organized. Some of these problems had been raised by previous programme chairmen, some by attendees and some been subsequently been raised by me. I have tried to organise the IJCAI-83 programme to solve these problems -or at least some of them, I have been unable to devise a scheme which simultaneously solves all the problems. (I leave this as an exercise for the reader.) My plans converged after consultation with many people in the AI community, including the IJCAI-83 conference committee, and they have that committee's approval. Inevitably this means that IJCAI-83 will be a little different from here-to -fore, and in order for my changes to be also solutions, it is necessary for you, the paying customer, to be aware of these differences and to take advantage of them. The aim of this article is to raise you awareness.

Our group's work in medical decision making has led us to formulate a framework for expert system design, in particular about how the domain knowledge may be decomposed into substructures. We propose that there exist different problem-solving types, i.e., uses of knowledge, and corresponding to each is a separate substructure specializing in that type of problem-solving. Each substructure is in turn further decomposed into a hierarchy of specialist which differ from each other not in the type of problem-solving, but in the conceptual content of their knowledge; e.g.; one of them may specialize in "heart disease," while another may do so in "liver," though both of them are doing the same type of problem solving. Thus ultimately all the knowledge in the system is distributed among problem-solvers which know how to use that knowledge. This is in contrast to the currently dominant expert system paradigm which proposes a common knowledge base accessed by knowledge-free problem-solvers of various kinds. In our framework there is no distinction between knowledge bases and problem-solvers: each knowledge source is a problem-solver. We have so far had occasion to deal with three generic problem-solving types in expert clinical reasoning: diagnosis (classification), data retrieval and organization, and reasoning about consequences of actions. In novice, these expert structures are often incomplete, and other knowledge structures and learning processes are needed to construct and complete them.

The Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research (FLAIR) was inaugurated in October, 1980, with the purposes of introduction AI Technology into Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, and of broadening the AI base of its parent company, Schlumberger Ltd. The charter of the laboratory includes basic and applied research in all AI disciplines. Currently, we have significant efforts underway in several areas of computational perception, knowledge representation and reasoning, and AI-related architectures. We also engage in various tool-building activities to support our research program. The current computational environment includes several large mainframes dedicated to AI research, a number of high-performance personal scientific machines, and extensive graphics capabilities.

To Date Gross margin, by activity: Rosenschein will complete McCarthy's term on the Council for

This paper explores the paradigm that heuristics are discovered by consulting simplified models of the problem domain. After describing the features of typical heuristics on some popular problems, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be obtained by the process of deleting constraints from the original problem and solving the relaxed problem which ensues. We then outline a scheme for generating such heuristics mechanically, which involves systematic refinement and deletion of constraints from the original problem specification until a semidecomposable model is identified. The solution to the latter constitutes a heuristic for the former.

This paper argues for the position that experimental human studies are relevant to most facets of AI research and that closer ties between AI and experimental psychology will enhance the development of booth the principles of artificial intelligence and their implementation in computers. Raising psychological assumptions from the level of ad hoc intuitions to the level of systematic empirical observation, in the long run, will improve the quality of AI research and help to integrate it with related studies in other disciplines.

THE COGNITION AND PROGRAMMING PROJECT (CAPP) to use such constructs effectively. Dr. Elliot Soloway, Assistant Professor; Dr. Kate which people bring to programming and that computing Ehrlich, Research Associate Lewis Johnson; Jeff Bonar; Valerie Abbott which arise due to cognztively poor programming language constructs. Work is currently in progress on the following projects: What do experts/novices know about programming. 'This project is currently being funded by NSF RISE, under grant'This project is currently being funded by NSF IST, under grant number TIIE AI MAGAZINE Winter/Spring 1083 17 then many individuals will not be able to acquire such languages; Soloway, E., Woolf, B., Rubin, E., Bonar, J. (1982) Overview moreover, it appears beneficial from a problem solving Vancouver, B.C. the empirical projects, we are actively engaged in building an Bonar, J., Ehrlich, K., Soloway, E., Rubin, E. (1982) Collecting AIbased tutoring system, PROUST, which can assist novice Behavioral Research Methods and Instrumentation, this system is to identify non-syntactic bugs in a student's Recent CAPP publications are listed below. What Do Novices Know About Programming?