Problem Solving
Associative memory in realistic neuronal networks
Almost two decades ago, Hopfield [1] showed that networks of highly reduced model neurons can exhibit multiple attracting fixed points, thus providing a substrate for associative memory. It is still not clear, however, whether realistic neuronal networks can support multiple attractors. The main difficulty is that neuronal networks in vivo exhibit a stable background state at low firing rate, typically a few Hz. Embedding attractor is easy; doing so without destabilizing the background is not. Previous work [2, 3] focused on the sparse coding limit, in which a vanishingly small number of neurons are involved in any memory.
Associative memory in realistic neuronal networks
Almost two decades ago, Hopfield [1] showed that networks of highly reduced model neurons can exhibit multiple attracting fixed points, thus providing a substrate for associative memory. It is still not clear, however, whether realistic neuronal networks can support multiple attractors. The main difficulty is that neuronal networks in vivo exhibit a stable background state at low firing rate, typically afew Hz. Embedding attractor is easy; doing so without destabilizing the background is not. Previous work [2, 3] focused on the sparse coding limit, in which a vanishingly small number of neurons are involved in any memory. Here we investigate the case in which the number of neurons involved in a memory scales with the number of neurons in the network.
Report on the First International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP)
Gil, Yolanda, Musen, Mark, Shavlik, Jude
Henry Lieberman surveyed successful techniques for programming by example, an approach where end users teach procedures to computers by demonstrating a sequence of actions on concrete examples as they how to accomplish it. This new conference series domain-independent inference practical exercises and illustrated promotes multidisciplinary research structures and reusable domain-specific the concepts with applications, including on tools and methodologies for efficiently ontologies. A related workshop of its knowledge content for communities. He received his Ph.D. in 1. portal.acm.org. For any inquiries, please email info@kcap.org.
Electric Elves: Agent Technology for Supporting Human Organizations
Chalupsky, Hans, Gil, Yolanda, Knoblock, Craig A., Lerman, Kristina, Oh, Jean, Pynadath, David V., Russ, Thomas A., Tambe, Milind
The operation of a human organization requires dozens of everyday tasks to ensure coherence in organizational activities, monitor the status of such activities, gather information relevant to the organization, keep everyone in the organization informed, and so on. Teams of software agents can aid humans in accomplishing these tasks, facilitating the organization's coherent functioning and rapid response to crises and reducing the burden on humans. Based on this vision, this article reports on ELECTRIC ELVES, a system that has been operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at our research institute since 1 June 2000. Tied to individual user workstations, fax machines, voice, and mobile devices such as cell phones and palm pilots, ELECTRIC ELVES has assisted us in routine tasks, such as rescheduling meetings, selecting presenters for research meetings, tracking people's locations, organizing lunch meetings, and so on. We discuss the underlying AI technologies that led to the success of ELECTRIC ELVES, including technologies devoted to agent-human interactions, agent coordination, the accessing of multiple heterogeneous information sources, dynamic assignment of organizational tasks, and the deriving of information about organization members. We also report the results of deploying ELECTRIC ELVES in our own research organization.
Structured Knowledge Representation for Image Retrieval
Di Sciascio, E., Donini, F. M., Mongiello, M.
We propose a structured approach to the problem of retrieval of images by content and present a description logic that has been devised for the semantic indexing and retrieval of images containing complex objects. As other approaches do, we start from low-level features extracted with image analysis to detect and characterize regions in an image. However, in contrast with feature-based approaches, we provide a syntax to describe segmented regions as basic objects and complex objects as compositions of basic ones. Then we introduce a companion extensional semantics for defining reasoning services, such as retrieval, classification, and subsumption. These services can be used for both exact and approximate matching, using similarity measures. Using our logical approach as a formal specification, we implemented a complete client-server image retrieval system, which allows a user to pose both queries by sketch and queries by example. A set of experiments has been carried out on a testbed of images to assess the retrieval capabilities of the system in comparison with expert users ranking. Results are presented adopting a well-established measure of quality borrowed from textual information retrieval.
Introduction to the Special Issue on Intelligent User Interfaces
Recent years have witnessed significant progress in intelligent user interfaces. Emerging from the intersection of AI and human-computer interaction, research on intelligent user interfaces is experiencing a renaissance, both in the overall level of activity and in raw research achievements. Because intelligent user interfaces are designed to facilitate problem-solving activities where reasoning is shared between users and the machine, they are currently transitioning from the laboratory to applications in the workplace, home, and classroom.
AAAI 2001 Spring Symposium Series Reports
Fesq, Lorraine, Atkins, Ella, Khatib, Lina, Pecheur, Charles, Cohen, Paul R., Stein, Lynn Andrea, Lent, Michael van, Laird, John, Provetti, A., Cao, S. Tran
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2001 Spring Symposium Series on Monday through Wednesday, 26 to 28 March 2001, at Stanford University. The titles of the seven symposia were (1) Answer Set Programming: Toward Efficient and Scalable Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning, (2) Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, (3) Game-Theoretic and Decision-Theoretic Agents, (4) Learning Grounded Representations, (5) Model-Based Validation of Intelligence, (6) Robotics and Education, and (7) Robust Autonomy.
AAAI 2001 Spring Symposium Series Reports
Fesq, Lorraine, Atkins, Ella, Khatib, Lina, Pecheur, Charles, Cohen, Paul R., Stein, Lynn Andrea, Lent, Michael van, Laird, John, Provetti, A., Cao, S. Tran
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2001 Spring Symposium Series on Monday through Wednesday, 26 to 28 March 2001, at Stanford University. The titles of the seven symposia were (1) Answer Set Programming: Toward Efficient and Scalable Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning, (2) Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment, (3) Game-Theoretic and Decision-Theoretic Agents, (4) Learning Grounded Representations, (5) Model-Based Validation of Intelligence, (6) Robotics and Education, and (7) Robust Autonomy.