Technology
Artificial Intelligence Research at General Electric
General Electric is engaged in a broad range of research and development activities in artificial intelligence, with the dual objectives of improving the productivity of its internal operations and of enhancing future products and services in its aerospace, industrial, aircraft engine, commercial, and service sectors. Many of the applications projected for AI within GE will require significant advances in the state of the art in advanced inference, formal logic, and architectures for real-time systems. New software tools for creating expert systems are needed to expedite the construction of knowledge bases. Further, new application domains such as computer -aided design (CAD), computer- aided manufacturing (CAM), and image understanding based on formal logic require novel concepts in knowledge representation and inference beyond the capabilities of current production rule systems. Fundamental research in artificial intelligence is concentrated at Corporate Research and Development (CR&D), with advanced development and applications pursued in parallel efforts by operating departments. The fundamental research and advanced applications activities are strongly coupled, providing research teams with opportunities for field evaluations of new concepts and systems. This article summarizes current research projects at CR&D and gives an overview of applications within the company.
Evolving Systems of Knowledge
The enterprise of developing knowledge-based systems is currently witnessing great growth in popularity. The central unity of many such programs is that they interpret knowledge that is explicitly encoded as rules. While rule-based programming comes with certain clear pay-offs, further fundamental advances in research are needed to extend the scope of tasks that can be adequately represented in this fashion. This article is a statement of personal perspective by a researcher interested in fundamental issues in the symbolic representation and organization ok knowledge.
Starting a Knowledge Engineering Project: A Step-By-Step Approach
Freiling, Michael, Alexande, Jim, Messick, Steve, Rehfuss, Stefe, Shulman, Sherri
Getting started on a new knowledge engineering project is a difficult and challenging task, even for those who have done it before. For those who haven't, the task can often prove impossible. One reason is that the requirements-oriented methods and intuitions learned in the development of other types of software do not carry over well to the knowledge engineering task. Another reason is that methodologies for developing expert systems by extracting, representing, and manipulating an expert's knowledge have been slow in coming. At Tektronix, we have been using step-by-step approach to prototyping expert systems for over two years now. The primary features of this approach are that it gives software engineers who do not know knowledge engineering an easy place to start, and that it proceeds in a step-by-step fashion from initiation to implementation without inducing conceptual bottlenecks into the development process. This methodology has helped us collect the knowledge necessary to implement several prototype knowledge-based systems, including a troubleshooting assistant for the Tektronix FG-502 function generator and an operator's assistant for a wave solder machine.
I Lied About the Trees, Or, Defaults and Definitions in Knowledge Representation
Over the past few years, the notion of a "prototype" (e.g., TYPICAL-ELEPHANT) seems to have caught on securely in knowledge representation research. Along with a way to specify default properties for instances of a description, proto-representations allow overriding, or "canceling" of properties that don't apply in particular cases. This supposedly makes representing exceptions ( three-legged elephants and the like ) easy; but, alas, it makes one crucial type of representation impossible-that of composite descriptions whose meanings are functions of the structure and interrelation of their parts. This article explores this and other ramifications of the emphasis on default properties and "typical" objects.
The Dark Ages of AI: A Panel Discussion at AAAI-84
McDermott, Drew, Waldrop, M. Mitchell, Chandrasekaran, B., McDermott, John, Schank, Roger
The fact was there were a lot of failures. There I have been assigned the role of survivalist. First I want to were overruns and systems delivered past schedule. This ask, "Has AI paid its way?"... Or to put it another way, is certainly not unique to Naval Electronic System Command. "Have we earned our keep?" I have three answers to that: The most would be systems being acquired for the Yes, yes, and yes.
Editorial
It has been a gratifying experience to observe and to One major exception: I know that many members participate in the growth of our Association's Magazine. As the official publication worried about how we'd get enough material to put out the Moreover, there is no articles full, and I was concerned that it just be nonempty! We don't have that I had rejected almost nothing since I had taken over-the editorial staff to do extensive rewriting or editing. "All the news we get we print" was close to the truth. Most of the magazine published four issues, averaging a little over 40 pages each.
The Emergence of Artificial Intelligence: Learning to Learn
The classical approach to the acquisition of knowledge and reason in artificial intelligence is to program the facts and rules into the machine. Unfortunately, the amount of time required to program the equivalent of human intelligence is prohibitively large. An alternative approach allows an automaton to learn to solve problems through iterative trial-and-error interaction with its environment, much as humans do. To solve a problem posed by the environment, the automaton generates a sequence or collection of responses based on its experience. The environment evaluates the effectiveness of this collection, and reports its evaluation to the automaton. The automaton modifies its strategy accordingly, and then generates a new collection of responses. This process is repeated until the automaton converges to the correct collection of responses. The principles underlying this paradigm, known as collective learning systems theory are explained and applied to a simple game, demonstrating robust learning and dynamic adaptivity.
Letters to the Editor
Mostow, Jack, Katke, William, Partridge, Derek, Koton, Phyllis, Estrin, Deborah, Gray, Sharon, Ladin, Rivka, Eisenberg, Mike, Duffy, Gavin, Dorr, Bonnie, Batali, John, Levitt, David, Shirley, Mark, Giansiracusa, Robert, Montalvo, Fanya, Pitman, Kent, Golden, Ellen, Stone, Bob
And even if verification to be accommodated within the SPIV paradigm. But until were possible it would not contribute very much to the such time as we find these learning algorithms (and I development of production software. Hence "verifiability don't think that many would argue that such algorithms must not be allowed to overshadow reliability. Scientists will be available in the foreseeable future) we must face should not confuse mathematical models with reality." the prospect of systems that will need to be modified, in AI is perhaps not so special, it is rather an extreme nontrivial ways, throughout their useful lives. Thus incremental and thus certain of its characteristics are more obvious development will be a constant feature of such than in conventional software applications. Thus the SPIV software and if it is not fully automatic then it will be part methodology may be inappropriate for an even larger class of the human maintenance of the system. I am, of course, of problems than those of AI. not suggesting that the products of say architectural design I have raised all these points not to try to deny the (i.e., buildings) will need a learning capability. Nevertheless, worth of Mostow's ideas and issues concerning the design a final fixed design, that remains "optimal" in a process, but to make the case that such endeavors should dynamically changing world, is a rare event.The similarity also be pursued within a fundamentally incremental and between AI system development and the design of more evolutionary framework for design. The potential of the concrete objects is still present, but it is, in some respects, RUDE paradigm is deserving of more attention than it is rather tenuous I admit.
The History of Artificial Intelligence at Rutgers
The founding of a new college at Rutgers in 1969 became the occasion for building a strong computer science presence in the University. Livingston College thus provided the home for the newly organized Department of Computer Science (DCS) and for the beginning of computer science research at Rutgers.