Goto

Collaborating Authors

 North America


Software Agents: Completing Patterns and Constructing User Interfaces

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research

To support the goal of allowing users to record and retrieve information, this paper describes an interactive note-taking system for pen-based computers with two distinctive features. First, it actively predicts what the user is going to write. Second, it automatically constructs a custom, button-box user interface on request. The system is an example of a learning-apprentice software- agent. A machine learning component characterizes the syntax and semantics of the user's information. A performance system uses this learned information to generate completion strings and construct a user interface. Description of Online Appendix: People like to record information. Doing this on paper is initially efficient, but lacks flexibility. Recording information on a computer is less efficient but more powerful. In our new note taking softwre, the user records information directly on a computer. Behind the interface, an agent acts for the user. To help, it provides defaults and constructs a custom user interface. The demonstration is a QuickTime movie of the note taking agent in action. The file is a binhexed self-extracting archive. Macintosh utilities for binhex are available from mac.archive.umich.edu. QuickTime is available from ftp.apple.com in the dts/mac/sys.soft/quicktime.


Research Workshop on Expert Judgment, Human Error, and Intelligent Systems

AI Magazine

This workshop brought together 20 computer scientists, psychologists, and human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers to exchange results and views on human error and judgment bias. Human error is typically studied when operators undertake actions, but judgment bias is an issue in thinking rather than acting. Both topics are generally ignored by the HCI community, which is interested in designs that eliminate human error and bias tendencies. As a result, almost no one at the workshop had met before, and the discussion for most participants was novel and lively. Many areas of previously unexamined overlap were identified. An agenda of research needs was also developed.


A Knowledge-Based Configurator that Supports Sales, Engineering, and Manufacturing at AT&T Network Systems

AI Magazine

PROSE is a knowledge-based configurator platform for telecommunications products. Its outstanding feature is a product knowledge base written in C-classIC, a frame-based knowledge representation system in the KL-ONE family of languages. It is one of the first successful products using a KL-ONE style language. Unlike previous configurator applications, the PROSE knowledge base is in a purely declarative form that provides developers with the ability to add knowledge quickly and consistently. The PROSE architecture is general and is not tied to any specific telecommunications product. As such, it is being reused to develop configurators for several different products. Finally, PROSE not only generates configurations from just a few high-level parameters, but it can also verify configurations produced manually by customers, engineers, or salespeople. The same product knowledge, encoded in C-classIC, supports both the generation and the verification of product configurations.


Pitch Expert: A Problem -- Solving System for Kraft Mills

AI Magazine

PITCH EXPERT was developed to make expertise available to mill-site engineers to solve pitch problems in kraft pulp mills. These problems have been estimated to cause losses to the Canadian pulp and paper industry in excess of $80 million each year. The design of the system took into account not only the complexity of the process interactions and the need for accuracy and completeness of recommendations but also the ongoing need for training mill personnel and the requirement that the system be maintainable and expandable without the constant involvement of the developers. PITCH EXPERT is now accessible by modem, and the savings achieved through use of the system covered the development costs within six months of release.


Compaq Quicksource: Providing the Consumer with the Power of AI

AI Magazine

This article describes Compaq QUICKSOURCE, an electronic problem-solving and information system for Compaq's line of networked printers. A major goal in designing this system was to empower Compaq's customers with expert system technology, allowing them to solve advanced network printer problems entirely on their own. This process minimizes customer down time; reduces the number of telephone calls to the Compaq Customer-Support Center (resulting in monetary savings); improves customer satisfaction; and, perhaps most importantly, differentiates Compaq printers in the market-place by providing the best and most technologically advanced customer-support facility. This approach also represents a reengineering of Compaq's customer-support strategy and implementation. In its first-generation system, SMART, the objective was to provide expert knowledge to Compaq's help-desk operation to better and more quickly answer customer calls and problems. QUICKSOURCE is a second-generation system in that the customer-support function is put directly in the hands of the consumers (an example of knowledge publishing). As a result, its design presented a number of different and challenging issues. Because the product would be used by a diverse and heterogeneous set of users, a significant amount of human factors research and analysis was performed as part of system design and implementation. The analysis also dictated certain decisions about the organization and design of the expert system component. Since September 1992, Compaq has shipped more than 3000 copies of QUICKSOURCE.


Applied AI News

AI Magazine

Prairie Virtual Systems Corp. play the resulting changes. Control Ocean Surveillance Center (Chicago, Ill.) has developed a barrier-free Harvest Software Inc. (Sunnyvale, (San Diego, Cal.) is conducting sea trials design virtual reality system Cal.) has integrated a neural networkbased of a multi-beam acoustic signal detection that checks building access. The which helps designers meet the into its Harvest Operator software Navy is evaluating the neural network-based requirements of the American with system. Harvest Operator automates system's ability to operate Disabilities Act, assists in the design the entire process of receiving faxed in real time, and to detect and classify of interiors that are accessible and forms. The neural network adds intelligent acoustic signals.


Engineering Design through Constraint-Based Reasoning

AI Magazine

These original contributions provide a current sampling of AI approaches to problems of with an analysis program for structural biological significance; they are the first to treat the computational needs of concrete design, and design sessions the biology community hand-in-hand with appropriate advances in artificial were performed to demonstrate intelligence. Focusing on novel technologies and approaches, rather than on how redundant analysis could be proven applications, they cover genetic sequence analysis, protein structure representation and prediction, automated data analysis aids, and simulation avoided and examine different of biological systems. A brief introductory primer on molecular biology and aspects of the reasoning and propagation AI gives computer scientists sufficient background to understand much of the strategies provided. Interval biology discussed in the book.


The Applied AI Business

AI Magazine

Remember, these are only the winners. It is reducing customers' software (KBS) vendor were touted as a natural fit for AI I think It is interesting to note that other $200,000 in personnel costs; other not. I believe it is more a sign of the AI techniques, beyond traditional benefits include increased product (downsizing) times and the need for representation and reasoning, are sales from higher customer satisfaction increased visibility for the conference. In I saw many good signs at the conference systems. In particular are multiple addition, AT&T reports increases in that applied AI is alive and uses of fuzzy logic, case-based reasoning, the quality of work produced and job healthy.


Tennessee Offender Management Information System

AI Magazine

Parole board date order received three different parole dates. On the changes, probation judgments, and new laws earliest of these parole dates, he would be eligible and sentencing guidelines enacted each year for release from prison to serve the remainder by the state legislature also affect sentence calculations. of his sentence in the community. Finally, Because offenders are often sentenced because of overcrowding in the prison, Doe under multiple laws, these changes can received a safety valve date, which is a fraction create a complex equation for judges and of his time to serve until parole.


The First International Workshop on Rough Sets: State of the Art and Perspectives

AI Magazine

The First International Workshop on Rough Sets: State of the Art and Perspectives was held on 2-4 September 1992 in Kiekrz, Poland. To stimulate the discussion, the participation was limited to 40 researchers who are involved in fundamental research in rough set theory and its extensions, logic for approximate reasoning, machine learning, knowledge representation and transfer, and applications of rough set methodology. The workshop focused primarily on applications of the basic idea of the approximate definition of a set and its consequences in other areas of science and engineering. Applications discussed at the workshop included machine learning, medical diagnosis, fault detection, medical image processing, neural net training, database organization, drug research, and digital circuit design.