This report contains a historical perspective on previous Distributed Artificial Intelligence Workshops, highlights of the roundtable discussions, and a collection of research abstracts submitted by the participants.

MA 02115 A Public Service of This Publicaiion 0 1987 National Commission for Cooperative Education page must specify exactly one topic ence proceedings. At most one addi-Please send program suggestions from the above list of topics (as well tional page can be used, at a cost to and inquiries to: as a subtopic, if applicable) as the the authors of $250 Papers exceeding Reid G. Smith main topic of the paper. This information six pages, and papers violating the Schlumberger Palo Alto Research helps determine which members instructions to authors, will not be 3340 Hillview Ave. of the program committee review included in the proceedings.

The (CSCW '86) was held in Austin, participants). The three-day report introduces the field of computersupported Texas, on 3-5 December 1986. It was event included nine paper sessions: cooperative work, describes the sponsored by the Microelectronics supporting face-to-face groups, empirical CSCW '86 program, and discusses the significance and Computer Technology Corporation studies, supporting distributed of the conference results An (MCC) Software Technology Program groups, hypertext systems, underlying introduction to the follow-on conference, in cooperation with the Association technology for collaborative systems, CSCW '88, is also provided for Computing Machinery (ACM) collaboration research, multimedia and its special interest groups on software and multiuser interfaces, industrial engineering (SIGSOFT), human experiences with CSCW, and coordination computer interaction (SIGCHI), and and decision making. There office information systems (SIGOIS); were also four panel sessions; the topics the Institute for Electrical and Electronic were collaboration and offices, collaborative Engineers (IEEE) Computer design studies, from theories Society; the American Association for to systems, and trends and markets Artificial Intelligence (AAAI); The for computer-supported group Information Management Society work. As the invited dinner speaker, (TIMS); and the Software Psychology Robert Howard, noted author on the Society.

The questions of how humans process uncertain information is important to the development of knowledge-based systems in term of both knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation. This article reviews three bodies of psychological research that address this question: human perception, human probabilistic and statistical judgement, and human choice behavior. The general conclusion is that human behavior under certainty is often suboptimal and sometimes even fallacious. Suggestions for knowledge engineers in detecting and obviating such errors are discussed. The requirements for a system designed to reduce the effects of human factors in the processing of uncertain knowledge are introduced.

The First International Workshop on User Modeling in Natural Language Dialogue Systems was held 30-31 August 1986 in Maria Laach, West Germany. Issues addressed by the participants included the appropriate contents of a user model, techniques for constructing user models in both understanding and generating natural language dialogue, and the development of general user-modeling systems. This article includes an overview of the presentations made at the workshop. It is a compilation of the author's impressions and observations and is, therefore, undoubtedly incomplete; and at times might fail to accurately represent the views of the researcher presenting the work.

Presented is a discussion of several issues raised during the workshop sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence on Coupling Symbolic and Numeric Computing in Expert Systems, which was held on 27 to 29 August 1987 in Seattle, Washington. Issues include the definition of coupled systems, motivations for coupling, coupled system architectures, and key factors in the design of coupled systems.

This article discusses several effective techniques for expert system knowledge acquisition based on the techniques that were successfully used to develop the Central Office Maintenance Printout Analysis and Suggestion System (COMPASS). Knowledge acquisition is not a science, and expert system developers and experts must tailor their methodologies to fit their situation and the people involved. Developers of future expert systems should find a description of proven knowledge-acquisition techniques and an account of the experience of the COMPASS project in applying these techniques to be useful in developing their own knowledge-acquisition procedures.

A superficial look at the artificial intelligence (AI) research being done here could give that impression. General awareness of the Australian AI research community has been growing slowly for some time. AI was once considered a bit esoteric -- the domain of an almost lunatic fringe- but the large government -backed programs overseas, as well as an appreciation of the significance of AI products and potential impact on the community, have led to a reassessment of this image and to concerted attempt to discover how Australia is to contribute to the world AI research effort and hoe the country is to benefit from it. The results of this study were published by DOS in the Handbook of Research and Researchers in Artificial Intelligence in Australia (Department of Science1986).

The 1987 Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) was held at Sea Ranch, California, 3 to 6 December 1987. Twenty-eight participants gathered in this rugged, windswept northern California coastal village to debate the theory and practice of DAI.