From: timm@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Menzies)
Subject: UNSW AI SEMINAR 18/12- Eklund on Epistemic Interactive Design
Reply-To: timm@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Menzies)
Organization: none
Distribution: aus
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 03:16:04 GMT

               University of New South Wales

         School of Computer Science and Engineering

             Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

                       Seminar Series
--------------------------------------------------------------

TITLE:     An Epistemic Approach to Interactive Design

WHO:       Peter Eklund
           Department of Computer Science
           University of Adelaide
           peter@cs.adelaide.edu.au

WHEN       1-2pm Friday, December 18, 1992


                          ABSTRACT

The seminar explores the advantages of a marriage between  a
``mixed  dialogue''  interaction metaphor  and belief logics
and in particular how the two  can  be  used  for   multiple
inheritance  hierarchy  design.   The result is a design aid
which produces critiques of multiple inheritance hierarchies
in  terms of their logical consequences. The work draws on a
number of theoretical  issues  in  artificial  intelligence,
namely  belief  logics  and  multiple inheritance reasoning,
applying ``belief sets'' to  dialogue  and   using  multiple
inheritance hierarchy design as a specific application.

The work identifies three design  modes  for  the  interface
which reflect the intuitions of multiple inheritance hierar-
chy design and conform to an  existing  framework  for  user
modeling.   A  major survey  of multiple inheritance hierar-
chies leads to the  allocation   of  a  precise  inheritance
semantics  for  each  of  these design modes.  The semantics
enable a definition of network entailment in each,  and  are
in  turn  used to determine the translation from inheritance
networks to belief sets.

The formal properties of belief  sets  imply  that  when  an
ambiguous  inheritance network is encountered more than than
one belief set must be created. Each  belief set provides an
alternative  interpretation  of  the logical consequences of
the inheritance hierarchy.  A ``situations matrix'' provides
the   basic  referent  data  structure  for  the  system  we
describe. Detailed examples  of  multiple  inheritance  con-
struction  demonstrate that a significant design aid results
from the explicit representation  of  operator  beliefs  and
their internalization using an epistemic logic.

WHERE:     Rm 212, Samuel Building, University of New  South
           Wales.  Enter off Botany Street, stop at gate and
           ask grey men for day pass and instructions.  Park
           in  the  main car park on your left.  The Samuels
           building is the gray building directly behind the
           gates  with  strange shield-like objects over the
           windows.

INQUIRIES: timm@cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Menzies)

--------------------------------------------------------------

                       PLEASE NOTE:

If you have a seminar that you would like to present at this
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