HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.)
Subject: There's a computer going up
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 00:09:06 GMT

Skynet is scheduled to go up in August 1997. That's a scary prospect.
I don't believe that any system made by man or even man himself can
tell when it/(s)he will go berserk or bonkers. How come the universe
appears so orderly? It seems that there is an order that we can't see
so we say "random", "there's a probability that such and such happens",
"we cannot be certain of one quantity given certainty of another",
etc. If we can tap this orderliness, we may be able to have our
cake and eat it too. Until then, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow
you may be dead.

Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: pat@cs.strath.ac.uk (Pat Prosser)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI Winter Refugees
Date: 26 Aug 92 10:05:54 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.
Originator: pat@kelvin-02

I've followed some of the dialogue on the above topic. Almost without
exception it has come from "the good old US of A". 

Europe, and UK in particular, had its AI winter in the late 70's due to 
the Lighthill Report. Lighthill, an advisor to Her Majesty's Government
concluded that AI was pissing into the wind. All funding dried up.

AI research then picked up due to the scaremongering tactics of E Fiegenbaum
and the 5th Generation, courtesy of the Alvey Directive and ESPRIT in
Europe. So we have a lot to thank the Japanese and E.F. for.

Mathew Ginsberg made the following observations:

>The result, of course, was that many relatively incompetent
>individuals started doing AI.  As their incompetence has become
>recognized, the field has arrived at a point where it needs to prune
>these people and retrench.  This process is in many ways complete in
>the academic arena; individuals have failed to get tenure and an
>increasing number of job openings are appearing in AI as time passes.

Again, this is a phenomenon peculiar to the goUSoA. And it backfires. 
The "publish or die" rule in the academic world (US) results in a low
signal/noise ratio, and it may just have taken too long for the
funding bodies to work that one out.

>In the industrial sector, things are more complex because industrial
>jobs are somewhat more stable than academic ones.  Often individuals
>cannot be dismissed; entire corporations must disappear instead.

Same comment as above. In UK academic positions are relatively stable,
whereas industrial jobs are unstable.

So ... is there an AI winter over here (you might ask)? There is a research
winter over here. It is affecting all scientific research. AI is no different than any 
other endeavour in that respect (I believe).

However ... my research is funded by a large national telecomunications
company (who will remain anonymous). They no longer use the term AI within their
organisation. It is tabu, and is considered as a 2 letter acronym for "pipe dreams". 
They now use the 3 letter acronym AIP (Advanced Information Processing).


Patrick
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: regions within regions
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1992 22:43:47 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <22948@ilog.fr> lepape@ilog.UUCP (Claude Le Pape) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug28.211428.148200@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com
>(Frank Adams) writes:
>
>> In article <SJAMESON.92Aug13083908@fergie.atl.ge.com> sjameson@atl.ge.com
>(Stephen M Jameson) writes: 
>
>>> In article <3753@keele.keele.ac.uk> csa09@seq1.keele.ac.uk (Paul Singleton)
>>> writes:
>
>>>> I have some regions in N-space, each defined by a simple set 
>>>> of constraints,
>>>> e.g.
>>>> 	0 =< X =< 5         (1)
>>>> 	0 =< Y =< 5         (2)
>>>> 	2 =< Z =< 7         (3)
>>>>	0 =< X+Y =< 8       (4)
>>>> 
>>>> and I need an algorithm (for general N) to determine whether one region
>>>> completely encloses another.
>
>>>
>>> This is based on about 5 minutes of pen-pushing, so it may need some
>>> smoothing of the rough edges, but your algorithm will be based on
>>> the following three facts:
>>> ...
>
>> Since nobody else has done so, let me note that this is *not* a solution, or
>> even much of a start at a solution. This is a "linear programming" problem;
>> accept no substitutes.
>
>Even though I ---in this particular case--- agree with the
>conclusion, I am afraid the sententious sentence above (This is a
>"linear programming" problem; accept no substitutes) does not provide
>very valuable information to Paul Singleton. Of course his problem IS
>a LINEAR problem, but there are many particular types of linear
>problems for which a general linear programming algorithm is not the
>most appropriate (e.g., critical path problems).

Yes, it's true that there may be other information not given which would
enable simplification.  However, no such information was given; I replied to
the problem as stated.

>The problem that P. Singleton wants to solve seemingly has an important
>characteristic: all the coefficients of variables are equal to 1. This

I assumed that this was merely a case of providing relatively simple
examples.  I don't think that the assumption that it is true in general
is justified.

>may suggest that an efficient algorithm ---more efficient than general
>linear programming--- exists or may exist for such a problem. In fact
>it happens that every linear problem with integral (or rational)
>coefficients/constants can be rewritten as a linear problem with
>coefficients of variables equal to 1.
>
>[proof omitted]

This is interesting.  Thank you.
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: es_fuchs@rcvie.co.at (Daniel Fuchs)
Subject: Where to order the FUZZ-IEEE'92 proceedings
Reply-To: es_fuchs@rcvie.co.at
Organization: Alcatel ELIN Research
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 12:48:09 GMT

Hi !

I would like to order the proceedings of the FUZZ-IEEE'92 conference on fuzzy-logic
that took place in San Diego.

Could anyone tell me where I could get an order form for these proceedings, or give
me their exact reference (Editor / Publisher) ?

Thanks in advance.

Daniel.

(Please reply by email: Daniel.Fuchs@rcvie.co.at )

Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: osborn@socs.uts.edu.au (Tom Osborn)
Subject: Re: AI Winter
Organization: Computing Sciences, Uni of Technology, Sydney.
Date:  4 Sep 92 04:39:22 GMT

marie@paris.erg.sri.com (Marie desJardins) writes:

>In article <1992Aug28.191729.105759@ua1ix.ua.edu>, rsun@athos.cs.ua.edu
>(Ron Sun) writes:
>|>In article <1992Aug28.125825.7628@csc.ti.com> thrift@ra.csc.ti.com
>(Phil Thrift) writes:
>|>>knowledge-based approaches are declining, learning-based approaches
>|>>are on the upswing (see the latest addition of Winston's AI text).
>|>
>|>Although interesting, this thing is no longer AI: it has nothing to do
>|>with the original grand goal of understanding intelligence and cognition.

>Since when is machine learning not AI?  I find it hard to believe that's
>what you're saying; perhaps you could clarify.  (Possibly your point is that
>learning *alone* isn't "complete AI"?  But then neither is knowledge 
>representation and inference.)

He's saying ML != AI. I think that's pretty plain. I take ML as the theory
and methods of compressing data into semantically exploitable categorical
expressions <woa, adjectival overload!>, ie, to explain data simpler than
by listing it. I would (if pressed) take AI to be satisficing within a model
- the model usually coming from existent conventional human explanations.

I don't see ML as a subset of AI (complete AI - not a term I would use).
(And I don't see it vice versa either). Even the overlap seems, to me,
to be far less than 50% of either field. [The aims may overlap moreso].

The original post (Thrift?) lists various methods of ML which I wouldn't 
accept as within AI. Even NNs have been given the black spot by many AI 
Labs and principals. Just because they have become more useful and productive
doesn't justify a "prodigal returns" conversion? [I raise a political spectre].


Tom Osborn,                                 " It is sorrow, not malice
School of Computing Sciences,                       which kills worlds ".
University of Technology, Sydney,      
PO Box 123 Broadway 2007,  AUSTRALIA.               Kate Braverman, 1985.
From: grady@public.BTR.COM ( )
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Looking for data sets for character recognition
Keywords: character recognition
Date: 29 Aug 92 01:27:55 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, MtnView CA. Contact: Customer Service cs@BTR.COM

A comprehensive set of spoken words, i.e.,
words accompanied by encoded pronunciation
is available in source, royalty-free, on disk.

E-mail grady@btr.com

167,000 entries in English
full International Phonetic Encoding
with three levels of emphasis
and part-of-speech disambiguation for
several hundred words.


Newsgroups: comp.ai,misc.jobs.misc
From: rgopu@cs.tamu.edu (Rangarathnam Gopu)
Subject: Help - CLIPS source code
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 04:57:02 GMT

Hi

Friendly warning:
----------------
This is a request for help. You may not be interested if you do not 
know a bit about the CLIPS compiler - knowing CLIPS alone won't help. 

I am a graduate student in  the CS dept in Texas A & M.  I am working 
with CLIPS version 5.0 

I am trying to modify the compiler to do a few things as part of my 
research work. Thanks to the umpteen C files, I find it pretty hard :-(
to keep track of each function - i.e. in which file each is located.
This is pretty far fetched, but does anyone out there have an index 
of the functions, sorted by function name and indicating the source
C file? Or a program to get such an index?

Help, please.

Gopu
email:  rgopu@cs.tamu.edu
--------------------------------------------
P.S: To the extremely curious, I am trying to make CLIPS more than an
Expert system language. The idea is to have some sort of meta-rules
and ordinary rules. There will be multiple copies of these ordinary
rules (CLIPS rules as we know them), with the same LHS and different
RHS. :-O ? Well the meta-rules are supposed to choose one of the 
ordinary rules to execute based on some criterion which cannot be
ordinarily included in the LHS of  a CLIPS rule - an example would
be a time constraint.

Anyone out there know of any such attempt by
someone else already?

Maybe I should get in databases ;-) No this is not my .sig
--
rgopu@cs.tamu.edu			ParukkuLE nalla naadu
Texas A&M University			EngaL Baaratha naadu
From: christb@infmuc (Christian Barmala)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: STRIPS
Date: 31 Aug 92 15:02:22 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

I'm looking for an article on STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem
Solver). Has anyone a reference ?

Christian Barmala
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: roberto@erg.sri.com (Roberto Desimone)
Subject: Re: AI Winter Refugees
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 20:11:39 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.190423.20543@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> ginsberg@t.Stanford.EDU (Matthew L. Ginsberg) writes:
>      Teknowledge in its heyday employed well over 100 individuals
>(I think it was closer to 200, but I'm not sure).  Now they employ
>some 35.

Am I wrong? Or didn't Teknowledge Federal become ISX Corporation,
Westlake Village, CA.  ISX seems to be doing pretty well.

Roberto
-----------
-- 
Roberto Desimone      roberto@erg.sri.com          Tel: (415) 859-4038
SRI International (EK335), 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025
From: park@netcom.com (Bill Park)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: DARPA AI Programs?
Summary: When, where, how much, for what?
Keywords: DARPA, Image Understanding, Speech Understanding, Strategic Computing
Date: 2 Sep 92 21:14:05 GMT
Followup-To: comp.ai
Distribution: na
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

Can someone please give me the dates on which the major ARPA/DARPA AI
research programs began and ended, where they were conducted, the cost,
and what the results were?  I only know of the following programs
(please add to the list if you know of more):

Image Understanding

Speech Understanding

Strategic Computing, comprising:

    Pilot's Associate (Air Force)
    Autonomous Land Vehicle (Army)
    Battle Management (Navy)
    (?) one for the Marines?

Pointers to review/summary articles in the open literature would also
be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill Park
=========

-- 
Grandpaw Bill's High Technology Consulting & Live Bait, Inc.
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI Winter Refugees
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:07:11 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Aug28.103804.9632@aisb.ed.ac.uk> e.reiter@ed.ac.uk (Ehud Reiter) writes:

>With regard to the AI Winter debate, one thing that really bothers me about
>AI is the level of academic dishonesty, i.e., situations where someone gets
>a large research grant to do something which he or she knows is impossible,
>on the theory that `money is money, and once I've got it I can put it to
>good use'.

Supposing this is true, there could be a number of reasons for it:

	1. AI researchers are dishonest charlatans.

	2. The funding agencies have ridiculous goals, and the
	researchers are trying to get some decent work done despite
	this.

	3. The AI funding agencies operate much sloppier controls on how
	their money gets spent than do physics etc.

Charlatanry seems to follow big money, and if you're motivated by big
money and research empire building then AI is not at the moment a
fruitful field. For example, I'd expect genetic engineering and AIDS
research to be more attractive to charlatans. I can't think of a reason
why the AI funding agencies should be sloppier. The funding agencies
operate general policies, and their staff move around.  So, if you
allegation is true, I would suspect 2. above. Which seems quite a good
reason to be dishonest. Remember von Braun being dishonest with Hitler
about his wonderful new V2 missile? It was a dreadful missile, cost a
fortune to develop and to make, and buried itself so deep in the ground
before exploding that it did very little damage. Being supersonic and
coming straight down it didn't even terrify people the way the V1
("buzzbomb") did. But it made a _lovely_ spaceship!
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: g92b8843@giraffe.ru.ac.za (MR PA BAISE)
Subject: NASA TECHNICAL REPORT ON PARALLEL EXPERT SYSTEMS
Organization: Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 15:41:40 GMT

Hi

I am looking for the following technical report by NASA :

	S.Lau & J.C. Yan , "Parallel Processing and Expert Systems",
	National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
	Report no. 103886, May 1991, 39 pages.

Could anyone please let me know where I can obtain it from. Any help will be 
very much appreciated.

Thanks
- Paul


Paul Baise                          E-Mail : G92b8843@giraffe.ru.ac.za
Department Of Computer Science      Tel : +27-461-22023 (ext 292)
Rhodes University                   Fax : +27-461-25049
P.O. Box 94
Grahamstown, 6140
South Africa

Xref: sparky comp.ai:3311 comp.ai.neural-nets:3375 sci.math.num-analysis:2621 sci.math.stat:1782
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets,sci.math.num-analysis,sci.math.stat
Subject: REQUEST: Multi-algorithm Machine Learning system?
From: Dick Jackson <Dick_Jackson@ibd.nrc.ca>
Date: 2 Sep 92 10:45:29 +0600
Distribution: world
Organization: National Research Council Canada
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d9X-XXDate: Wed, 2 Sep 92 16:43:26 GMTLines: 66

Gentle readers,

Our Informatics group has been discussing the need for a software
system for doing Multivariate Analysis, primarily for classification
and clustering tasks, making techniques from different areas of Machine
Learning available to the user.

What I would like to know is: has something of this kind been developed
already?  Many excellent individual machine-learning programs are
available from different sources, but has anyone made a system which
allows combination and comparison of different algorithms?

In more detail, we would want the system to include:

A. Pre-processing of raw data file:
- provide a means for choosing a sequence of options such as:
  - normalizing selected variables
  - filling in missing data
  - creating new variables from existing ones
  - performing transforms via Principal Component Analysis, etc.
  - splitting data into 'training set' and 'test set'
  - saving resulting dataset with pre-processing details 

B. Dataset Analysis
- following with the dataset above, allow any of a number of types of
analysis, each of which result in a clustering or classification
'system', such as:
  - inductive learning, giving a decision tree or other representation
  - connectionist, giving a trained neural net
  - LDA, genetic algorithms, fuzzy clustering...
    (incorporating software from willing sources)
- parameters/options for these analyses can be numerous, but
  heuristics can give a good first-attempt at parameter choice
- interactive displays may be needed for some
- end results to be saved for future use

C. Test/Use of classifier systems:
- pass test data through resulting classifier systems, giving reports
of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, etc.
- pass new unclassified data through classifiers, giving predicted
classes (with confidence estimates?)

D. Meta-analysis:
- based on reports from the previous stage, devise more robust
classification systems incorporating multiple techniques

The target user could be a medical researcher, not a programmer, so a
clear graphical user interface is of high importance.

It is clear that much of part A is seen in some of the better
statistical packages, but what about the machine learning techniques? 
Is anyone developing a multiple-technique 'workbench' like this?  If
not, we might be interested in starting up such a project.

I welcome any comments on this topic, please reply to me directly.  If
there is enough interest in a summary, I will provide it, so tell me
which newsgroup you read this in.

Thanks for your time,

-Dick

Dick Jackson
Institute for Biodiagnostics            National Research Council Canada
Winnipeg, Manitoba                               Dick_Jackson@ibd.nrc.ca
                      Any opinions: Mine alone!
From: turkel@unixg.ubc.ca (Bill Turkel)
Subject: Pandemonium and d(a)emons in general...
Originator: turkel@unixg.ubc.ca
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 17:25:21 GMT


Has anyone mentioned Maxwell's Demon yet?  It could be construed as a 
computational process of sorts...

Bill
turkel@unixg.ubc.ca
Newsgroups: comp.ai
From: ld231782@LANCE.ColoState.Edu (L. Detweiler)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: online thesaurus + travelling salesman = word spectrum
Date: 2 Sep 92 18:02:31 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523


- - -

Hello. Since the subject of online thesauruses pops up here and is in the
FAQ, I thought I would ask a question of people involved in this area.

Suppose I have a (large) set of words. A thesaurus can be represented as
a graph with words as vertices and edges denoting synonymnity. Now, suppose
the shortest path can be found that visits all vertices.  In a sense this
collapses the multidimensional graph into a linear listing.  The 
structure of this listing would be very interesting from the point of view
of a lexicographer.  It would be a listing of all the words in the set
in the order of `shades of meaning', and even gives a metric for this--
the similarity of two words can be defined as their distance from each 
other in the list.  

In a sense, this could be used to give a new kind of reference in addition
to a thesaurus or dictionary, combining some of the best features of both.
If a person wants to learn the meaning of a word, s/he looks in the index
to find the location of the word. Then, looking it up, examines neighboring
words, hopefully more familiar, to grasp at the meaning of the newer word.
It could be used as a thesaurus in a similar fashion.

Depending on the scheme, weights may be assigned to edges of the graph as
either unit lengths or some other measure based on the "nearness" of
two words (for example, the average distance of all paths connecting them).
If the weights of edges are nonuniform, the endpoints of the optimal path
may be determined uniquely. It would be interesting to speculate on what two
words would fall at the endpoints--`good'/`evil'?  `true'/`false'?
`love'/`hate'?

The question, then--has anybody attempted to implement such a scheme?  I
know that Travelling Salesman is apropos and in NP, so that the optimum 
path is intractable for larger sets, but even approximations would be useful.
The project may be feasible and even lucrative to an inventor, considering
the importance and ubiquity of language reference materials.


--

ld231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.EDU
From: ludemann@quintus.com (Peter Ludemann)
Subject: Re: turbo prolog
Organization: Quintus Corporation, Palo Alto, CA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 19:29:25 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.111331@aifh.ed.ac.uk>, xindongw@aifh.ed.ac.uk (Xindong Wu) writes:
> > Turbo_Prolog may be an interesting language, but it is *not* Prolog.
> 
> I don't think so. The only difference between Turbo and other Prolog
> languages (e.g. SICStus) is that Turbo needs a declaration part before
> clauses. However, the declaration makes Turbo quite easier to compile
> programs into runtime systems while I have been bored with the facilities
> in other Prolog languages for this work.
> 

Disagree.  

Turbo Prolog's types are similar to Pascal's.  This makes writing generic
predicates difficult.  For example, in Turbo Prolog, how would you write a sort
predicate which takes as arguments:
	(input)  a 2-arity ordering predicate
	(input)  a list of TypeX
	(output) a list of TypeX, sorted using the ordering predicate
which can be called by:
	sort( =< , [3,1,2] , SortedList) /* sort ascending */
	sort( >= , [3,1,2] , SortedList) /* sort descending */
	sort( before, [task1,task2,task3,task4], SortedList) /* topological sort of tasks */

This is just one example of how Turbo Prolog is missing some important
functionality that is in "regular" Prolog.

Which is not to say that Turbo Prolog is bad; it just isn't sufficient
for many of the things I do using Prolog.

If you search the literature, you'll find many type schemes for logic
and functional languages, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.  
Producing very efficient code is the goal of most Prolog implementors; if
adopting Turbo Prolog's type scheme were sufficient, I'm sure that
all other Prolog implementations would provide something similar.
Unfortunately, Turbo Prolog's type scheme is inadequate for many complex symbol
manipulation tasks; and if all you know of Prolog is what Turbo Prolog provides,
you're missing a lot.  (By the way, right now I'm using Prolog for analyzing
1,000 line-drawing maps and converting them into a geographic database; my 
Prolog code runs faster than the database loader, which was written in C.)

-- 
	Peter Ludemann  +1-415-813-3800  ludemann@quintus.com
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5955 rec.arts.sf.misc:2813 alt.cyberpunk:4129