bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A study of the determinants of acceptance of computer-mediated communication systems
Authors: Hiltz Starr Roxanne
Published: January 2007

Computer-mediated communication systems use a computer to create, store, manipulate, and communicate text files and data bases of various types. They include "electronic mail," computerized conference systems, and office support systems (text processing, managerial decision support systems that contain group communication components, etc.). Pilot studies indicate that their use can significantly increase the productivity of the "knowledge workers" who now make up the majority of the labor force in the United States and other "post-industrial" societies.... One estimate... is that labor savings for managerial, professional, and technical workers making optimal use of such systems could equate to two hours a day per person, or $62 billion dollars per year based on total current U.S. annual labor costs in these areas.
Directions in human/computer interaction
Authors: Borman Lorraine
Published: January 2007

In 1981 a workshop was held in Atlanta, GA to review, consider and exchange ideas on research in the area of interactive system design and information processing. The ten papers in this book (as are so many publications in this field) are a result of that workshop. The following paragraphs form a descriptive review of this new contribution to the literature on Human/Computer Interaction.
A layout abstraction for user-system interface
Authors: Coutaz Joëlle
Published: January 2007

The strict separation of the functionality of a system from the user-system interface is considered as a reasonable design principle. One promising way to enforce the separation is to supply the system designer with a "user interface toolkit", a set of integrated software tools for implementing the user-system interface. The difficulty resides in determining the "right" abstractions to be implemented by the toolkit. So far, there is no satisfactory answer to this problem, only propositions. Little has been proposed for object-oriented I/O as a toolkit facility. Yet, applications are currently bound to express I/O in terms of low level abstractions. As a result, they are in charge of tasks that are irrelevant to their functionality. In this paper, we propose the
Box
as a mechanism to permit applications to handle I/O in terms of their own abstractions and to be relieved from irrelevant tasks. The box mechanism has been implemented and integrated in a user interface toolkit.
A continuing education course in software ergonomics for programming school teachers
Authors: Nielsen Jakob
Published: January 2007

A one-week continuing education course was given on software ergonomics for teachers in the Danish one to two year programmer training schools.
A psychometric evaluation of Yourdon's structured design methodology
Authors: Clark Jon D.
Published: January 2007

The outcome of any system design effort is typically assumed to be a function of the user's requirements specification. This study attempts to test the general hypothesis that the designer's psychological profile has a measurable impact on the system being designed. A simple experiment was designed and carried out to test the hypothesis and though the limited sample size prevents a strong statement of results, the hypothesis appears to be supported.
Expanding problem-solving techniques in people-oriented systems
Authors: Bly S. A.
Published: January 2007

We're here today to talk about people-oriented computer systems. Much of our work is concernea with evaluating and designing, or re-evaluating and re-designing, systems with which we are somewhat familiar. We also need to be looking ahead at new techniques, new methods, and new ways of using computers. First I want to discuss aspects of people-oriented systems, focusing on problem-solving. Secona, I will set up examples of problems that are difficult to solve with traditional techniques. Third, I will suggest a variety of alternatives for exploring these problems. I hope to encourage you to consider new ways in which people-oriented computer systems might better aid problem solving.
Formative evaluation
Authors: Martin Tom
Published: January 2007

If you want to find out how slow progress really is, invite a speaker back to report on reserch impacts four years later. It is very hard to say that a tremendous amount of progress has been made. One sign of progress is that many more people are interested in user-friendly systems nowadays than were four years ago.
Reaserch on human-computer interfaces at Virginia Tech
Authors: Ehrich Roger W.
Published: January 2007

For the past year and a half, a large research program in the area of human-computer interaction has been evolving at Virginia Tech. The program is the child of an alliance between two departments - Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) and Computer Science (CS), each of which had smaller-scale activities in that area without knowledge of each other's existence. A most important factor in this alliance is the support of the Office of Naval Research through a Selected, "Human-Computer Interactions and Decision Behavior", augmented by joint work with the Digital Equipment Corporation.
Lack of guidance for decision aid interface design
Authors: Schwartz Jeffrey P. , Jamar Pamela
Published: January 2007

Decision aids are being built by several research organizations. However, as noted by Wohl (1981), relatively few decision aids are in actual use. Problems with decision structuring methodology and failure to consult users during aid development are two reasons for this. A more important reason is the lack of general interface design guidelines directed specifically at decision aid designers. Three aspects of aid-user interaction--decision contingency, decision emergence, and the aid-user relationship--are issues which cannot be addressed by the decision structuring portion of aids but which require careful consideration during interface design. The development of a decision situation taxonomy which accounts for these issues is advocated as the starting point for general decision aid interface design guidance.
Working paper on ethical issues for research on the use of computer services and interfaces
Authors: Allen Robert B.
Published: January 2007

It is important to open a discussion on ethical procedures for conducting research on the use of computer services and interfaces. As a basis for that discussion, this paper outlines relevant ethical guidelines from several professional societies.
Human factors considerations in development of interactive software
Authors: Yestingsmeier Jan
Published: January 2007

When computerized systems were first developed, and storage capacity was highly limited, the primary concern was the design of an efficient, reliable system which could store data in the most compact manner. Little regard was given to the human element of data entry and retrieval. Although there have been considerable advancements in computer technology, human factors considerations are still lacking. This results in the end user frequently becoming confused or frustrated when trying to interact with the software.
Workshop summary
Authors: Spiegel Mitchell G.
Published: January 2007

A workshop was held on the Applications of Queuing Models to ADP System Performance Prediction on 7-8 March 1977 at the National Technical Information Service in Springfield, VA. Topics were divided into four general areas: (1) Application of Queuing Models to Feasibility and Sizing Studies, (2) Application of Queuing Models to System Design and Performance Management, (3) Queuing Model Validation and (4) New Queuing Model Implementations. Mr Philip J. Kiviat, Chairman, SIGMETRICS, made the welcoming remarks. As Workshop Chairman, I provided a historical overview of queuing model use which traced the development of the application of queuing models to ADP system performance prediction through the 20th century, while setting the stage for each speaker's talk.
A table of work formulae with derivations and applications
Authors: Hellerman L.
Published: January 2007

Formulae for the work of certain common simple computational steps are derived. The evaluation is in terms of an information theoretic measure. The results are then applied to evaluate the work of multiplication and division, and the work of the IBM S/370 branch and link instruction.
AI research at CMU
Authors: Rychener Mike
Published: January 2007

The most populous project at CMU is the speech recognition project headed by Professor Raj Reddy and Lee Erman. The current achievement is a voice-chess system incorporating several knowledge sources working in a hypothesize-and-test mode and interacting smoothly as a set of cooperating independent processes. This Hearsay system is reasonably successful in recognizing connected speech in the limited chess context, even though the chess-move grammar includes about five million possible utterances. It relies on a chess semantic specialist, the Tech program, on a grammar specialist, and on basic acoustic routines. Presently, re-analysis and reorganization of that effort is being undertaken, by Lee Erman, Victor Lesser, and Richard Fennell, with views towards implementation on the CMU C.mmp (multi-mini-processor) system. Bruce Lowerre and Richard Smith are analyzing the performance of Hearsay for multiple speakers on several other tasks: a Doctor task, voice news retrieval, and a desk calculator.
The heuristic programming/heuristic DENDRAL project
Authors: Shridharan N. S.
Published: January 2007

The Heuristic Programming Project at Stanford University is an interdisciplinary research effort. The problems of interest to this project include, besides the major effort in the Heuristic DENDRAL set of programs, determination of protein structures from X-ray crystallographic data, work in automatic programming and automatic debugging of programs, and studies on the representation problem. Some aspects of the Heuristic DENDRAL work are detailed below:
The Edinbugh versatile layout and assembly program
Authors: Ambler A. Patricia
Published: January 2007

A computer-controlled versatile layout and assembly system has recently been programmed at the School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh. The equipment used, locally known as Freddy, consists of a moveable table, a mechanical hand suspended over the table and two fixed TV cameras, all connected via an 8K Honeywell 316 to a timeshared 128K ICL 4130 running POP-2 programs. The hand is fixed above the table but can be raised and lowered, and rotated about a vertical axis. It has two palms, with force sensors, which are parallel to each other, and can be tilted about a horizontal axis, and moved together and apart. There is an obliquely mounted, wide-angle TV camera which is used to scan the table, and a vertically mounted one which is used to examine in detail smaller areas of the table (See Figure 1).
Progress report from Case Western Reserve University
Authors: Banerji Ranan B.
Published: January 2007

The work last year continued along the three areas of pattern recognition, theorem proving, and theory of problem solving. I believe that the new work on Theorem Proving is best described in terms of one of the abstracts referenced below. The work on pattern recognition has continued along the lines of "simulation for evaluating the effectiveness of generalization." Theoretical and experimental results are being collected on how large a sample size one needs during the training phase to ensure good generalization. The answer seems to be, "a huge lot, unless there are very few significant parameters or (almost equivalently) there is strong clustering of the classes."
Notes on the social impacts of artificial intelligence
Authors: Kling Rob
Published: January 2007

IJCAI-73 devoted three sessions to the aspects of AI funding, applications, and impact. In addition, one paper (Firschein, et al, 1973) described a Delphi study of plausible AI applications and their possible impacts. I'd like to share some of my reflections on this timely burst of attention devoted to these social concerns.
Progress report from SUNY at Buffalo
Authors: Furugori Teiji
Published: January 2007

Following Prof. David G. Hays's suggestions concerning a network form for the representation of knowledge in the human mind, we are constructing a robot that will create and use a human memory based on the linguistic experience of learning to drive a car. The main functional components in the model are a Parser, an Integrator, a Planner, and an Effector. The robot is to be simulated in a general-purpose digital computer.
A progress report on project CONSIM
Authors: Clema Joe K.
Published: January 2007

PROJECT CONSIM (Conflict Simulation) is a research effort devoted to emulating the processes of human decision making in complex situations requiring value judgements. The goals are (1) the development of a general computer decision aid and (2) a better understanding of how humans learn to improve in their decision making. The computer decision aid is designed to be prescriptive rather than to include the flaws of some particular human or group of humans, although "CONSIM I" did include the capability for incorporating some human imperfections. The model is of a mathematical and statistical nature and includes the following techniques: (1) linear programming, (2) alpha-beta search methods, (3) bayes's theorem, (4) linear evaluation function, (5) pattern recognition techniques, (6) heuristic procedures, (7) computer modeling and simulation of human decision processes, (8) game theory, (9) utility theory, and (10) decision theory.
Results of the fourth annual U.S. computer chess tournament
Authors: Mittman Ben , Newborn Monty
Published: January 2007

CHESS 4.0, a completely rewritten version of Northwestern University's computer chess program, won its fourth consecutive title in the Fourth U.S. Computer Chess Championship sponsored by the ACM at ACM-73 in Atlanta, Georgia last August. CHESS 4.0 was written by David Slate and Larry Atkin, systems programmers at Northwestern's Vogelback Computing Center, with the help of Keith Gorlen, now with the U.S. Public Health Service. It ended the tournament with three wins and one draw (against the Dartmouth chess program) for a total of 3 1/2 points in the four-round Swiss-style turnament.
AI at Essex University
Authors: Hayes Pat
Published: January 2007

The Computing Centre at Essex university is a fairly large academic department (28 teaching staff) and a computing service centre for the Whole University. Many research interests are represented, including numerical analysis, system design, communications, operating systems, compilers and computational linguistics. We nave a PDP10, an ICL 1900, a PDP15 and about a dozen smaller machines.
AISB summer school on knowledge systems
Authors: Oatley Keith
Published: January 2007

A most successful meeting was held by the Study Group on Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour at Oxford this summer. It took the form of a number of this country's more distinguished workers in AI, Dr. M. B. Clowes, Mr. P. Hayes, Prof. H. C. Longuet-Higgins, Mr. A. Mackworth and Prof. D. Michie each giving a series of lectures and leading discussions on the problem of how humans and artificial intelligences organize and use knowledge.
Fourth U.S. computer chess championship
Authors: Fikes Rich
Published: January 2007

The following are the games from Round 2 of the tournament held at ACM '73. The games from Round 3 will appear in the next issue of the Newsletter. (Games from the other rounds appeared in Newsletter issues No. 42 and 43.)
First world computer chess championship
Authors: Fikes Rich
Published: January 2007

Final plans have been completed for the First World Computer Chess Championship to be held at the IFIP Congress 74 in Stockholm on August 5-8, 1974. The four-round Swiss-style tournament will be held at the Hotel Birger-Jari in central Stockholm, each evening, Monday through Thursday, starting at 7:30 p.m. The tournament organizers are Prof. Benjamin Mittman of Northwestern University, Mr. David Levy, an international chess master from London, and Prof. Monroe Newborn of Columbia University.
Impermanent balance between man and computer
Authors: Davis Ruth
Published: January 2007

The sciences and technologies of computers, automation, and electronics are comparatively new. They differ in many respects from older sciences. Major confrontations can be expected -- and are already occurring -- as the domain of these new sciences overlaps that of individuals.
'Losing move'
Authors: Simon Herbert A.
Published: January 2007

Chess, like all games of perfect information, is, from a game-theoretic point of view, trivial. The value of the game, as well as optimal strategies, can be calculated - in principle, of course - by minimaxing backwards from terminal positions. If, as generally believed, the game's value is Drawn, then it is possible for a player to make a losing move - one that changes the value from D to L - but not to make a winning move - one that changes the value from D to W. (W, D and L mean 'won', 'drawn', and 'lost' from the standpoint of the player in question.)
Go and the computer
Authors: Dowsey S.
Published: January 2007

It seems that a disproportionately large number of mathematicians and computer engineers are members of the Go playing population in Western countries, and there is a sound reason for this. The development of Game Theory received its first great boost with the successful analysis of Poker and the demonstration that Poker principles can be observed in human situations on a very wide scale. The investigators then turned their attention to other games of skill and intelligence such as Bridge and Chess and finally to Go. In order to understand the principles of these games attempts were made to program computers to play them (at least the board game variety). We now have computers that play many games but their prowess varies in inverse proportion to the complexity of the game. For instance a computer is one of the top five 'tic tac toe' (Noughts and Crosses) players in the U.S. However, When it comes to chess the best performance so far attained is evaluated at around 1,700 points while in Go no one has yet produced a program which will Go beyond 10 kyu, the first level achieved by every beginner.
Symbol-mapping
Authors: McDermott Drew
Published: January 2007

This is a brief report on a frustrating problem (or constellation of problems) that has been a source of controversy at our lab recently. It is a summary of the ideas of many people, but, since even the formulation of the problem is controversial, your reporter is solely responsible for describing it in the following terms.
A theorem about automatic programming
Authors: Kugel Peter
Published: January 2007

An automatic programming system is a system (usually a programmed computer) that generates a program from partial information about that program (Figure 1). Looked at in this general way, automatic programming systems are hardly new. Assemblers are automatic programming systems. So are compilers, debugging systems, and even loaders. In this paper, I propose to focus on systems that "do more" than such systems in the sense that they require less complete information about the programs they are to generate.
AI and brain theory at the Univ. of Massachusetts
Authors: Riseman Edward M.
Published: January 2007

In the Computer and Information Science (COINS) Department of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, five of the thirteen faculty members are conducting active research in Cybernetics -- which in our department includes Artificial Intelligence and Brain Theory.
Representation and use of knowledge in vision
Authors: Barrow H. G. , Tenenbaum J. M.
Published: January 2007

This paper summarizes the present state of research in scene analysis. It identifies fundamental information processing principles relevant to representation and Use of knowledge in vision and traces limitations of existing progams to compromises of these principles necessitated by extant processors Some specific and general recommendations are offered regarding a productive course of research for the next decade.
The visions system
Authors: Williams Thomas D.
Published: January 2007

VISIONS (for Visual Integration by Semantic Interpretation Of Natural Scenes)
3
deals with the questions posited by the technical topic for the June
SIGART Newsletter.
E. Riseman and A. Hanson are developing the VISIONS research project with the long-range goal of analysing a wide variety of natural scenes. The problems incurred in machine interpretation of natural scenes are manifold. The three questions, however, do summarize several of the major thrusts of our effort.
Semantic picture recognition
Authors: Baird Michael L.
Published: January 2007

This paper is a slightly edited version of a research progress report prepared for an internal publication of the Georgia Institute of Technology. It is reproduced here to make its contents more widely available.
Relational models for object location
Authors: Baird Michael L.
Published: January 2007

The introduction of vision into advanced automation technology has been impeded by our lack of understanding of the cognitive processes involved. Significant theoretical advances towards explicating the "ostensive" nature of perceptual events has yet to emerge. We have, correspondingly, chosen to investigate empirically a subset of the general problem of machine vision. In particular, we are interested in the rapid and reliable recognition of the location of a known object. As a first step in this direction, we have identified the important role of "relations" in descriptive schemata, as opposed to "properties", in capturing an essential connotation of ostensive description. New combinatorial problems associated with relational descriptions became the focus of the research effort.
Overview of the hearsay speech understanding research
Authors: Erman Lee D.
Published: January 2007

Haarsay is the generic name for much of the speech understanding research in the computer science department at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). The major goals of this research include the investigation of computer knowledge-based problem-solving systems and the practical implementation of speech input to computers. An emphasis of this effort is the design of system structures for efficient implementation of such systems.
Computer power and human reason
Authors: Kuipers Benjamin , McCarthy John , Weizenbaum Joseph
Published: January 2007

I had some strong reactions to Joe Weizenbaum's book,
Computer Power and Human Reason.
The book mentions some important concerns which are obscured by harsh and sometimes shrill accusations against the Artificial Intelligence research community. On the whole, it seems to me that the personal attacks distract and mislead the reader from more valuable abstract points. I strongly recommend Samuel Florman's article "In Praise of Technology" in the November, 1975, issue of
Harper's Magazine
to see a different opinion about the role of technology in modern society.
AI sessions at ACM conference
Authors: Fikes Rich
Published: January 2007

SIGART has organized the following three AI sessions for the upcoming ACM National Conference to be held October 20-22 in Houston, Texas. Included below are the currently available session and presentation summaries.
Scene segmentation by cluster detection in color spaces
Authors: Schacter B. J. , Davis L. S. , Rosenfeld A.
Published: January 2007

Ohlander [1] has shown that a variety of scenes can be segmented into meaningful parts by histogramming the values of various point or local properties of the scene; extracting the region whose points gave rise to that peak; and repeating the process for the remainder of the scene. A generalization of this histogram analysis approach is to map the points of the scene into a multi-dimensional feature space, and to look for clusters in this space (a histogram is a mapping into a one-dimensional feature space, in which clusters are peaks). This note illustrates how one of Ohlander's scenes, a house, can be reasonably segmented by mapping it into a three-dimensional color space.
The Weizenbaum controversy
Authors: Schank Roger C.
Published: January 2007

I have so far managed to keep out of the great Weizenbaum debate, although I find my name and research bandied about enough. However, the last piece by Weizenbaum written in response to McCarthy's
SIGART
review has caused me to take the gauntlet at last.
Some thoughts on an interactive information retrieval system
Authors: Brown David
Published: January 2007

"Documents are in natural languages and the person seeking information from a document collection will almost always find it easiest to put his request in the language of everyday discourse." - Karen Sparck Jones.
Semantic grammar
Authors: Burton Richard R.
Published: January 2007

One of the major stumbling blocks to more effective used computers by naive users is the lack of natural means of communication between the user and the computer system. This report discusses a paradigm for constructing efficient and friendly man-machine interface systems involving subsets of natural language for limited domains of discourse. As such this work falls somewhere between highly constrained formal language query systems and unrestricted natural language under-standing systems. The primary purpose of this research is not to advance our theoretical under-standing of natural language but rather to put forth a set of techniques for embedding both semantic/conceptual and pragmatic information into a useful natural language interface module. Our intent has been to produce a front end system which enables the user to concentrate on his problem or task rather than making him worry about how to communicate his ideas or questions to the machine.
Philips question-answering system PHLIQA1
Authors: Scha Remko J. H.
Published: January 2007

PHLIQA1 is an experimental system for answering isolated English questions about a restricted subjectdomain. It was developed at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, by a team consisting of W. J. Bronnenberg, H. C. Bunt, S. P. J. Landsbergen, P. Medema, R. J. H. Scha, W. J. Schoenmakers and E. P. C. van Utteren. The system was designed during the period 1972-1975, and implemented in 1975. It runs under the MDS time sharing system on a Philips P1400 computer. Some details of the 1975 version have been improved in the currently running system.
Some sample programs currently accepted by a natural language programming system
Authors: Elschlager R.
Published: January 2007

This note lists several sample programs currently accepted by a natural language programming system. The natural language programming system takes a program written in a certain kind of "parenthesized" natural language, translates the program into an internal representation, and then executes this representation.
Request
Authors: Plath W. J.
Published: January 2007

REQUEST [1,2,3] is an experimental Restricted English Question-answering system that has been implemented in LISP 1.5 and runs under an interactive operating system in one million bytes of virtual storage. It is currently capable of analyzing and answering a variety of English questions, spanning a significant range of syntactic complexity, with respect to a small Fortune-500-type data base.
Natural language programming
Authors: Miller Lance
Published: January 2007

One project of the Behavioral Sciences Group, IBM Research, is to analyze natural language programs to discover the means by which process information is communicated. The object is to determine the extent to which there exist sufficiently reliable and powerful communication mechanisms which might be employed in natural language interfaces between computing systems and users.
Automatic programming through English dialogue
Authors: Heidorn George
Published: January 2007

The goal of this project is to develop a system which will automatically produce a business application program for a user after carrying on a natural language dialogue with him about his requirements. This can be viewed as an extension of currently existing questionnaire-driven application customizers, such as ACS [1], which automatically produce business application programs from the answers supplied to a series of multiple-choice questions. Each program so produced is a particular version of a very general, parameterized program for that application (e.g. billing).
On-line query system
Authors: Thompson C. H. , Badre N. A. , Fredericksen D. H. , Power L. R.
Published: January 2007

An interactive query system which is based on a library of on-line manuals and which provides answers quickly to users' questions stated in unrestricted English can alleviate many of the informational problems of the users of today's complex computing systems. In addition to providing relevant information to users when and where they need it, on-line manuals make it possible to insure that the latest manual updates have been made for all users. This project is involved in the development of such a system.
Contributions to a practice-relevant AI theory
Authors: Boley Harold
Published: January 2007

The general procedure of my current work is to formalize complex practical AI problems in a non-restrictive way such that they become solvable by means of well-known or new formal methods (e.g. from theoretical computer science). The results thereby obtained are regarded as contributions to a practice-relevant AI theory, whose development seems to be a prerequisite to a substantial progress of present AI.
System HANSA
Authors: Wittig T.
Published: January 2007

The system HANSA (=Hamburger Analyse von Sachverhalten) is the first stage of a natural language interface system for the input of data into a DBMS. The system designed and implemented so far (as a Ph.D. project under the supervision of Prof. Dr. W. Brauer) accepts German sentences with a very limited syntax, mainly because the implementation is not focussed on a syntactic parser but on a purely semantic one. Sentences are expected to express facts (describing realworld situations) and not opinions. These facts are mapped by the system into a semantic net, representing the model of a part of the real world. The procedures that accomplish this analysis are designed to be independent of a specific task domain. Thus the system can equally well handle sentences of the above mentioned type and sentences on a meta-level that express facts about the system's own net, enabling the user to modify the basic knowledge of HANSA in a simple and straightforward way.
Weather reporting
Authors: Coyne Edward J.
Published: January 2007

My research at Georgetown University involves practical applications of natural language input for small task domains. I would like to have included the following description of my work:'Semantics based analysis and synthesis of English language statements in the field of weather reporting.'
An approach to deductive question-answering systems
Authors: Reiter Raymond
Published: January 2007

The research which I shall outline here, and which is fully described in [2], is specifically directed towards the use of inference for fact retrieval in data base systems. Its principal point of contact with natural language input is through the choice of a query language, which is a subset of that used so successfully in the LUNAR system [4]. As such, this query language is a highly appropriate target for a natural language front end to a retrieval system.
Automatic thesaurus construction from natural language definitions
Authors: Schwind Camilla , Janas Jurgen M.
Published: January 2007

The aim of our work is the construct a thesaurus from natural language definitions out of a scientific domain; such definitions, e.g., for the field of computer science can be found in (1).
Automatic construction of semantic networks
Authors: Schneider H. J.
Published: January 2007

Six scientists are members of the group. The project started in August 1975.
The determination and conceptual structuring of restricted domains of discourse for "intelligent" interactive systems
Authors: Leitner Henry
Published: January 2007

With the recent development of Artificial Intelligence, it has become possible to develop programs which enable a computer to "understand" and act upon natural language input in a far more powerful manner than was previously feasible. In many cases, processing time of even fairly complex sentences can be reduced to the point that quasi-natural dialogue interaction can take place between the computer and human-user. Storage requirements and program complexity have increased accordingly, however, rendering such systems unmanageable except by highly sophisticated programmers and on all but large machines. It is the intention of the proposed project to explore ways in which proportionately powerful mini-systems can be developed, using some of the main AI strategies alluded to above.
Conversational HELP
Authors: Schultz Dave
Published: January 2007

The operator aide project uses a minicomputer-based terminal for operator interaction and control of a large time sharing system. The software in the minicomputer is split into two parts. The foreground part controls the communications line to the time shared system. The background part uses natural language input to answer questions about operating procedures, options, and error conditions.
Conversational program model
Authors: Corkhill Daniel D.
Published: January 2007

A practical approach to natural language recognition is taken in the development of a transition graph model for predetermined conversational program dialogues. The model incorporates context and prediction to reduce the number of user entries likely at any given point in a dialogue. In the design of the model, four major questions are addressed: (1) what types of conversational applications are suitable for practical natural language interaction, (2) what are the important characteristics of the dialogues used in those applications, (3) how can those dialogues be represented to improve program performance, and (4) how can those dialogues be represented to aid in the program design process. Implementation of an interactive computer science course advisor program provides evidence that the model can be a significant aid in the design of practical conversational programs accepting restricted natural language input via a teletype-like terminal.
A hybrid framework for natural language processing of large data bases
Authors: Williams Martha E. , Preece Scott E.
Published: January 2007

At the Information Retrieval Research Laboratory we are working on combining techniques in common use in information retrieval with concepts from artificial intelligence to provide enhanced processing of large data bases. Information retrieval research has provided the inverted file, which indexes the occurrence of each word in a text file. Our system will include a complete inverted index as an underlying representation of the natural language text and will impose additional information structures on that index. Specifically, the index will include: information about the semantic function of words at each of their occurrences, linguistic knowledge connecting the vocabulary nodes, "fact nodes" attached to vocabulary nodes describing entities (e.g. people), and procedural knowledge needed to find facts and build fact nodes - attached to word nodes and functioning as word demons. The information structure will have some features of a semantic net, some of a network of frames. The procedural and linguistic knowledge attached to a vocabulary node will fill the function of an ATN segment that is attached to the sentence ATN when the associated word is recognized and will also be responsible for recognizing limited kinds of facts and attaching them as attributes to the appropriate entity.
Conversational text input for modifying graphics facial images
Authors: Rhodes Michael L. , Klinger Allen
Published: January 2007

This paper reports on a text interpretation program for a minicomputer with 8K memory to facilitate modifying line drawings of faces. An interactive language is described that allows conversational dialogues between the user and image modification routines. We present an implementation that retains context during a dialogue and makes possible relational adjustments of facial features. Imprecise feature judgements issued by the user are used to modify images. Ambiguities encountered by the program are resolved by interrogating short term memory buffers and hash table data. Language and hardware features are combined by data structures that interface display processor instructions and requests generated by the interpreted text. The updating of these structures is discussed in terms of relationships between structure elements.
Some specifications for a natural query language
Authors: Mesguich Alfred , Normier Bernard
Published: January 2007

In this paper we define the main characteristics of a possible quasi-natural query language. Some linguistic analysis methods propounded (at the lexical, syntactic and semantic levels) are the results of a previous experience which resulted in a prototype in which only some of the exposed concepts were implemented. The data base model used is CODASYL-like.
Representing and locating deduction rules in a semantic network
Authors: Shapiro Stuart C.
Published: January 2007

A semantic network is defined with its arcs and nodes separated into various sets. Arcs are partitioned into descending, ascending, and auxiliary arcs. Nodes are partitioned into base, variable, assertion, pattern and auxiliary nodes. Nodes can be temporary or permanent.Some pattern and assertion nodes, called rule nodes, represent propositional functions of the nodes they dominate. Rule nodes may bind the variables they dominate with any one of a set of binding relations representing quantifiers. A rule node which dominates variables all of which are bound is a constant deduction rule.Deduction rules may be viewed as pattern-invoked procedures. The type of propositional function determines the procedure, the variables bound by the rule are the local variables, and the quantifier determines the type of binding.A binding is defined as a list of variables associated with the nodes they are bound to. A binding can be used like a substitution, except it is seldom actually applied. Instead, a pattern node and a binding for it are used as a pair.A match routine is defined which is given a source node and a binding and finds target nodes, target bindings and more fully specified source bindings. Target nodes that are patterns provide entrees into relevant rules.
Designing a rule system that searches for scientific discoveries
Authors: Lenat Douglas B. , Harris Gregory
Published: January 2007

Some scientific inference tasks (including mass spectrum identification DerzdrczL, medical diagnosis
Mycin
, and math theory development
AM
) have been successfully modelled as rule-directed search processes. These rule systems are designed quite differently from "pure production systems". By concentrating upon the design of one program (AM), we shall show how 13 kinds of design deviations arise from (
i
) the level of sophistication of the task that the system is designed to perform, (
ii
) the inherent nature of the task, and (
iii
) the designer's
view
of the task. The limitations of AM suggest even more radical departures from traditional rule system architecture. All these modifications are then collected into a new, complicated set of constraints on the form of the data structures, the rules, the interpreter, and the distribution of knowledge between rules and data structures. These new policies sacrifice uniformity in the interests of clarity, efficiency and power derivable from a thorough characterization of the task. Rule systems whose architectures conform to the new design principles will be more awkward for many tasks than would "pure" systems. Nevertheless, the new architecture should be significantly more powerful and natural for building rule systems that do scientific discovery tasks.
Spontaneous computation in cognitive models
Authors: Rieger Chuck
Published: January 2007

The engineering and theory of a style of computation in which code runs spontaneously (as opposed to on demand) are developed. The notion of a spontaneous computation (SC) is defined, briefly surveyed, and compared to other styles of computation. Then, in the first half of the paper, a LISP-based system which carries out a general theory of SC is described. This includes: complex trigger patterns, organization of SC trigger patterns into associative "trigger trees", and the structure of an SC itself. Higher level organization and control of SC are then discussed, introducing time notion of a "channel". In the second half of the paper, some theoretical ideas about how to use SC in cognitive models, particularly those modeling language comprehension and problem solving, are presented and discussed. The discussion includes: SC as a model of non-algorithmic inference, SCs as "character followers" in a story comprehension system, SCs as subgoal protectors and plan optimizers in a problem solver, and the relationships among SC, context and frames, In particular, ideas related to partially triggered SCs, and their theoretical applications as context-focusers and motivation-generators are explored. The paper reresents one aspect of a larger project called the Commonsense Algorithm Project.
Knowledge acquisition in rule-based systems
Authors: Davis Randall
Published: January 2007

Recent research efforts aimed at task-oriented systems have emphasized the importance of large stores of domainspecific knowledge as a basis for high performance. But assembling the required knowledge base is a difficult task that often extends over several years, and involves numerous modifications to the knowledge base. Given the difficulty of making even srnall changes to a program, this presents a challenging problem in system construction.
Production systems as control structures for programming languages
Authors: Brooks Ruven
Published: January 2007

Production systems have recently found considerable favor as the control structure for systems in artificial intelligence. This work has lead other researchers to suggest the creation of languages which have production systems as a primary or alternative control structure. This paper explores some of the possibilities available in these languages; an experimental language with a production system control structure is presented, along with an example program written in it. Appropriate application domains for languages of this type are discussed, and the potential for using them with future hardware architectures is explored.
Production system conflict resolution strategies
Authors: McDermott J. , Forgy C.
Published: January 2007

Production systems designed to function and grow in environments that make large numbers of different, sometimes competing, and sometimes unexpected demands require support from their interpreters that is qualitatively different from the support required by systems that can be carefully hand crafted to function in constrained environments. In this paper we explore the role of conflict resolution in providing such support. Using criteria developed in the paper, we evaluate both individual conflict resolution rules and strategies that make use of several rules.
An instructable production system
Authors: Rychener Michael D. , Newell Allen
Published: January 2007

The full advantages of the incremental properties of production systems have yet to be exploited on a large scale. A promising vehicle for this is the task of instructing a system to solve problems in a complex domain. For this, it is important to express the instruction in a language similar to natural language and without detailed knowledge of the inner structure of the system. Instruction and close interaction with the system as it behaves are preferred over a longer feedback loop with more independent learning by the system. The domain is initially an abstract job shop. The beginning system has capabilities for solving problems,, processing language, building productions, and interacting with the task environment. All parts of the system are subject to instruction. The main problem-solving strategy, which permeates all four system components, is based on means ends analysis and goal-subgoal search. This is coupled with an explicit representation of control knowledge. The system's behavior so far is restricted to simple environmental manipulations, a number of which must be taught before more complex tasks can be done.
Inductive learning of relational productions
Authors: Vere Steven A.
Published: January 2007

Relational productions provide a mathematically tractable formal model for operators in discrete systems. Two paradigms for the inductive learning of such operators are considered: before-and-after situation pairs and situation sequences. An operational theory for the generalization of productions for these paradigms is then developed, based on previous work in concept induction. This theory has been computer implemented. In examples three "blocks world" operators are learned from six before-and-after pairs and also from a sequence of fifteen blocks world situations. A transformational grammar learning example of Hayes-Roth is repeated with an improvement in speed of two orders of magnitude.
Robot perception learning
Authors: Friedman Leonard
Published: January 2007

A model of robot perception learning is described that duplicates aspects of observed animal performance. The designer incorporates in the model abstract knowledge about the possible observable consequences of actions in the robot's world. In this way the robot can predict an outcome and can compare the expectation with the actual experience. The robot's internalized perceptions of the world may then be linked with the consequences. The model structure permits the robot to reinforce predictions if they are in accord with experience or augment its stored perception knowledge and predictive ability if the predicted consequences disagree with expectation. The learning is accomplished without extensive search over a multi-dimensional space. The model is being implemented as a system called RECOGNIZER, intended to work with situations actually arising in the world of the JPL robot, now operational.
Cognitive systems based on adaptive algorithms
Authors: Holland John H. , Reitman Judith S.
Published: January 2007

The type of cognitive system (CS) studied here has four basic parts: (1) a set of interacting elementary productions, called
classifiers
, (2) a performance algorithm that directs the action of the system in the environment, (3) a simple learning algorithm that keeps a record of each classifier's success in bringing about rewards, and (4) a more complex learning algorithm, called the
genetic algorithm
, that modifies the set of classifiers so that variants of good classifiers persist and new, potentially better ones are created in a provably efficient manner.
Concept learning by feature value interval abstraction
Authors: Brown D. J. H.
Published: January 2007

An approach to the machine learning of pattern classification rules (concepts) is described. Rules relating pattern classes to identifying responses are generated by generalizing examples of simple numerical patterns. Once a set of rules has been established, the concepts they embody may be described in symbolic form by mapping individual pattern classifications into a set of standard classes (developed from all the induced rules).Some of the limitations of the paradigm are discussed and a proposal is put forward for its enhancement.