FAQ: Artificial Intelligence Questions & Answers 1/6 [Monthly posting]
Mark Kantrowitz
Last-Modified: Tue Feb 7 13:22:28 1995 by Mark Kantrowitz
Version: 1.28
Maintainer: Mark Kantrowitz <mkant+...@cs.cmu.edu>
URL: http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/Groups/AI/html/faqs/ai/ai_general/top.html
Size: 42503 bytes, 1102 lines
;;; ****************************************************************
;;; Answers to Questions about Artificial Intelligence *************
;;; ****************************************************************
;;; Written by Mark Kantrowitz
;;; ai_1.faq
If you think of questions that are appropriate for this FAQ, or would
like to improve an answer, please send email to mkant+...@cs.cmu.edu.
*** Copyright:
Copyright (c) 1992-94 by Mark Kantrowitz. All rights reserved.
This FAQ may be freely redistributed in its entirety without
modification provided that this copyright notice is not removed. It
may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents
(e.g., published for sale on CD-ROM, floppy disks, books, magazines,
or other print form) without the prior written permission of the
copyright holder. Permission is expressly granted for this document
to be made available for file transfer from installations offering
unrestricted anonymous file transfer on the Internet.
If this FAQ is reproduced in offline media (e.g., CD-ROM, print form,
etc.), a complimentary copy should be sent to Mark Kantrowitz, School
of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 USA.
This article is provided AS IS without any express or implied warranty.
*** Recent changes:
;;; 1.26:
;;; 1-DEC-94 mk Added [1-9] Future Directions of AI.
;;; 1-DEC-94 mk Added Conceptual Graphs, Wisdom, SRKB, interlingua, and
;;; conlang mailing lists to part 2, thanks to Fritz Lehman.
;;; 8-DEC-94 mk Corrected AISB entry.
;;; 9-DEC-94 mk Updated entry for NCC AI CD-ROM in part 6.
;;; 12-DEC-94 mk AI-ED list seems to have moved. Anybody know where?
;;;
;;; 1.27:
;;; 13-DEC-94 mk Added URL for ML-List in part 2.
;;; 14-DEC-94 mk Changed chess ftp site to chess.lm.com in part 5.
;;; 16-JAN-95 mk Updated Uncertainty mailing lists in part 2.
;;; 25-JAN-95 mk Added AI-CBR list to part 2.
;;; 7-FEB-95 mk Added "ai" to glossary.
;;; 7-FEB-95 mk Added note about the AI BOOK PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENTS
;;; mailing list to part 4.
*** Topics Covered:
Part 1:
[1-0] What is the purpose of this newsgroup?
[1-1] History of AI?
[1-2] Glossary of AI terms.
[1-3] What are the top schools in AI?
[1-4] How can I get the email address for Joe or Jill Researcher?
[1-5] What are the rules for the game of "Life"?
[1-6] What AI competitions exist?
[1-7] Commercial AI products.
[1-8] AI Job Postings
[1-9] Future Directions of AI
Part 2 (AI-related Newsgroups and Mailing Lists):
List of all known AI-related newsgroups, newsgroup archives, mailing
lists, and electronic bulletin board systems.
Part 3 (AI-related Associations and Journals):
List of AI-related associations and journals, organized by subfield.
Part 4 (Bibliography):
- Bibliography of introductory texts, overviews and references
- Addresses and phone numbers for major AI publishers
- Finding conference proceedings
- Finding PhD dissertations
Part 5 (FTP Resources):
[5-0] General Information about FTP Resources for AI
[5-1] FTP Repositories
[5-2a] FTP and Other Resources: Agents -- Planning
Note: Question [5-2] (FTP and Other Resources) is split across parts 5 and 6.
Part 6 (FTP Resources):
[5-2b] FTP and Other Resources: Qualitative Reasoning -- Theorem Proving
[6-1] AI Bibliographies available by FTP
[6-2] AI Technical Reports available by FTP
[6-3] Where can I get a machine readable dictionary, thesaurus, and
other text corpora?
[6-4] List of Smalltalk implementations.
[6-5] AI-related CD-ROMs
[6-6] World-Wide Web (WWW) Resources
Search for [#] to get to question number # quickly.
*** Introduction:
Certain questions and topics come up frequently in the various network
discussion groups devoted to and related to Artificial Intelligence
(AI). This file/article is an attempt to gather these questions and
their answers into a convenient reference for AI researchers. It is
posted on a monthly basis. The hope is that this will cut down on the
user time and network bandwidth used to post, read and respond to the
same questions over and over, as well as providing education by
answering questions some readers may not even have thought to ask.
The latest version of this FAQ is available via anonymous FTP from
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/ [128.2.206.173]
using username "anonymous" and password "name@host" (substitute your
email address) or via AFS in the Andrew File System directory
/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/
as the files ai_1.faq, ai_2.faq, ai_3.faq, ai_4.faq, ai_5.faq and ai_6.faq.
You can also obtain a copy of the FAQ by sending a message to
ai+q...@cs.cmu.edu with
Send AI FAQ
in the message body.
The FAQ postings are also archived in the periodic posting archive on
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/ [18.181.0.24]
If you do not have anonymous ftp access, you can access the archive by
mail server as well. Send an E-mail message to mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu
with "help" and "index" in the body on separate lines for more
information.
An automatically generated HTML version of the AI FAQ is accessible by
WWW as part of the AI-related FAQs Mosaic page. The URL for this
resource is
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/Groups/AI/html/faqs/top.html
The direct URL for the AI FAQ is
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/Groups/AI/html/faqs/ai/ai_general/top.html
If you need to cite the FAQ for some reason, use the following format:
Mark Kantrowitz, "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about
Artificial Intelligence", comp.ai, <month>, <year>,
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/ai_?.faq, mkant+...@cs.cmu.edu.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: [1-0] What is the purpose of this newsgroup?
The newsgroup comp.ai exists for general discussion of topics related
to Artificial Intelligence. For example, possible topics can
include (but are not necessarily limited to):
announcements of AI books and products
discussion of AI programs and tools
questions about AI techniques
problems implementing an AI technique
Postings should be of general interest to the AI community. See also
part 2 of the FAQ for a list of other more specialized discussion lists.
Every so often, somebody posts an inflammatory message, such as
Will computers every really think?
AI hasn't done anything worthwhile.
These "religious" issues serve no real purpose other than to waste
bandwidth. If you feel the urge to respond to such a post, please do
so through a private e-mail message, or post redirecting follow-ups to
comp.ai.philosophy.
We've tried to minimize the overlap with the FAQ postings to the
comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.prolog, comp.ai.neural-nets, and
comp.ai.shells newsgroups, so if you don't find what you're looking
for here, we suggest you try the FAQs for those newsgroups. These FAQs
should be available by anonymous ftp in subdirectories of
rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/
or by sending a mail message to mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu with subject "help".
The Lisp FAQ is also available by anonymous ftp from the same ftp
location as the AI FAQ and from ftp.think.com:/public/think/lisp/.
The Expert Systems Shells FAQ is also available by anonymous ftp from
the same ftp location as the AI FAQ.
Information about Prolog may be obtained from two sources: The Prolog
FAQ, which is posted twice a month to the newsgroup comp.lang.prolog
by Jamie Andrews <ja...@cs.sfu.ca>, and the Prolog Resource Guide,
which is posted to the newsgroup comp.lang.prolog once a month, and is
available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/prolog/ [128.2.206.173]
or in the AFS directory
/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/pubs/faqs/prolog/
as the files prg_1.faq and prg_2.faq.
The Robotics FAQ is available by anonymous ftp from
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/nivek/robotics-faq/ [128.2.206.173]
as the files part1 and part2. To obtain a copy by email, send a message to
mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu containing the following lines:
send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part1
send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part2
On UUCP, it is available at
uunet!/archive/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/
as the files part1.Z and part2.Z, or by ftp from
ftp.uu.net:/archive/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/ [137.39.1.9]
Information about object-oriented programming can be obtained in the
newsgroups comp.object, comp.lang.clos, and comp.lang.smalltalk.
Information about object-oriented databases can be obtained in the
survey compiled by Stewart Clamen, which may be found either in the
comp.object FAQ posting or in
byron.sp.cs.cmu.edu:/usr/anon/clamen/evolution-summary
The Neurosciences Internet Resource Guide is available by
anonymous ftp from
una.hh.lib.umich.edu:/inetdirsstacks/neurosci:cormbonario
and by WWW from
gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu/00/inetdirsstacks/neurosci:cormbonario
in text (ascii) form. A hypertext version of the guide suitable for
viewing using Mosaic is available from
http://http2.sils.umich.edu/Public/nirg/nirg1.html
For more information, contact Steve Bonario and Sheryl Cormicle
<ni...@umich.edu>.
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Subject: [1-1] History of AI?
For an online timeline of artificial intelligence milestones, see
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/timeline.txt
The appendix to Ray Kurzweil's book "Intelligent Machines" (MIT Press,
1990, ISBN 0-262-11121-7, $39.95) gives a timeline of the history of AI.
Pamela McCorduck, "Machines Who Think", Freeman, San Francisco, CA, 1979.
Allen Newell, "Intellectual Issues in the History of Artificial
Intelligence", Technical Report CMU-CS-82-142, Carnegie Mellon
University Computer Science Department, October 28, 1982.
See also:
Charniak and McDermott's book "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence",
Addison-Wesley, 1985 contains a number of historical pointers.
Daniel Crevier, "AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for
Artificial Intelligence", Basic Books, New York, 1993.
Henry C. Mishkoff, "Understanding Artificial Intelligence", 1st edition,
Howard W. Sams & Co., Indianapolis, IN, 1985, 258 pages,
ISBN 0-67227-021-8 $14.95.
Margaret A. Boden, "Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man", 2nd edition,
Basic Books, New York, 1987, 576 pages.
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Subject: [1-2] Glossary of AI terms.
This is the start of a simple glossary of short definitions for AI terminology.
ai:
A three-toed sloth of genus Bradypus. This forest-dwelling
animal eats the leaves of the trumpet-tree and sounds a
high-pitched squeal when disturbed. (Based on the Random House
dictionary definition.)
Admissibility:
An admissible search algorithm is one that is guaranteed to
find an optimal path from the start node to a goal node, if
one exists. In A* search, an admissible heuristic is one that never
overestimates the distance remaining from the current node to
the goal.
Case-based Reasoning:
Technique whereby "cases" similar to the current problem are
retrieved and their "solutions" modified to work on the current
problem.
Data Mining:
Also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) was been defined
as "The nontrivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and
potentially useful information from data" in Frawley and
Piatetsky-Shapiro's overview. It uses machine learning, statistical
and visualization techniques to discover and present knowledge in a
form which is easily comprehensible to humans.
Fuzzy Logic:
In Fuzzy Logic, truth values are real values in the closed
interval [0..1]. The definitions of the boolean operators are
extended to fit this continuous domain. By avoiding discrete
truth-values, Fuzzy Logic avoids some of the problems inherent in
either-or judgments and yields natural interpretations of utterances
like "very hot". Fuzzy Logic has applications in control theory.
Nonlinear Planning:
A planning paradigm which does not enforce a total (linear)
ordering on the components of a plan.
Strong AI:
Claim that computers can be made to actually think, just like human
beings do. More precisely, the claim that there exists a class of
computer programs, such that any implementation of such a program is
really thinking.
Validation:
The process of confirming that one's model uses measureable inputs
and produces output that can be used to make decisions about the
real world.
Verification:
The process of confirming that an implemented model works as intended.
Weak AI:
Claim that computers are important tools in the modeling and
simulation of human activity.
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Subject: [1-3] What are the top schools in AI?
The answer to this question is not intended to be a ranking and should
not be interpreted as such. There are several major problems with
ratings like the Gourman Report and the US News and World Report. Such
rankings are often unsubstantiated and anecdotal, their accuracy is
questionable, and they do not focus on the subfields of an area. When
selecting a graduate school, students should look for schools which
not only have excellent programs in their general area of research
but also at least one faculty member whose research interests mesh
well with the student's. Accordingly, we've broken down this list
according to topic, and sorted the schools within each topic in
ALPHABETICAL ORDER.
For a school to be added to a topic area, there should at least two
faculty actively conducting research in that area and the school
should have a "good" reputation in that area. Exceptions are made for
schools which only have one faculty member in the area, but that
professor is a "leader" of the area, or for fields where the total
number of people working in the area is small in the first place. The
general idea behind these criteria is to ensure that a school has
enough activity in the area that a student who considers one of these
schools won't be disappointed if one of the faculty in that area is on
sabbatical or isn't taking students. Note that the research need not
be conducted in the school's computer science department for the
school to be listed -- in some cases we've included schools where the
research is being conducted in a different department or special laboratory.
The best way for students to discover which schools are good in a
field is to ask professors (and graduate students) in their
undergraduate school for suggestions on where to apply. Reading the
research journals in the field is another good method (see part 3 of
the FAQ).
A genealogy of AI thesis-advising relationships is available by
anonymous ftp as
cs.ucsd.edu:/pub/rik/aigen.rpt
Although intended to complement citation analysis and free-text
information retrieval as tools for understanding the AI community and
their connections to other disciplines, it may be useful to
prospective graduate students. For example, it may help you understand
the historical context of a given professor's perspective. 2,600 MS
and PhD theses have been tabulated so far. If you'd like to
contribute additional listings (including year, title, abstract,
school, advisor, committee members, and subsequent employment), write
to Rik Belew <r...@cs.ucsd.edu> or fax 619-534-7029, for the
questionnaire. A copy of the questionaire and more information is
available in
cs.ucsd.edu:/pub/rik/announce.t
A list of email addresses for CS departments is posted once a month to
the newsgroup soc.college.gradinfo.
The Association for Computational Linguistics publishes a directory of
graduate programs in Computational Linguistics ($15 for members, $30
for others). It includes several useful indices (e.g., index of
faculty and a list of references). Contact Association for
Computational Linguistics, Walker, C. N. 925, Bernardsville, NJ
07924-0925, phone/fax 908-204-1337, or send email to a...@bellcore.com.
NOTE THAT THIS LIST IS PRELIMINARY AND BY NO MEANS COMPLETE.
Please feel free to suggest schools that are particularly strong in
any of these areas, or to suggest new areas to be listed.
Schools with excellent programs in most fields:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
MIT
Stanford
Georgia Tech
Imperial College
Indiana
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
Johns Hopkins University
Maryland
Rutgers
SUNY/Buffalo
Toronto
UC/Berkeley
UCLA
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Univ. of Rochester
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Univ. of Texas/Austin
Yale
Universities with 2 or more AAAI Fellows:
Note: Some Fellows have changed their affiliation since being named,
so this list isn't completely accurate.
12 MIT
11 Stanford University
10 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
6 Univ. of Massachusetts
5 Univ. of Toronto
5 Univ. of Texas at Austin
5 Univ. of Pennsylvania
5 Rutgers
3 Northwestern
3 UCLA
3 Univ. of Edinburgh
3 Univ. of Illinois
3 Univ. of Maryland
3 Univ. of Southern California (USC)
3 USC/Information Sciences Institute
2 Brown University
2 Duke University
2 Harvard
2 Univ. of California, Berkeley
2 Univ. of Pittsburgh
2 Univ. of Rochester
2 Univ. of Sydney
Universities with only one AAAI Fellow include: Columbia University,
George Mason, Georgia Tech, Imperial College, New Mexico State, Ohio
State, Oregon State University, Oxford, P. and M. Curie University,
SUNY/Binghamton, SUNY/Buffalo, Saint Joseph, San Jose State, Syracuse,
Tufts, UC Irvine, UC/Santa Cruz, UCSD, Univ. of Birmingham, Univ. of
British Columbia, Univ. of Cambridge, Univ. of Linkoeping, Univ. of
Marseille, Univ. of Minnesota, Univ. of Sussex, Wellesley, Yale
The full list of AAAI Fellows and their affiliations is available
by anonymous ftp as
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/faqs/ai/aifellow.txt
AI and Manufacturing:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) -- CIMDS
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Toronto
AI and Medicine:
MIT
Stanford
Univ. of Pittsburgh
AI and Legal Reasoning:
Imperial College
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Artificial Life:
Santa Fe Institute (SFI)
UCLA
UCSD
Univ. of Delaware
MIT (Brooks' mobots)
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Automated Deduction/Theorem Proving:
Imperial College
Stanford
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Oregon
Univ. of Texas/Austin
Case-Based Reasoning/Analogical Reasoning:
Chicago
Georgia Tech
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Cognitive Modelling:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Georgia Tech
Indiana
SUNY Buffalo
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Michigan
Cognitive Science:
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Georgia Tech
Indiana University/Bloomington
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Princeton
Rutgers
SUNY/Buffalo
Stanford
UC/Berkeley
UC/San Diego
Univ. of Colorado/Boulder
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Minnesota
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Rochester
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Computational Biology:
Carnegie Mellon University
Johns Hopkins University
Rutgers
UC/Berkeley
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Wisconsin/Madison
Connectionism/Neural Networks:
Boston University, Cognitive and Neural Systems Department (ART networks)
Brown University
CalTech
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Indiana
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
Ohio State Univ.
Stanford
Syracuse University
Texas A&M
Toronto
UC/Berkeley
UC/Irvine
UC/San Diego
UCLA
UNC/Chapel Hill
Univ. of Colorado/Boulder
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Helsinki
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Univ. of Wisconsin
Decision Theory and AI:
Berkeley
MIT
Stanford
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Washington
Distributed AI:
Georgia Institute Of Technology
MIT
Nova Southeastern University
Stanford University
Univ. of Maryland
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Michigan
Emotion:
Carnegie Mellon University
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
Fuzzy Logic:
Berkeley
Genetic Algorithms:
George Mason Univ.
Indiana
Stanford (Koza)
UC San Diego
UCLA
Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Integrated AI Architectures:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Stanford
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Intelligent Tutoring, AI & Education:
Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive Science Department)
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Knowledge Representation:
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
Stanford
SUNY/Buffalo
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Oregon
Logic Programming and Logic-based AI:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Imperial College
Stanford
UCLA
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Melbourne
Univ. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
Univ. of Oregon
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Machine Discovery:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Machine Learning:
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
George Mason
Georgia Tech
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
UCI
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Texas/Austin
Univ. of Wisconsin
Natural Language Processing (NLU, NLG, Parsing, NLI, Speech):
Brown
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Columbia
Georgia Tech
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
Institute for the Learning Sciences, Northwestern University (ILS)
ISI
Indiana
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Engineering
Penn
Rutgers
Stanford
SUNY/Buffalo
Toronto
UCLA
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Univ. of Rochester
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Waterloo (stylistics, MT, discourse)
Nonmonotonic Reasoning:
Imperial College
Stanford
UCLA
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Oregon
Toronto
Philosophy of AI:
Berkeley
MIT
SUNY Buffalo
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Planning:
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Imperial College
MIT
Stanford
SUNY Buffalo
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Oregon
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Univ. of Rochester
Univ. of Washington/Seattle
Waterloo
Production Systems/Expert Systems:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
Stanford
Qualitative Physics and Model Based Reasoning:
Northwestern ILS (Forbus)
Univ. of Oregon
Univ. of Texas/Austin
Univ. of Washington
Reasoning Under Uncertainty (Probabilistic Reasoning, Approximate
Reasoning, etc.):
Brown University
George Mason
Oregon State University
Stanford
UCLA
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Rochester
University of South Carolina
Robotics:
Bristol Polytechnic, UK
Brown
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Georgia Tech
Harvard
Hull University, UK
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
Naval Postgraduate School
New York University (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
North Carolina State Univerisity/Raleigh (NCSU)
Oxford
Purdue
Reading University, UK
Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Salford University, UK
Stanford
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
UC/Berkeley
Univ. of Alberta
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Kansas
Univ. of Kentucky
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Paris INRIA
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Utah
Univ. of Wisconsin
Yale
Search:
UCLA
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Oregon
Temporal Reasoning:
Imperial College
Virtual Reality:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Cal Arts
Columbia
Florida Institute of Technology
MIT Media Lab
Naval Postgraduate School
Naval Research Lab
RPI
Stanford
Syracuse
Toronto
UIUC
Univ. of Alberta, Banff
Univ. of Central Florida
Univ. of Geneva
Univ. of North Carolina/Chapel Hill (UNC)
Univ. of Tokyo
Univ. of Virginia (UVA)
Univ. of Washington/Seattle -- HIT Lab
Vision:
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Columbia
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Oxford
SUNY/Buffalo
UCLA
Univ. of Edinburgh
Univ. of Maryland/College Park
Univ. of Massachusetts/Amherst
Univ. of Rochester
Univ. of Southern California & USC/Information Sciences Institute
Univ. of Sussex, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
Univ. of Wisconsin
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Subject: [1-4] How can I get the email address for Joe or Jill Researcher?
The AAAI membership directory is updated annually and contains
addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses for many members of AAAI
and other AI societies. Contact in...@aaai.org for information on
getting a copy of the directory (you should get a free copy if you are
a member of one of the listed societies).
See also the Email Address FAQ posting to the newsgroups soc.college
and soc.net-people.
The Artificial Intelligence and Molecular Biology Researchers database
contains names, institutions, addresses, phone, fax, email,
research interests and other related information about more than 200
researchers worldwide. The database is available via anonymous ftp from the
lhc.nlm.nih.gov:/pub/aimb-db/
There are computer- and human-readable versions available. Get the
README file for more information or send email to Larry Hunter,
<hun...@nlm.nih.gov>.
E-mail addresses for members of the Linguistics Society of America
(LSA) are available by anonymous ftp as
linguistics.archive.umich.edu:/linguistics/LSA.email.list
or by sending a message to list...@tamvm1.tamu.edu with
"get lsa lst linguist" in the message body.
A list of "Who's Who in Fuzzy Logic" may be obtained by sending a
message to lists...@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at with
GET LISTSERVER WHOISWHOINFUZZY
in the message body. New entries and corrections should be sent to
Robert Fuller <rfu...@finabo.abo.fi>.
WHO's On-Line is a WWW biographical database of folks on the internet.
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/Canessa/ENTRIES/entries.html
For more information, contact E. Canessa <cane...@ictp.trieste.it>.
The Association for Logic Program (ALP) membership list was published
in the February 1994 issue of the newsletter (Volume 7/1). It will be
made available by anonymous ftp from Imperial College in October 1994.
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Subject: [1-5] What are the rules for the game of "Life"?
Cellular Automata, of which Life is an example, were suggested by
Stanislaw Ulam in the 1940s, and first formalized by von Neumann.
Conway's "Game of Life" was popularized in Martin Gardner's
mathematical games column in the October 1970 and February 1971 issues
of Scientific American. (Shorter notes on life are alse given in the
column in each month from October 1970 to April 1971, and well as
November 1971, January 1972, and December 1972.) There's also quite a
bit on the game in "The Recursive Universe", by William Poundstone,
Oxford University Press, 1987, 252 pages.
The rules for the game of life are quite simple. The game board is a
rectangular cell array, with each cell either empty or filled. At each
tick of the clock, we generate the next generation by the following rules:
if a cell is empty, fill it if 3 of its neighbors are filled
(otherwise leave it empty)
if a cell is filled, it
dies of loneliness if it has 1 or fewer neighbors
continues to live if it has 2 or 3 neighbors
dies of overcrowding if it has more than 3 neighbors
Neighbors include the cells on the diagonals. Some implementations use
a torus-based array (edges joined top-to-bottom and left-to-right) for
computing neighbors.
For example, a row of 3 filled cells will become a column of 3 filled
cells in the next generation. The R pentomino is an interesting
pattern:
xx
xx
x
Try it with other patterns of 5 cells initially occupied. If you
record the ages of cells, and map the ages to colors, you can get a
variety of beautiful images.
When implementing Life, be sure to maintain separate arrays for the
old and new generation. Updating the array in place will not work
correctly. Another optimization to to maintain a list of the cells
that changed.
Conway has demonstrated that it is possible to construct the basic
building blocks of a computer from Life using modified glider guns.
See the last chapter of
Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway, and Richard K. Guy, "Winning
Ways", Academic Press, New York, 1982, ISBN 0-120911-507.
for details.
Some interesting patterns to use include:
*
* * ** * *
** * ** * * * *
** *** * * ****
* **** *** *** * *
* ** *
Clock Glider Block Spaceship * * *
* ****
*
Traffic Light Cheshire Cat
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Subject: [1-6] What AI competitions exist?
The Loebner Prize, based on a fund of over $100,000 established by New
York businessman Hugh G. Loebner, is awarded annually for the computer
program that best emulates natural human behavior. During the
contest, a panel of independent judges attempts to determine whether
the responses on a computer terminal are being produced by a computer
or a person, along the lines of the Turing Test. The designers of the
best program each year win a cash award and a medal. If a program
passes the test in all its particulars, then the entire fund will be
paid to the program's designer and the fund abolished. For further
information about the Loebner Prize, write Dr. Robert Epstein,
Executive Director, Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, 11
Waterhouse Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or call 617-491-9020.
The BEAM Robot Olympics is a robot exhibition/competition started in
1991. For more information about the competition, write to BEAM Robot
Olympics, c/o: Mark W. Tilden, MFCF, University of Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada, N2L-3G1, 519-885-1211 x2454, mwti...@watmath.uwaterloo.ca.
The Gordon Bell Prize competition recognizes outstanding achievements
in the application of parallel processing to practical scientific and
engineering problems. Entries are considered in performance,
price/performance, compiler parallelization and speedup categories,
and a total of $3,000 will be awarded. The prizes are sponsored by
Gordon Bell, a former National Science Foundation division director
who is now an independent consultant. Contestants should send a
three- or four-page executive summary to 1993 Gordon Bell Prize,
c/o Marilyn Potes, IEEE Computer Society, 10662 Los Vaqueros Cir.,
PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1264, before May 31, 1993.
AAAI has an annual robot building competition. The anonymous FTP site
for the contest is/was
aeneas.mit.edu:/pub/ACS/6.270/AAAI/
This site has the manual and the rules. To be added to the
rbl...@ai.mit.edu mailing list for discussing the AAAI robot building
contest, send mail to rbl-94-...@ai.mit.edu. See also the 6.270
robot building guide in part 4 of this FAQ.
The International Computer Chess Association presents an annual prize
for the best computer-generated annotation of a chess game. The output
should be reminiscent of that appearing in newspaper chess columns,
and will be judged on both the correctness and depth of the variations
and also on the quality of the program's written output. The deadline
is December 31, 1994. For more information, write to Tony Marsland
<to...@cs.ualberta.ca>, ICCA President, Computing Science Department,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2H1, call 403-492-3971, or
fax 403-492-1071.
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Subject: [1-7] Commercial AI products.
Commercial Expert System Shells are listed in the Expert System Shells FAQ.
See the Robotics FAQ for information on Robotics manufacturers.
Stiquito is a small (3cm H x 7cm W x 6cm L), simple (32 parts) and
inexpensive (< $30) nitinol-propelled hexapod robot developed at the
Indiana University (Bloomington) Robotics Laboratory. Its legs are
propelled by nitnol actuator wires. Each leg has one degree of freedom.
The robot walks up to 10 centimeters per minute and can carry a 9-volt
cell, a MOSIS "tiny chip" and power transistors to drive the nitinol
actuator wires. Nitinol wire (aka BioMetal, Flexinol), is a nickel-titanium
alloy which exerts useful force as it is heated by passing a current
through it. IUCS Technical Report 363a describes Stiquito's construction
and is available by anonymous ftp from
cs.indiana.edu:/pub/stiquito/ [129.79.254.191]
as are many other related files. The tech report is also
available by US mail for $5 (checks or money orders should be made payable
to "Indiana University") from Computer Science Department, Attn: TR 363a
215, Lindley Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405. A kit
containing all the materials needed to construct a simple version of
Stiquito and its controller is available for an extra $10 from the above
address (use attn line "Stiquito Kit"). To receive a video showing the
assembly of Stiquito, include an additional $10 and add "Video" to the
"Attn:" line. Anyone may build and use Stiquitos in any quantity for
educational or research purposes, but Indiana University reserves all
rights to commercial applications. Questions about Stiquito should be sent
to Prof. Jonathan W. Mills <stiq...@cs.indiana.edu>. To join the Stiquito
mailing list run by Jon Blow of UC/Berkeley, send mail to
stiquito...@xcf.berkeley.edu.
Togai InfraLogic, Inc. (TIL) is a supplier of fuzzy logic and fuzzy
expert system software and hardware. For more information, write to
Togai InfraLogic, Inc., 5 Vanderbilt, Irvine, CA 92718, call +1 714
975 8522, fax +1 714 975 8524, or send email to in...@til.com or
til!info. TIL also supports an email-server that can be reached at
fuzzy-...@til.com or til!fuzzy-server. Send an email message that
contains just the word "help" in either the subject line or the
message body for more information. A list of products can be obtained
by sending a message that contains only the line "send products.txt"
to the email-server. For an index of the contents of the server, send
a message with the line "send index".
The following is from Risks Digest 13.83 -- I have no idea what the software
does, but Colby did head up the PARRY project:
FEELING HELPLESS ABOUT DEPRESSION? Overcoming Depression 2.0 provides
computer based cognitive therapy for depression with therapeutic
dialogue in everyday language. Created by Kenneth Mark Colby, M.D.,
Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioural Sciences, Emeritus, UCLA.
Personal Version ($199), Professional version ($499). Malibu
Artificial Intelligence Works, 25307 Malibu Rd, CA 90265.
1-800-497-6889.
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Subject: [1-8] AI Job Postings
The AI-Jobs mailing list exists to help programmers and researchers
find AI programming and research positions, and to help companies with
AI programming and research positions find capable AI programmers and
researchers.
Material appropriate for the list includes AI job announcements and
should be sent to ai+ai...@cs.cmu.edu. Resumes should NOT be sent to
the list.
As a matter of policy, the contents of this mailing list is
considered confidential and will not be disclosed to anybody.
To subscribe, send a message to ai+q...@cs.cmu.edu with
subscribe ai-jobs <First Name> <Last Name>, <Affiliation/Organization>
in the message body and no Subject line.
Similar lists exist for post-doctoral fellowships (subscribe to AI-POSTDOC),
pre-doctoral fellowships (subscribe to AI-PREDOC), Lisp jobs
(subscribe to Lisp-Jobs) and Prolog jobs (subscribe to Prolog-Jobs).
(If your mailer objects to the "+", send subscription requests to
"ai+query"@cs.cmu.edu, job announcements to "ai+ai-jobs"@cs.cmu.edu, etc.)
For help on using the query server, send mail to ai+q...@cs.cmu.edu with
help
in the message body and no Subject line.
If you have any other questions, please send them to a...@cs.cmu.edu
[For neural networks, the Neuron Digest and Connectionists mailing
lists are a good source of job postings. A good source for general AI
is Computists' Communique. For postdoctoral appointments, see
sci.research.postdocs.]
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Subject: [1-9] Future Directions of AI
The purpose of this question is to compile a list of major ongoing and
future thrusts of AI. To be included in this list a research problem
or application must have the following characteristics:
[1] Collaborative Community Effort: It must span several subfields
of AI, requiring some degree of collaboration between AI
researchers of different specialties. The idea is to help
unify the fragmented subfields with a common purpose or
purposes.
[2] High Impact: It must address important problems of widespread interest.
Solving the problem must matter to many people and not simply
be adding another grain of sand on the anthill. This will help
motivate and excite researchers, and justify the field to outsiders.
[3] Short Horizon for Progress: It must be possible to have incremental
progress and not be an all or nothing problem. For example,
problems where we can reasonably expect to make significant
measurable progress over the next 10 years or so.
[4] Drive Basic Research: It should involve more than just
applying current technology, but should drive basic research
and the development of new technology (possibly in completely
new directions).
In short, these problems should be "Grand Challenges" for AI. If you
were trying to describe the field of AI to a layman, what concrete
problems would you use to illustrate the overall vision of the field?
Saying that the goal of AI is to produce "thinking machines that solve
problems" doesn't quite cut it.
o Knowbots/Infobots and Intelligent Help Desks
Unifies NLU, NLG, Information Retrieval, KR, Reasoning,
Intelligent User Interfaces, Qualitative Reasoning.
o Autonomous Vehicles
Unifies Robotics, Machine Vision, Machine Learning,
Intelligent Control, Planning
o Machine Translation
Unifies NLU, NLG, Knowledge Representation, Speech Understanding,
Speech Synthesis
Additional problems are, of course, welcome. I have not included the
Loebner Prize (e.g., passing the unrestricted Turing Test) in the list
because it doesn't address a high impact problem.
It seems appropriate to mention, in this context, some of the early
goals of AI. In 1958 Newell and Simon predicted that computers would
-- by 1970 -- be capable of composing classical music, discovering
important new mathematical theorems, playing chess at grandmaster
level, and understanding and translating spoken language. Although
these predictions were overly optimistic, they did represent a set of
focused goals for the field of AI. [See H. A. Simon and A. Newell,
"Heuristic Problem Solving: The Next Advance in Operations Research",
Operation Research, pages 1-10, January-February 1958.]
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;;; *EOF*