DAI-List Digest Sunday, 14 March 1993 Issue Number 112 Topics: TR on Organizational Fluidity and Sustainable Cooperation Code for Multiple Defeasible Hetereogeneous Inheritance Reasoner CFP on Dependability of AI Systems for IEEE Trans. on DKE Summary re Knowbots and Intelligent Agents Administrivia: Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 10:44:14 PST From: Bernardo Huberman Subject: Report available ORGANIZATIONAL FLUIDITY AND SUSTAINABLE COOPERATION Natalie S. Glance and Bernardo A. Huberman Dynamics of Computation Group Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Palo Alto, CA 94304 Abstract We show that fluid organizations display levels of cooperation that are higher than those found in groups that are either unorganized or have fixed social structure. By moving within the organization, individuals cause restructurings that facilitate cooperation. Computer experiments simulating fluid organizations faced with a social dilemma reveal a myriad of complex cooperative behavior that results from the interplay between individual strategies and structural changes. Significantly, fluid organizations can display long cycles of sustained cooperation interrupted by short bursts of defection. ------------------------------ From: afzal@divsun.unige.ch (Afzal Ballim) Subject: Multiple defeasible hetereogeneous inheritance reasoner Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993 08:13:31 GMT I have just uploaded the code for a multiple defeasible heterogeneous inheritance reasoner as described in my dissertation: Ballim, A. (1992) "ViewFinder: A Framework for Representing, Ascribing and Maintaining Nested Beliefs of Interacting Agents," Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. d'Informatique, Universite de Geneve, Geneva, Switzerland. to the ftp sites where the dissertation is stored (details below). This reasoner is based on the theory originally described in: Ballim, A., D. Fass & S. Candelaria de Ram (1988a) "Resolving a clash of intuitions: Utilizing strict and defeasible information in inheritance systems," Memoranda in Computer and Cognitive Science, MCCS-88-119, Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. Ballim, A., D. Fass & S. Candelaria de Ram (1988b) "HETIS: a Heterogeneous Inheritance System," ISSCO Working papers, 55, ISSCO, 54 rte. des Acacias, 1227 Geneva, Switzerland. Ballim, A., S. Candelaria de Ram & D. Fass (1989) "Reasoning using Inheritance from a Mixture of Knowledge and Beliefs," in Knowledge Based Computer Systems (Proceedings of KCBS '89), S. R. Ramani & K. Anjaneylu, eds., Narosa Publishing House, Delhi, 387--396. The program is written in Sicstus prolog, and so should run with Quintus and it should be easily convertible to any Edinburgh-style prolog. Also archived at the ftp sites are my dissertation plus a copy of an important program that forms a subpart of it (called ViewGen). The dissertation is concerned with representing,forming, and maintaining nested models of agent attitudes, in particular belief. The ViewGen program implements one of the belief ascription algorithms described in the dissertation, and is a core element in my book with Yorick Wilks, Artificial Believers (1991) Afzal Ballim & Yorick Wilks Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, ISBN: 0-8058-0453-6 The files are available from the following sites: USA: crl.nmsu.edu (128.123.1.18) in the directory pub/ViewFinder Login as user "anonymous" and give your email address as password. As a courtesy to the people at this site please try to restrict ftp access to time slots outside office hours. The load on the machine usually is pretty high between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. MST. Europe: ftp.ims.uni-stuttgart.de (141.58.127.8) in the directory pub/ballim Login as user "ftp" and give your email address as password. As a courtesy to the people at this site (thank you Stefan) please try to restrict ftp access to time slots outside office hours. The load on the machine usually is pretty high between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. CET. Currently there are no restrictions on ftp access on this host. It's up to you whether it can be kept that way. Please note that ftp access to ftp.ims.uni-stuttgart.de is monitored, i.e., they keep a log of the hosts that had connections and which files are up-/downloaded. The dissertation is available in a number of formats. Each tar file contains the appropriate PostScript file, plus a readme file. 1) A5 format -- this is really A4, but with two pages side by side in landscape mode (each being an A5 page). The file to get if you want this is ViewFinder-A5.tar.Z 2) A4 format -- the file is formatted to fill an A4 page. ViewFinder-A4.tar.Z 3) US Letter -- the file is formatted to fill a US Letter page. ViewFinder-US.tar.Z ViewGen is available in the file ViewGen.tar.Z and the inheritance reasoner is the file vf-hetis.tar.Z Afzal Ballim afzal@divsun.unige.ch ISSCO, University of Geneva UUCP: mcsun!divsun.unige.ch!afzal 54 route des Acacias JANET: afzal%divsun.unige.ch@uk.ac.ean-relay CH-1227 GENEVA,Switzerland CSNET: afzal%divsun.unige.ch@relay.cs.net ------------------------------ From: tsai@bert.eecs.uic.edu (Jeffrey Tsai) Subject: IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering (Call for paper) Date: 8 Mar 93 17:50:09 GMT IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON KNOWLEDGE AND DATA ENGINEERING CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue on Dependability of A.I. Systems Many systems with artificial intelligence (AI) have been developed to deal with problems in industrial, scientific, and financial applications. Despite the great potential of these systems and millions of dollars invested on their research and development, the major concern faced in industry today is whether these systems are dependable. This is particularly important for applications that involve human safety. In view of this important and evolving topic, a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering will be dedicated to this topics. This special issue will cover formal techniques, systems, and methodology to support the development and maintenance of dependable A.I. systems including, but not limited, the following topics: o Knowledge Elicitation and Acquisition o Knowledge Base and Representation o Validation and Verification of Knowledge Base o Reliability of A.I. Systems o Safety and Security of A.I. Systems o Maintainability of A.I. Systems o Portability of A.I. Systems o Performance Evaluation o Autonomous Decentralized Systems o Distributed Real-Time AI Systems o Friendly User Interfaces for A.I. systems o Knowledge Base Tools o Architecture, Methodology, and their Comparative Study and Tool Support Manuscripts should be no more than 35 typewritten, double-spaced pages, including figures and references. Each manuscript should have a title page with the title of the paper, full names(s) and affiliation(s) of author(s), complete postal and electronic addresses, telephone number(s), and informative 250 word abstract, and a list of identifying keywords. A signed IEEE copyright transfer form and eight copies of complete manuscripts should be received the guest editor by April 1, 1993. No electronic submission of the paper will be accepted. All manuscripts must conform to the normal submission requirements of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. Please send manuscripts to the Guest Editor at the following address: Prof. Jeffrey J.P. Tsai Department of EECS, (M/C 154) P.O. Box 4348 University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, IL 60680 (312)996-9324 tsai@bert.eecs.uic.edu Important Dates: April 1, 1993 Due date for 8 copies of full manuscript August 15, 1993 Notification of acceptance September 20, 1993 Due date for final manuscript/electronic media February 1994 Publication of special issue ------------------------------ From: cantwell@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Jeff Cantwell) Subject: Summary: Knowbots and Intelligent Agents Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1993 18:01:54 GMT Here is a summary of responses I received to the following query: :Any pointers to articles on Knowbots and Intelligent Agents? Who :coined the term "knowbot"? How do the strategies that knowbots use :differ from those of typical knowledge-based systems? -Jeff --- I first ran across "knowbot" in the article "Networks" by Vinton G. Cerf in the Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991, page 74. He remarks that "knowbot" is a registered trademark of the Corporation for National Research Innitiatives. As an aside,the Prodigy network updated my access program extensively without my request after I had to reboot from my original disks. Would you consider this type of update a knowbot? Carl Page Computer Science Michigan State University --- I've been looking for information on the subject myself. Here's one pointer that could be useful: "Distributed Artificial Intelligence: An Annotated Bibliogrpahy" (ACM SIGART Bulletin, August 1992, pp. 20-37). Steve Krause SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 415-859-4746 Fax: 415-859-4544 --- The term "knowbot" was coined by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) and is actually a registered trademark of CNRI. It is a type of intelligent agent specifically conceived for use in CNRI's proposed digital library system (see [6] for details). Here's a somewhat dated list of knowbot references as the term "knowbot" seems to be losing out to the more general term "intelligent agent" in the literature. Maybe someone else can post more current references on knowbot-like intelligent agents... 1. Anonomyous (draft by James E. Dunstan), "Workshop on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in a Digital Library System, May 18-19, 1989," Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Reston, VA, 1989. (about 30 pages, includes sections on: Definitional Framework, Operation of a Digital Library System, Conditions and Enforcement, Business Structures, Role of Government in a DLS, Conclusions on the Workshop) 2. Anonomyous, "Gigabit Network Testbeds," Computer, 23(9):77-80, September 1990. (discusses 5 network testbeds being investigated under contract issued to Corp. for National Research Initiatives) 3. Anthes, Gary H., "Internet Makes Users KIS-ing Cousins," _Computerworld_, 24(??):66, 14 May 1990. (describes prototype Knowbot Information System to search Internet user directories) 4. Barney, Clifford, "Kahn and Cerf Pursue 'A Civilian Arpanet'" _Electronics_, 59(33):20, 16 October 1986. (discusses establishment of Corp. for National Research Initiatives; doesn't discuss knowbots) 5. Davis, Bob, "Group Wins Funds to Study Network of Fast Computers," _Wall Street Journal_, B4 (Eastern), 11 June 1990. (discusses NSF/DOD contract to Corp. for National Research Initiatives for research in high-speed computer networks; doesn't discuss knowbots directly) 6. Kahn, Robert E., Vinton G. Cerf, "The Digital Library Project; Volume 1: The World of Knowbots (DRAFT); An Open Architecture for a Digital Library System and a Plan for Its Development," Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Reston, VA, March 1988. (86 pages, including sections on Architecture of a Digital Library System, Knowbots and Their Applications, Implementation Plan) 7. Markoff, John, "For PC's, a New Class of Software," _New York Times_, D6 (Metropolitan)/C6(National), 8 March 1989. (discusses "knowledge daemons," a.k.a. knowbots) 8. Markoff, John, "Creating a Giant Computer Highway," _New York Times_, Business Section (3), p. 1., 2 September 1990. (discusses NSF/DOD contract to Corp. for National Research Initiatives for research in high-speed computer networks, including a few comments about knowbots) 9. Steinberg, Don, "Demon Knowbots," _PC-Computing_, 3(1):135-135, January 1990. (discusses how a knowbot might work, mentions some companies involved, e.g., Locus Computing Corp.) 10. Waldrop, M. Mitchell, "Learning to Drink from a Fire Hose," _Science_, 248:674-675, 11 May 1990. (discusses issues related to locating/accessing scientific data on distributed network, including 5-6 paragraphs about possible use of knowbots) 11. Davis, Bennett, "Knowbots", _Discover Magazine_, April 1991. Thanks go to A. Lee Salomon for compiling the above list. Chris Toomey Lockheed AI Center toomey@aic.lockheed.com O/96-20 B/254F Office: (415) 354-5802 3251 Hanover Street Fax: (415) 354-5235 Palo Alto, CA 94304-1191 --- Somewhere along the way, I picked up a net address to access a knowbot. I don't remember where I saw it, but if you try telnet nri.reston.va.us 185 you reach a knowbot service. I wasn't particularly happy with what I could get out of this knowbot. I found NetFind more interesting. Maybe knowbots have to evolve. R Chandrasekar ------------------------------ End of DAI-List Digest Issue #112 *********************************