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ANALYS[s81,jmc]		Preliminary description of ANALYST

[In order to get the ideas down, JMC wrote this from scratch without
taking into account the work already done by LGC, RPG and JD.  Probably
the best course is for RPG and LGC to integrate its ideas - mainly the
commitment to actually do an ANALYST with what they have previously
written, which contains more details than this.  Remember that we need
sentences that Engelmore can lift].
.end

	ANALYST is to be an Advice Taker program for analyzing interesting kinds
of "intelligence" information.  It attempts to infer concealed facts
from visible facts and assumptions that have been made.  It deals with
facts about purposes, beliefs, likes and dislikes and fears.  It
both ascribes purposes to actions and uses ascribed purposes to
predict actions.  It will sometimes infer the existence of previously
unknown hidden entities from their observed effects.

	1. The core of ANALYST is a logical problem solver augmented in
various ways.  A logical problem solver is a program that tries to
find an %2x%1 satisfying some sentence %2Eα{xα}%1 using a collection
of facts also expressed as logical sentences.

	2. ANALYST will use sentence schemata when required.  This includes
both induction schemata of the usual kinds and those generated by the
application of non-monotonic rules of conjecture such as circumscription.

	3. ANALYST will rely heavily on various forms of non-monotonic
reasoning including circumscription and its generalizations
and also the dialectical forms
of reasoning being developed by Doyle.

	4. ANALYST versions of the next two years
will not use natural language input and output
in order to concentrate attention on the facts rather than on the
ways fact are customarily expressed.

	5. Nevertheless, the ANALYST project will study the kinds of
facts expressed in common sense natural language and find formal
ways of expressing them.  When the "ambiguity tolerant" formalisms
now being studied by McCarthy are sufficiently developed, they will
be used.

	6. The technique proposed in (McCarthy 1960) for storing
information on the property lists of objects (not usually atoms and
including variables) will be used.  Recent studies by Gabriel have
indicated that the technique of storing information under generalized
tasks
(which was never implemented)
as promising in the present programming environment.

	7. ANALYST will use first order logic for expressing facts
including facts about events taking place in time and facts about
knowledge and belief.  The first order languages used will have
"enriched ontologies", i.e. beliefs, goals, purposes and situations will be
objects.  Possible worlds and other entities from the semantics of
other theories may also be taken as objects.

	8. Besides ascribing beliefs, goals and actions to individuals,
ANALYST will ascribe them when appropriate to organizations and
abstractions like "the Russians".

	9. Early versions of ANALYST will work with present
computing facilities, but more address space, more real memory and
more compute cycles will be required for later versions doing harder
problems.  The programming will be done in subsets of MACLISP having
a guaranteed future.


Goals and Milestones

December 1, 1981

	A collection of target inferences from example data bases
will be specified.

January 1, 1982

	The external specifications of the problem solver will be
given except for the non-monotonic part.

April 1, 1982

	A preliminary version of the monotonic part of the problem
solver will be working.

May 1, 1982

	Non-monotonic additions to the problem solver will be defined.

Dec. 1, 1982

	A non-monotonic version of ANALYST will be working.

More ANALYST examples

	#. If the carrier were ready for sea duty, they would probably
have sent it out.

	#. If they were in agreement, they would have acted before now.