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1 SIGART NEWSLETTER Number 41 August 1973 <PBS>
1A CONTENTS <Irest=5>
1A1 CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE ............................ 3
1A2 EDITORS' ENTRY ................................ 4
1A3 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
A FASCINATION WITH ROBOTS OR
A SERIOUS INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVOR?
by Allen L. Hammond....................... 6
1A4 SRC THREATENS BRITISH ROBOT RESEARCH........... 9
1A5 THE EDINBURGH VERSATILE LAYOUT AND
ASSEMBLY PROGRAM......................... 11
1A6 REPORT ON THE SIGART MEETING AT THE NCC....... 14
1A7 EFFICIENT UTILIZATION OF ALGORITHMS
THROUGH HEURISTIC LEARNING............... 16
1A8 PROGRESS REPORT FROM
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY.......... 20
1A9 PAJARO DUNES WORKSHOP ON
AUTOMATIC PROBLEM SOLVING................ 21
1A10 CHESS ........................................ 30
1A11 CONFERENCES .................................. 38
1A12 ABSTRACTS .................................... 45
1A13 RECENT NOVELS................................. 56
1A14 INTERESTING FILMS............................. 56
1B SIGART NEWSLETTER
<PBS><Center=1><BM=62><TM=3><BRM=76><BLM=-6><Irest=0>
1B1 The SIGART Newsletter is a bimonthly publication of the
Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence of the
Association for Computing Machinery. The Newsletter reports on
projects being conducted by the artificial intelligence research
community and generally reviews current progress in the
state-of-the-art. Correspondents report news from local SIGART
Chapters and other AI Centers.
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<Center=19>
1B1A SIGART CHAIRMAN: Bob Balzer
1B1A1 USC Information Science Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, California 90291
Telephone: 213-822-1511 <GCR>
1B1B NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Steve Coles ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Rich
Fikes
1B1B1 Artificial Intelligence Center
Stanford Research Institute
Menlo Park, California 94025
Telephone: 415-326-6200 ext. 4601, 4620 <GCR>
1B1C ASSISTANT EDITOR FOR ONLINE OPERATIONS: Kirk Kelley
1B1C1 Augmentation Research Center
Stanford Research Institute
Menlo Park, California 94025
Telephone: 415-326-6200 ext. 3630
1B2 --------------------------------------------------------------
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The Editors encourage contributions from authors, including
Letters to the Editor (AI Forum), Technical Contributions (1 to 6
pages), Abstracts (preferably 100-200 words), Book Reviews,
Bibliographies of Special Topics in AI, News Items (Conferences,
Meetings, Course Announcements, Personals, etc.), Advertisements
(New Products or Classified Advertising), Puzzles, Poems,
Cartoons, etc. Material may be reproduced from the Newsletter
for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and SIGART.
1B3 Anyone interested in acting as editor for a special issue of
the Newsletter devoted to a particular topic in AI is invited to
contact the Editor. Letters to the Editor will be considered as
submitted for publication unless they contain a request to the
contrary. Technical papers appearing in this issue are
unrefereed working papers, and opinions expressed in
contributions are to be construed as those of the individual
author rather than the official position of SIGART, the ACM, or
any organization with which the writer may be affiliated.
1B4 You are invited to join and participate actively. SIGART
membership is open to members of the ACM upon payment of dues of
$3.00 per year and to non-ACM members upon payment of dues of
$5.00 per year. To indicate a change of address or if you wish
to become a member of SIGART, please complete the form on the
bottom of the last page of this issue.
1B5 Copy deadline for the October Issue: September
21st.<Center=1>
2 CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE <PBS> <LBS=2>
<H1Sw=On><H2Sw=On><SNF=77><SNFShow=1,2><BLM=0><BRM=72><BM=58>
2A In the lasscheduler service restored to normal
t issue George Ernst thanked all of the officers of
SIGART for the excellent job they have done. I know of no better
way of starting my term then by adding my thanks to these same
people and to add George to the list for the fine job he has done in
tying all the activities together.
2B During my term, I would like to accomplish three goals:
2B1 1. Help continue the steady expansion of the benefits of
SIGART to the members by encouraging more participation in and
contributions to our newsletter and the sessions and symposia we
sponsor.
2B2 2. Increase our contacts with other disciplines and with
practical applications of AI.
2B3 3. Use SIGART as a forum for examining the field of AI.
2C Let me expand on the last point. Recently, AI has come under
critical review, most notably by Sir James Lighthill in a report to
the Science Research Council in Britain (see the SCIENCE article
reprinted in this issue, pp. 6-8 for a short summary). Such
criticism gives us an excellent opportunity (though perhaps for the
wrong reasons) to step back from our day-to-day activities and
evaluate the accomplishments of AI and consider its goals.
2D I hope to expand on each of these themes in following issues.
2E <SPLIT>R.M.B. 7/24/73
3 EDITOR'S ENTRY<PBS><LBS=1>
3A 1. CONGRATULATIONS TO PROF. ALLEN NEWELL
3A1 A remarkable coincidence has just been called to my
attention: the immediate past Chairman, George Ernst, the
current Chairman, Bob Balzer, and the current Editors of the
Newsletter, Rich Fikes and yours truly, were all at one time
(seven or eight years ago) simultaneously students of Prof.
Newell at Carnegie-Mellon. Even though we have all subsequently
moved to other areas of the country, I am sure that I speak for
all of us when I say that his inspired teaching continues to
influence our approach to AI even today.
3B 2. CARNEGIE TO SIMULATE HUMAN PROBLEM SOLVING
3B1 I have recently been informed that John R. Hayes and Herbert
A. Simon of the Psychology Department at Carnegie-Mellon
University have been awarded a $56K NSF grant to test and refine
a tentative model of how the human mind takes a problem that it
has never encountered before and puts it into a form that it can
recognize and deal with. The ultimate goal of the project is to
develop a computer program that can simulate this process, so
that a computer can understand and define a problem directly from
written instructions. The end result will be "a program that
will tell itself what the problem is, rather than having to be
told." Dr. Hayes has been an Associate Professor of Psychology
at CMU since 1965. He was published extensively on the topics of
cognitive development and problem solving. Dr. Simon has been at
CMU since 1949, serving as the Richard King Mellon Professor of
Computer Science and Psychology since 1966.
3C 3. BBC DEBATE
3C1 Last July 4th in London, Sir George Porter moderated a
controversial panel discussion on the subject "The General
Purpose Robot is a Mirage." The program, one of a series of six,
was run in conjunction with The Royal Institution for the BBC.
Participants included Sir James Lighthill, Prof. Donald Michie of
Edinburgh, Prof. Richard Gregory of Bristol University and our
own Prof. John McCarthy, representing U.S. AI. The program will
probably be screened on August 20th and will last about one hour.
We hope that Nils Nilsson will be able to obtain a video tape
for showing at IJCAI-73.
3D 4. MORE ON THE LIGHTHILL REPORT <PBS>
3D1 Although I had originally planned to use this space to make
an editorial statement about the adverse impact of the "General
Survey of Artificial Intelligence" by Sir James Lighthill,*
commissioned by the British Science Research Council, on the
field of AI generally and especially on our British counterparts,
I find that the subject has by now been extensively treated in
other sources. The July, 1973 article in SCIENCE reported by
Allen L. Hammond, has been reprinted on pp. 6-8 of this issue for
the benefit of those who may have missed it. I especially
recommend an article by Pat Hayes (now at Essex University) in
the current issue of the AISB European Newsletter,** since it
covers virtually all of the criticisms I planned to make and
more. Firbush News 3 has reprinted the complete text of the
Lighthill Report and contains a useful comment on the Report by
Prof. Bernard Meltzer.***
3D2 Prof. Flowers, Chairman of the SRC, says in his preface to
the Report that "the Council would welcome readers' comments on
the importance of artificial intelligence research, and the
extent of the support the Council should plan to give to it." If
you feel you would like to make your opinions regarding the
Report and related matters known the the SRC, we would be happy
to receive them first, so as to formulate a joint response to
Prof. Flowers on behalf of the U.S. AI community.
3D2A <SPLIT>L.S.C. 7/26/73 <GCR=4>
3D3 -----------------------------
3D4 * As mentioned in the preceding issue, copies of the
report including followup comments by Profs. N. S. Sutherland, R.
M. Needham, H. C. Longhet-Higgins, and D. Michie may be obtained
by writing to the Public Relations Unit; Science Research
Council; State House; High Holborn; London WCIR 4TA, England.
3D5 ** Pat Hayes, "Some Comments on Sir James Lighthill's
Report on Artificial Intelligence," AISB European Newsletter, ed
by A. Bundy and M. Liardet, pp. 36-54, Issue 19, July 1973.
3D6 *** B. Meltzer, "Comments on the Lighthill Report: Extracts
from a Letter," Firbush News 3, pp. 44-46, March 1973.
4 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:<PBS>
A FASCINATION WITH ROBOTS OR A SERIOUS INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVOR? <GCR>by
<GCR>Allen L. Hammond
SCIENCE Magazine
June 29, 1973 <BM=60>
4A In early 1972 Sir James Lighthill of Cambridge University
undertook to survey the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for
the Science Research Council of Britain. His report was
sufficiently controversial that the Council held up its release for
over a year until last month, when a somewhat sanitized version was
published (along with comments from several other scientist