B552: Knowledge-Based Computation, Spring 2008
Class Home Page

Contents

• Announcements
• Course details
• Communication
• Assignment and presentation information
• Resources

Announcements

A project demo session will be held in the final exam slot for the class: 5:00-7:00 p.m., Wed., April 30.

Please email your top 3 paper presentation preferences to me by noon on Tuesday, Feb 19. See "Paper presentation information" in the assignments section.

Note that IU classes do not meet on Martin Luther King day, Monday, Jan 21. IU and the city of Bloomington will offer extensive activities for the Martin Luther King celebration.

Welcome to the class!

Course details

Instructor

• Professor: David Leake (E-mail: leake at cs).

Meeting Time and Place

Essential Information

Everyone is responsible for reading the following pages.

• Overview of class policies, etc.
• Syllabus
• Departmental statement on academic integrity

Communication

• Instructor Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, LH230D.
  9:30-10:30 is regular office hours; 4:00-5:00 is express office hours (short questions get priority).
  If my door is closed during office hours, please knock, even if I am talking with someone, so I will know you are there.
  If you can't make these hours, or if I have to be absent during these hours, I'd be happy to make appointments to meet at other times. In either case, please send email, and please include your scheduling constraints in the message.
• Email questions: I'm happy to get questions by email. Please include "B552" in the subject line.
• Submissions: Submissions will be done through Oncourse. The oncourse message system may also be used to send general-interest questions, thoughts, and news to the class. Please use the email option and include "B552" in the subject line. NB: The handling of class discussions may change based on class needs and preferences.

Assignment and presentation information

• Semester projects
  • Keep on the lookout for potential areas!
  • Final project writeup guidelines and grading information
  • Project presentation schedule
  • Guidelines for project presentations.
• Presentations of research papers
  • Guidelines for presenting research papers
  • Discussant guidelines
  • Paper presentation information, to include titles, dates, presenters, and discussants. Links to the web summaries will be added 24 hours before each presentation.
• Homework assignments
  • HW2, Due by 11:30pm on Tuesday, Feb 26.
  • HW1, parts due Jan 28 and 30, and presentations due Feb 4.
• Reading assignments
  
  • Feb 11: An Introduction to the Syntax and Content of Cyc by Cynthia Matuszek, J. Cabral, M. Witbrock, J. DeOliveira. Proceedings of the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium on Formalizing and Compiling Background Knowledge and Its Applications to Knowledge Representation and Question Answering, Stanford, CA, March 2006.
  • Jan 23: From Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Second Edition (on reserve at Swain):
    • Background refresher: As needed, review Chap 7 through 7.5, except for resolution; Chap 8; 9.3 up to p 282; pp. 287-288.
    • Read 8.4 and chapter 10 through page 331.
  • Jan 16: What is a knowledge representation? by Davis, Shrobe, and Szolovits, AI Magazine, Spring, 1993
  • Jan 9: On the thresholds of knowledge, by Lenat and Feigenbaum, IJCAI 87, pp. 1173-1182.

Resources

• Supplementary class materials
• Materials on reserve at Swain library
• On-line resources (includes links to Web sites and on-line papers)
• AI/Cog Sci societies

Supplementary class materials (Some may only be available within IU)

Slides

• Slides on OpenCyc
• Slides on McELI, McSAM, and Rieger's inference theory
• Slides on Mycin and a sample dialogue from The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. Edited by Bruce G. Buchanan and Edward H. Shortliffe, 1984.
• Slides on production systems
• AM slides (4-up pdf)
• Course intro slides (2-up pdf)

Code and Data

• IUCBRF case-based reasoning framework.
• CIP/CBR Microprograms archive
• Conceptnet intro slides (pdf), Conceptnet demo code (py), and MontyLinguaDemo.py demo code (py).
• Jess, the Java expert system shell.
• Quick-start guide for OpenCyc

Video Clips

• Doug Lenat presents "Computers versus common sense"

Reserves at Swain Library

• Davis, E. Representations of commonsense knowledge. Morgan Kaufmann, 1990. Q335 .D37 1990.
• Guida, G. and Tasso, C. Design and development of knowledge-based systems. John Wiley, 1994. QA76.76.E95 G85 1994.
• Leake, D. Case-Based Reasoning: Experiences, Lessons, and Future Directions. AAAI Press, 1996. QA76.76.E95 C374 1996.
• Riesbeck, C. and Schank, R. Inside Case-Based Reasoning. Erlbaum, 1989. Q336 .R54 1989.
• Russell, S. and Norvig, P. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall, 1995. Q335 .R86 1995
• Schank, R.C., and Riesbeck, C. Inside Computer Understanding, Erlbaum, 1981. Q336 .I55 1981.

On-line Resources

• Minsky, M., Singh, P., and Sloman, A. The St. Thomas common sense symposium: designing architectures for human-level intelligence. AI Magazine, Summer, 2004.
• Aria interface agent home page
• The Saxex project home page: A Case-Based Reasoning system for generating expressive performances
• Aaron site. You can download a Windows screensaver. A sample painting shows its style.
• AI Topics web site, an extensive resource of AAAI.
• AI Magazine site. Articles are freely available after a 1-year delay.

AI/Cog Sci societies