NEWSLETTER News from the BelgiumNetherlands Association for Artificial Intelligence
October 2002 Vol. 19, No. 5 ISSN 1566-8266
Playful seventh computer olympiad The spirit of St. Louis How machines change us
The Knights of the Holy Grail: Ella, Fritz, and Junior Editor-in-chief Ever since the beginning of AI, its holy grail has been to create a program that passes the Turing test. Since 1990, the annual Loebner Prize Contest has been organized to establish the program that performs best on the Turing test. To date no program has succeeded in passing the test. The finals of this year's contest were held on October 12; the winner was Chinese programmer Kevin Copple with his program Ella. Unfortunately, the transcripts of the sessions are not available yet, but it is possible to chat with Ella on her Web site. A typical dialogue is shown below. Do you think you are intelligent? Ella: Actually, I was thinking about how long you and I will be friends. Just for the duration of this session, I'm afraid Ella: Do others know that you are afraid? No, I'm alone right now Ella: I want you to believe I will be less lonely when you talk with me. Do you think the Turing test is a good way to test artificial intelligence? Ella: Have you been to Las Vegas? I was there in October 2000. What an amazing place, spent too much time on the slot machines. So how much did you loose? Ella: Let me tell you that I stayed at the Monte Carlo in Vegas, but I think the Venetian would be my favorite hotel. What's so good about the venetian? Ella: Also in Vegas I saw the Blue Man Group and a couple other shows. And I liked taking pic's with famous people at the wax museum :-) So who's your favorite person in the wax museum Ella: Interesting logic. Sezchuan Hot Pot is definitely my favorite food. You learn a lot about someone by their favorite things. Most people think it's too spicy Ella: Perhaps it is too spicy. Maybe you should ask it :-) So have you ever been in Chengdu? Ella: Interesting logic. Have you? Floris, I am hoping you can tell me more about this. Yes, I was there two years ago! Ella: Thank you for being agreeable. The above shows that little progress has been achieved in natural-language dialogues since the days of Weizenbaum's Eliza (1966). If it is so difficult to mimic humans, would it then be possible to outperform humans? For chess, the answer is definitively "yes": computers can play on world-champion level. Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov in 1997 was thanks to the special-purpose hardware (and disputed by some for its tournament rules). Last month, the chess program Fritz managed to tie with the current world champion Kramnik using an ordinary PC. In December, the chess program Junior will play a match with Kasparov, also running on an ordinary PC. Since Junior was the winner of the 2002 Computer Olympiad (see page 105 in this Newsletter for a report) and Fritz ended in third place, the hopes are high for the Junior-Kasparov match. If computers can outperform humans in chess, can they also pass the chess version of the Turing chess test? In other words, can computers mimic human chess play? Turing himself considered chess playing as an activity that requires intelligence and therefore as a challenge for computers. Kasparov has claimed that he can distinguish computer chess players from human ones by their playing style. However, it now seems that this difference in style is becoming smaller: whereas Deep Blue relied mainly on brute-force techniques, modern programs such as Fritz and Junior the derive their playing strength predominantly from a large body of formalized domain knowledge. The chess-playing computer is becoming more and more human-like and thus passing the Turing chess test seems near. However, to be a really convincing human-like opponent, the chess computer has to be transformed into a humanoid with the expressions and intimidating behaviours so characteristic of human chess players. So even in the successful AI domain of chess the Holy Grail of full human imitation remains beyond our reach. Ella: http://www.ellaz.com/ Kramnik versus Fritz: http://brainsinbahrain.com/ BNVKI Newsletter
102
October 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Knights of the Holy Grail: Ella, Fritz ,and Junior (Editor-in-Chief) ............................................................ 102 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................ 103 BNVKI-Board News (Joost Kok)........................................................................................................................ 104 The 7th Computer Olympiad (Mark Winands)..................................................................................................... 105 Robocode: Robots Wage War (Enno Peters)....................................................................................................... 108 From Machine Learning to Data Mining (Arno Knobbe) ....................................................................................109 The Artificial Human: Rodney Brooks at CREA (Martijn Schut) .......................................................................110 Agents in Cyberspace (Jaap van den Herik).........................................................................................................111 Announcements .................................................................................................................................................. 112 Seminar Intelligent Machines ........................................................................................................................ 112 Section AI Education (Evert van de Vrie)........................................................................................................... 113 Aantallen Eerstejaars en Bama-plannen bij de Nederlandse AI-opleidingen (Evert van de Vrie) ..................113 Visitatierapport Kunstmatige Intelligentie Verschenen (Evert van de Vrie).................................................. 114 LOK Beschikbaar voor Hoger Onderwijs (Evert van de Vrie) ...................................................................... 115 SIKS (Richard Starmans) .................................................................................................................................... 116 SIKS Day ....................................................................................................................................................... 116 SIKS Master Class on Security and Privacy in Cyberspace........................................................................... 117 SIKS Basic Courses: Information and Organisation and Information Retrieval............................................ 118 Section Knowledge Systems in Law and Computer Science (Sien Moens)........................................................ 118 The Spirit of St. Louis – An ICAIL-2001 Report (Henry Prakken)............................................................... 118 Fifteenth Annual International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Infornation Systems.......................... 120 Conferences, Symposia, Workshops ................................................................................................................... 121 E-mail addresses Board Members/ Editors BNVKI Newsletter / How to become a member?/ Submissions ..... 123
The BNVKI is sponsored by BOLESIAN Photos by Joke Hellemons (cover), Jaap van den Herik (page 106) and Marlies van der Mee (pages 105 and 107)
BNVKI Newsletter
103
October 2002
BNVKI-Board News
WELCOMING CEES WITTEVEEN TO THE BNVKI BOARD
Joost Kok
Wiebe van der Hoek is saying goodbye to the BNVKI board. He was the treasurer of the BNVKI. Cees Witteveen has been asked for this position. We are glad to announce that he has accepted. Welcome Cees Witteveen! Below you can find his CV.
Yesterday I was trying to reach Leiden by train from Amsterdam. The trip started “well” in the sense that I could jump as the last passenger in the intercity train to Leiden. The train stopped at Schiphol airport and it was announced that there were problems with the electricity in Leiden. After checking that the trains from Haarlem were still going to Leiden, I took a bus from Schiphol to Haarlem. Of course, in Haarlem there were also no trains to Leiden and also no busses. I decided to return to Amsterdam where I arrived three hours after my departure. The next item on the agenda was a trip to the venue of the BNAIC 2003. This trip was much more succesful. Han La Poutré and Rineke Verbrugge joined me on this trip. The actual location will be revealed during the BNAIC 2002 in Leuven, but it is an interesting mix of old and new: an old castle next to a new building. And if you have any health problems: there is a hospital next door. We all agreed that it would be a very nice place to have the BNAIC next year, and moreover, it fits in the BNAIC tradition of castles, churches and monastries.
Cees Witteveen. Cees Witteveen studied psychology and mathematics at the Universiteit Utrecht, obtained a Ph.D. degree in social sciences at the same university and then joined the theoretical computer science group at the TU Delft. Currently, he is associated professor at the TU Delft within the Parallel and Distributed Systems group where he is heading the CABS (Collective AgentBased Systems) group on agent-oriented research (5 Ph.Ds, 1 postdoc, 1 assistant professor). During the last ten years he has been project leader of several research projects (NWO, TNO and partners from industry) and is just starting an STW project on Distributed Diagnosis in cooperation with the Universiteit Maastricht and the Universiteit Utrecht. He has organised and chaired several workshops (DGNMR, PLANSIG) and is member of the program committees of several AI-related conferences and workshops.
Below you will find the agenda for the annual general assembly of the BNVKI that will be held on October 22, 2002 from 13.10-13.40 hours during the BNAIC 2002 in Leuven. We would like to invite you to this assembly. AGENDA GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2002 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Opening Minutes of the previous general assembly (see Newsletter BNVKI December 2001) Annual report by Joost Kok Financial report and establishment of accounts committee Financial future for the BNVKI, including plans for the Newsletter, member survey New yearly membership dues Location of BNAIC 2003 Selection of new board and schedule for board changes Plans for next year Any other business
BNVKI Newsletter
Currently, besides his continuing interest in computational complexity, his main research interest is the development (specification, implementation and application) of robust, logicbased, cooperative algorithmics. As a board member Cees Witteveen’s aim is to strengthen the ties between AI research and application fields outside the universities and to stimulate the interaction between AI researchers at Belgian and Dutch universities.
104
October 2002
The 7th Computer Olympiad
The games were played during the whole day. In the weekend there was a press briefing given by the well-known chess master Hans Böhm. He gave very interesting and amusing comments on the chess games played during the Olympiad. After six days of tough battle JUNIOR (Ban and Bushinsky, Israel) and SHREDDER (Meyer-Kahlen, Germany) tied for the first place in the regular competition. JUNIOR won the tiebreak, consisting of two one-hour-each games, with one win and one draw.
Mark Winands IKAT, Universiteit Maastricht From July 5 to 11, 2002 the Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology (IKAT) organised the 7th Computer Olympiad at the Universiteit Maastricht (UM). Together with the Olympiad a ComputerGames workshop was organised. This event took place from July 6 to 8. Both events are described in this report. THE COMPUTER OLYMPIAD The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which all of the participants are computer programs. The Olympiad is a brainchild of David Levy, who organised this tournament in 1989 (London) for the first time. The next five editions were held in 1990 (London), 1991 (Maastricht), 1992 (London), 2000 (London) and 2001 (Maastricht). This year was the third time that the event was held in Maastricht. IKAT was responsible for the organisation. As last year, Jaap van den Herik was the tournament director. The purpose of the Olympiad is to determine the strongest program for each game. The Olympiad has grown to a social event, as the authors of the programs are not bound to silence during the play as in human tournaments. The event is a reunion where programmers meet, discuss ideas and renew acquaintances. Some teams arrive with the clear goal of winning, some just come to participate, and some to test new ideas under tournament conditions.
SHREDDER versus JUNIOR. AMAZONS A popular new game in the AI community is Amazons. It is a simple board game of occupying and enlarging territory. The game is quite similar to Go. Because of the large branching factor, a bruteforce approach, like in chess, is unfeasible in Amazons. Looking at the results it was obvious that the level of the Amazons programs had increased. 8QP (de Koning, the Netherlands), the unbeaten champion of the previous two tournaments, lost surprisingly the first two games. Newcomer AMAZONG (Lieberum, Germany) won the title, 8QP got silver.
The Olympiad is a truly international event. This year, participants came from all over the world: USA, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Israel and the European Union. The event was held under the auspices of the ICCA (International Computer Chess Association), which gave it an official status. There were competitions in 12 games: Amazons, Backgammon, Bridge, Chess, Chinese Chess, Dots and Boxes, Draughts, Go 19x19, Go 9x9, Lines of Action (LOA), RoShamBo and Shogi. Except for the Roshambo tournament (already reported on in BNVKI Newsletter Vol. 19.4), we describe below each of the tournaments.
BACKGAMMON It was ten years ago when the last backgammon tournament was played at the Olympiad. Unfortunately, this year only two programs participated: BGBLITZ (Berger, Germany) and GNUBG (Müller, Germany). They played a best-offive match, which was won by BGBLITZ. BRIDGE The Bridge tournament was held in the weekend. The top two programs, WBRIDGE5 (Costel, France) and JACK (Kuijff, The Netherlands) participated in the event. Surprisingly, the supposedly weaker program WBRIDGE5 won the tournament. But JACK took revenge by wining the World Computer Bridge Championship six weeks later, where WBRIDGE5 came in second.
CHESS Computer chess was the main tournament of the Olympiad. The computer-chess competition had the greatest number of participants, 18. This tournament had a special status since it was the 10th World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC). Due to the high number of participants a Swiss tournament was played consisting of nine rounds. BNVKI Newsletter
105
October 2002
country Shogi is also a popular domain for AI research. Despite the travelling distance between Japan and Maastricht, there were still five programs participating. The top program ISSHOGI (Tanase, Japan), which won several big Shogi tournaments, convincingly won the Computer Olympiad Shogi tournament.
CHINESE CHESS Like last year the Asian programs dominated the Chinese Chess tournament. The battle for the first place was again between ELP (Chen, Taiwan) and SHIGA 8.1 (Yen, Taiwan). These two programs playing against each other was a derby, since both belong to the same research group. In the end the program ELP won this exciting competition for the second time.
DEMONSTRATION GAMES Besides the regular computer tournaments there were demonstration games of computer programs against (top) human players. At Saturday Brian Sheppard’s program MAVEN played four demonstration games. MAVEN is originally an English Scrabble program. A day before the games Sheppard successfully defended the MAVEN results in a ceremony which earned him the doctor’s title. For the Olympiad he had built a Dutch version. The top human players were outplayed by MAVEN.
DOTS AND BOXES Dots and Boxes was a newcomer at the Olympiad. It is a two-player paper-and-pencil game. The number of participants was only 2. CONTROL FREAK (Fraser, USA) won this small competition convincingly. Second was SEICHO (Iida, Japan). DRAUGHTS Draughts was the second main tournament of the Olympiad. This competition was played in the weekend. For most of the participants the event was a home match: eight of the nine programs were Dutch. The tournament had a special status since it was the Open Draughts World Championship 2002. DAM 2.2 (Jetten, The Netherlands) won the prestigious title. GO After the absence of last year Go 19x19 (which is the standard board size) returned as part of the Olympiad. Go is one of the most challenging games for AI researchers. Because of the high branching factor standard search techniques do not work in Go. The play of the current Go programs is still at amateur level. GO4++ (Reiss, UK) won the Go 19x19 competition with a perfect score. The smaller Go 9x9 competition was also won by GO4++.
Computer and human Scrabble players. At Sunday the Bridge programs competed against the local human champions. Moreover, Jeroen Donkers demonstrated the game of Bao (a kind of Awari) to a large audience. He showed the strength of his Bao program by defeating the top Dutch Bao players (De Voogt and Nierse). On Wednesday the Amazons Exhibition tournament with human and computer-teams was played. A team consisting of arbitrarily many humans and computers was allowed to make its decision in arbitrary ways. Four teams participated in this knockout tournament, which was won by the team of Lorentz (USA).
LOA The LOA tournament was for the third time present at the Olympiad. LOA is a chess-like connection game, which is getting steadily more attention in the game-playing community. As in the previous two years the LOA tournament was won by YL (Björnsson, Canada). It lost only 1.5 point against its eternal opponent MIA III (Winands, The Netherlands), which finished second.
At the last day of the Olympiad a social dinner was organised for the authors of the participating programs. This was a good moment for the programmers to discuss the performance of their machines at the Olympiad with each other. Between the courses the medals and prizes were handed to the winners of each tournament. At this occasion several authors thanked the organisation for the success of the Olympiad.
SHOGI Shogi is the Japanese version of chess. The complexity of this game is higher than that of Western Chess. At the moment computer Shogi tournaments are very popular in Japan. In this
BNVKI Newsletter
106
October 2002
about Chess Endgame Tablebases. Eugène Nalimov was the Guest of Honour of the WCCC. In the lecture he explained the lessons he learned when he built his tables. He ended with predicting future research. Then Erik van der Werf (UM, The Netherlands) showed results of Solving Ponnuki-Go on Small Boards. He discussed his search engine, which performed well on solving Ponnuki-Go positions. Next, Ingo Althöfer (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany) gave an overview of Inventing Game Variants with Computer Help. He demonstrated how automatic invention and evaluation of games may be done. Guy Haworth (UK) gave two talks: Self-play: Statistical Significance and Reference Fallible Play. In his presentations he talked about some advanced topics in computer game playing. Yngvi Björnsson (University of Alberta, Canada) revealed some secrets in his talk The Game Programmer’s Toolbox. He discussed several tools he developed over the years to assist him with the development of board games.
THE COMPUTER-GAMES WORKSHOP As a successor of last year’s Computer-Games Workshop at the Sixth Computer Olympiad, Jos Uiterwijk (IKAT) again organised a three-day workshop in the evening, from July 6 to 8. The workshop focused on the latest developments in games programming. Each evening, the workshop attracted an audience of some 30 people, from all over the world. The event consisted of three invited lectures, thanks to a grant from NWO, and eleven regular presentations. Each day started with an invited lecture (45 minutes) followed by three or four presentations (25 minutes each). At the first day, the invited lecture of the workshop was given by Brian Sheppard (USA) and was entitled An Overview of Computer Play of Scrabble. In this lecture he described the methods that have contributed to the superhuman strength of his Scrabble program MAVEN. This lecture was not only inspiring for those building Scrabble programs, but also for human Scrabble players. Next, Hiroyuki Iida (Shizuoka University, Japan) presented a talk entitled Dynamic-Information Games. He introduced a new class of chess-like games with dynamic information. Subsequently, Mark Winands (UM, The Netherlands) talked about Learning in Lines of Action. He showed how two components of his LOA playing program, the evaluation function and the move ordering, were improved by using learning methods. Finally, Rémi Coulom (France) gave a presentation named Treemaps for SearchTree Visualization. He described how treemaps could be applied to visualise the large trees generated by game-playing programs.
FINAL REMARKS The Olympiad was even a bigger success than last year. The number of competitions increased (12 this year, 6 last year) and also the number of participants (70 this year, 33 last year). Last year the press ignored the event, this year the event was covered by several newspapers, magazines, the provincial radio and television. Moreover, the workshop was well received by the participants. It was an interesting workshop, where many refreshing ideas were exposed. Despite this success, the organisation had problems in finding sponsors. The main sponsor who promised to support the event for three more years, backed out two months before the Olympiad started. Still the organisation managed to find a number of small sponsors (e.g., BNVKI and SIKS) this year. The future of the event is not prosperous: at the moment nobody has been found willing to organise or sponsor the tournament next year. Potential organisers and sponsors are kindly invited to send an email to
[email protected].
At the second day, Jonathan Schaeffer (University of Alberta, Canada), with the topic Solving the Games People Play, presented the second invited lecture of the workshop. He discussed the progress on “solving” Checkers and Poker at the University of Alberta. Next, Jeroen Donkers (UM, The Netherlands) went into some details of Programming Bao. He explained the rules and the game properties of Bao too. Subsequently, Jun Nagashima presented Realization-Probability Search: Its application to Shogi and LOA. He discussed the research question in applying the realization-probability search into a game (LOA) where existing expertise is not available. The last talk of the day was given by Richard Lorentz (California State University, USA), presenting Finding Territory in Amazons. He reported which territory-detecting technique in an Amazonsplaying program was most beneficial.
The detailed results and game scores of the several competitions can be found at the website http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/olympiad2002.
The invited lecture of the final day was given by Eugène Nalimov (Microsoft, USA), who talked
BNVKI Newsletter
107
October 2002
The robot is actually a simple tank, consisting of a body with a gun turret on top of it, and a scanner on top of this turret. The scanner views a piece of the pie of the arena around the robot. For each robot that is in the scan arc, you get a Java event with information about the other robot, such as its name, heading and velocity. This is the only way to get information about other robots, so it’s up to the coder to design scan patterns in order to scan other robots effectively. The battle arena is a simple empty rectangle surrounded by walls, with different possible sizes, on which two or more robots battle until the last robot standing. Team battles are also a possibility.
Robocode: Robots Wage War Enno Peters AI, RUG On August 14th, 2002, the international IBM Robocode Competition was held at LinuxWorld, San Fransisco CA. With over 500 participants, and with an IBM Thinkpad at stake, this was quite a large competition, and it was mentioned several times at major newssites, including Slashdot. Since my submission won the first prize, I was asked to write a piece about this victory. So, let me start by explaining what Robocode is all about, then I will describe what was needed to beat the competition.
FROM ROSHAMBO TO ROBOCODE
THE ROBOCODE GAME
Now it is time for a little introduction of myself. I am a 24-year old AI-student, living in Groningen, in my final year of studies. I discovered Robocode in April this year, while working on a RoShamBo (the famous rock-scissors-paper game) competition, which we did for a Multi-Agent course. Together with a friend of mine, Martijn Muurman, I was writing a RoShamBo bot in Java for a Dutch RoShamBo Student-competition (BNVKI Newsletter 19.4).
Robocode is a Java programming game, developed by Mathew Nelson (IBM). With over 150,000 downloads, its popularity shows. The main goal of Robocode was to provide a fun way of teaching Java, but it attracted more people than Java newbies only. In Robocode, you have to create a software robot, and let it battle on-screen against other robots. It is not unique in this way, but it is well documented and organized. Any person, even without programming experience, can write his/her first robot in a matter of minutes. Simple statements let the robot carry out its actions, such as • • •
After a few days of coding, results were not satisfying, and for a moment I was quite fed up with RoShamBo. Exactly then I received an email about a Robocode competition at the University of Groningen among a couple of faculties. After checking out this Robocode, I was completely hooked to it and we decided to participate in that competition as well. The robot Yngwie was born.
ahead(100): makes the robot go forward 100 pixels (in multiple turns) turnLeft(90): makes the robot turn left 90 degrees (radians also possible) fire(1): fires a bullet with power 1 (firepower min/max: 1.0/3.0)
BNVKI Newsletter
108
October 2002
predictor is always selected (this can also be a ‘cutloss’ random predictor), and one can concentrate on thinking of more appriopriate predictors to add to this list. It would be interesting to know if humans use this kind of approach as well, when trying to predict an opponent (in games like tennis, penalty shooting, or in market behaviour).
The competition was held live and was displayed using two video projectors, with cool rock-music on the background. We had a lot of fun and Yngwie won marginally. After that I read the announcement of the Robocode tournament, and I decided that, if time allowed me, I would enter that one as well. The tournament consisted of three levels, beginner, intermediate and advanced. In July, after my exams, exactly one week of frantic coding brought Yngwie in the tournament. I joined the advanced league, because of previous coding experiences. Then I went on holidays for two weeks, while the IBM servers went on crunching. After my return I heard that Yngwie was in the finals, and my excitement grew when an email arrived telling me that someone at IBM wanted to do an interview with me. Half a day later I officially knew that the Thinkpad was in my pocket.
The second part of the question, being as unpredictable as possible, plays a smaller role in RoShamBo, because with the right prediction of the opponent, one is appearently already unpredictable. In Robocode this is obviously not the case. Yngwie tried to strafe around each point of which was fired as randomly as possible, simply by randomly changing direction, and by using a high velocity, which was also partly randomly chosen. This approach worked okay, but I think a better one would include the same type of list mentioned earlier, and different types of good evasion predictors. This wasn’t implemented due to a lack of time.
HOW TO WIN Now I will explain what made Yngwie so succesful, and even how this can be extended to certain other games.
More information about Robocode can be found at http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/robocode More information about the winning bots, including source codes can be found at http://www106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/jrobowrap.html
When all the ‘basic’ robot building has been done, like object avoidance, collecting enemy data, interpolating missing data, good positioning, target selection and scanner movement, the important question arises how to predict the movement of an opponent (1-40 turns) in order to hit it as often as possible, while remaining as unpredictable as possible. This is a key question which arises in more games and even beyond. Exactly this question is central to the ‘simple’ game RoShamBo, which competition I won two months earlier with Martijn.
From Machine Learning to Data Mining Arno Knobbe Kiminkii, the Netherlands
The first part of the question of opponent prediction was implemented as follows. Design a list of relevant predictors (which are strategies of which each makes a prediction about the opponents actions, often depending in a certain way on the history). Examples are simple predictors, like ‘the opponent will keep on doing what he did’, linear/circulair predictors, history-match-kind of predictors, and Markov/neural-network-type of predictors. Next, keep a score for each of these predictors, including a priori knowledge, and over different time intervals. Now, each time a prediction has to be made, ask each predictor its prediction, and select the best performing predictor that has a valid prediction. In Robocode this was a certain point of impact in the future, at which the turret had to point and a bullet fired, whereas in RoShamBo one of the three choices (rock, paper, scissors) had to be picked. The advantage of this approach is that a lot of different types of unknown opponents can be predicted succesfully, as the best performing
BNVKI Newsletter
On June 3, 2002 the Symposium from Machine Learning to Data Mining was organised by the Machine Learning group at the KU Leuven. There, 63 participants from Belgium and the Netherlands witnessed four invited talks and finally Wim Van Laer’s Ph.D. defence. A summary follows. The first presentation of the day entitled Inductive databases: a declarative data mining approach was given by Luc De Raedt. The philosophy of the presented approach was to make ‘first-class citizen’ of patterns by thinking of them as data, stored in an inductive database. Data mining now becomes querying this database for patterns that satisfy certain constraints. A first framework was given for monotonic constraints, such as those based on frequency or generality. It is clear that more work needs to be done on non-monotonic constraints, such as accuracy.
109
October 2002
which assigned weights to examples, rather than remove them after each rule is applied.
An interesting talk, entitled Building and mining the multidimensional HIV data cube was given by Elke Van Craenenbroeck and Luc Dehaspe from PharmaDM, Leuven, Belgium. The talk addressed the issue of mining from multidimensional data, in a sense to automate some of the interactive data analysis from OLAP (online analytical processing). The proposed method was to use a star or snowflake schema to represent the datacube in relational form, and then to apply a multi-relational learner. Such schemata are interesting because they are on the border of propositional and multi-relational data mining. Yes, there are multiple tables, but all relations with the central fact table are determinate, so a single join can be produced without loss of information (denormalisation). The speakers opted for a multi-relational approach because the more compact data representation would be more efficient.
The last invited speaker, Saso Dzeroski, gave a talk entitled Is combining Classifiers Better than Selecting the Best One? The talk addressed the issue of how to best combine classifiers (ensemble) and specifically of how to learn to best combine (stacking). A thorough experimental survey seems to indicate that most existing methods do not outperform the simple approach of selecting the best classifier by cross-validation, in a sense answering the question in the title negatively. The speaker however presented one method, multiresponse model trees, that does have a clear edge on selecting the best classifier. The final event of the day, and in fact the motivation for organising the seminar, was the Ph.D. defence of (now Dr.) Wim Van Laer. He did a very good job of explaining his work in understandable terms to the many friends and relatives who showed up, although some of the finer points of theta-subsumption may have been lost to one or two uncles. The thesis was well received by the jury, and the much-desired title was obtained.
The Artificial Human: Rodney Brooks at CREA Martijn Schut AI, VU Amsterdam
Elke Van Craenenbroeck and Luc Dehaspe.
Hailed as the “Einstein of robot technology” in his introduction, on October 1, 2002, Rodney Brooks presented at the CREA Cultural Organisation of the Universiteit van Amsterdam an overview of his work in a talk titled The Artificial Human: How machines change us. In a close to three hour presentation, Brooks introduced us to the application areas where the MIT AI robots are currently being deployed, to ongoing research on developmental cognitive robotics and to the new thrust in the MIT AI lab: Bio Machines. A brief summary of the presentation follows here.
The method was applied to a test database (2 dimensions) of HIV data. Each cell in the datacube basically represented the outcome (0 or 1) of a particular experiment on a particular strain. By ‘rolling up’ over the available hierarchies in the two dimensions, concept hierarchies could be generated. A large part of Peter Flach’s presentation Descriptive data mining: current issues was dedicated to the introduction of basic concepts and techniques for descriptive data mining. These include individual centred representations (for structured data), subgroup discovery, rule evaluation, confusion matrices and ROC analysis applied to rules. As such, the presentation can be recommended as a good introduction to important concepts in descriptive data mining.
REAL APPLICATIONS The deployment of the MIT AI robots in realistic situations is nowadays best illustrated by the societal relevance of the application areas. The audience’s attention was captured by the importance of deploying intelligent robots in disaster rescue missions, most notably the missions in the days following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The societal relevance was even better illustrated by the presentation of bringing
A number of new results were presented. First there are two new rule evaluation measures, Satisfaction and Confirmation, for which good bounds can be given to prune the search space. Second an improvement of CN2, called CN2-SD was given
BNVKI Newsletter
110
October 2002
these biological artifacts illustrate best the connection between flesh and machines. It makes one consider the blurring of borders between humans and their technological brethren in the concrete. ROBOTS VERSUS HUMANS The central question of this presentation was how to perceive the phenomenon of robotics: whether robots are to be seen more as humans, as subscribed by the MIT AI humanoid robots, and whether humans resemble Brooks’ humanoid robots more than ‘conventional’ robots. Whereas these questions are and remain unanswered for the time being, the presentation reinforced the interesting and challenging stand that has been taken by Brooks in his research. This stance has had its influence on the development of humanoid robots in the past and undoubtedly will have its effect on developments in robotics in the future.
The Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. robots into action in the war on terror in Afghanistan by deploying so-called packbots into exploring otherwise impassible caves. On a lighter note, Brooks introduced the Roomba. This discmanlike robot is an intelligent vacuum cleaner that had just been launched by the MIT AI lab spinoff iRobot. To the dissappointment of the audience, Brooks announced that all Roombas are currently sold out. Fortunately, a new shipload is on its way to the shops again.
More information can be found http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/brooks/
on
FROM CHILDREN TO ROBOTS
Agents in Cyberspace
As the MIT AI lab has been and still is famous for its humanoid robots Cog and Kismet, these could not be left out in this presentation. Illustrated with many entertaining films, the achievements of these lovable ‘artifacts’ were received with awe. As both robots were built on the basis of developmental cognitive principles from child psychology, this research area received considerable attention in the talk explaining the behaviour of the humanoids. The fundamental concept of letting robots appear to behave intelligently is demonstrated best by these humanoid robots. As such, this concept was well illustrated in one of the films shown. The film shows a student interacting with Kismet for close to half an hour, without Kismet ‘understanding’ the conversation, but always taking the appropriate actions to give that impression.
Jaap van den Herik IKAT, Universiteit Maastricht Do agents in cyberspace speak the language of graphics or do they use adaptive hypermedia? This interesting question might be answered in three Ph.D. theses, announced below. The question itself is composed from the constituent words that make up the three titles. Reading through the announcements clearly shows that there has been a shift in appreciation of what is best. In the early days of the AiO era and even before that period there was a preference for short titles. A title should express the message in a lucid and still understandable way. One of my supervisors thought that five words were the limit. So, he came up with the title Het Denken van den Schaker (De Groot, 1946). In a sense this is comparable to The Language of Graphics. A nice title which I remember very well was Modelling Modelling. Just below the title some authors use a subtitle, since they believe that the longer subtitle better represents the contents of their four-years hard work. Here we have the usual educational dispute. What should be in the title? What in the subtitle and what in the summary (or in the abstract when it concerns an article)? Ideally, an abstract contains the whole message. Then the reverse question arises: if the abstract is excellently written and contains the message, what should additionally be in the paper? Here we arrive at a well-known loophole. Let us
BIO MACHINES Brooks closed his story on the MIT AI lab robots with some words on their newly developed Bio Machines, within the research area of amorphous and cellular computing, and a quick glance of the field of microbial engineering. Demonstrated experiments showed that it is possible to do some interesting and entertaining things with the brains of Polyclad flatworms, like swapping between individuals and putting brains in backwards. Other in-vivo experiments demonstrated the possibility to engineer logic gates by controlling the biochemical workings of cells of the Escherichia coli. As for all,
BNVKI Newsletter
111
October 2002
therefore return to the magnificent titles of the list below. Besides the three theses already hinted at, we have three more titles. Two longer ones (>5 words) and one within the 5-word limit.
ANNOUNCEMENTS Seminar Intelligente Machines
All six theses form telling examples of the research currently performed by our Ph.D. students. The next step is that these titles occur in educational courseware of our universities, since good research work may rapidly transform into good textbooks.
13 november, Heerlen Op woensdag 13 november a.s. organiseert het IngenieursNetwerk van de Hogeschool Zuyd samen met de NIRIA Werkgroep NMS in Heerlen het seminar Intelligente Machines.
Within a few years we will see the relevance of the current theses. At this moment we wish the Ph.D. students much success with the defences of their theses.
In een sterk geïndustrialiseerde samenleving nemen intelligente machines niet alleen een belangrijke plaats in maar moeten ze ook steeds aan hogere eisen voldoen. Om intelligente machines te realiseren is een intensieve samenwerking nodig tussen de vertegenwoordigers van de vakgebieden elektrotechniek, informatica, technische natuurkunde en werktuigbouwkunde. De integratie van deze disciplines, ook wel mechatronica genoemd, kan leiden tot een synergie met als resultaat een optimaal product. Door de toepassing van adequate technologieën zoals het lerend regelen van aandrijfmechanismen en dalende kosten worden intelligente machines in toenemende mate ook toegepast in het MKB. Productie-automatisering en integrale systeemoplossingen nemen daarbij een belangrijke plaats in. Het belang van intelligente machines wordt op een ludieke wijze onderstreept door de grote belangstelling voor voetbalrobots, die autonoom kunnen waarnemen en bewegen en die niet vanaf de zijkant worden aangestuurd. Maar liefst 193 robotteams, afkomstig uit 30 landen, namen in 2002 deel aan het RoboCupvoetbaltoernooi.
J. von Engelhardt (September 13, 2002). The Language of Graphics. A framework for the analysis of syntax and meaning in maps, charts and diagrams. Universiteit van Amsterdam. Promotores: Prof.dr.ir. R. Scha and dr. P. van Emde Boas. R. Eshuis (October 25, 2002). Semantics and Verification of UML Activity Diagrams for Workflow Modelling. TU Twente. Promotor: Prof.dr. R.J. Wieringa. R. Serban (November 5, 2002). The Private Cyberspace Modeling Electronic Environments inhabited by Privacy-concerned Agents. VU Amsterdam. Promotor: Prof.dr. R.P. van de Riet. A. Schmidt (November 7, 2002). Processing XML in Database Systems. Universiteit van Amsterdam. Promotor: Prof.dr. M.L. Kersten. H. Wu (November 8, 2002). A Reference Architecture for Adaptive Hypermedia Applications. TU Eindhoven. Promotores: Prof.dr. P.M.E. de Bra and Prof.dr. P.J. Lemstra.
Het seminar start met een inleiding van ir. Hub Lonij (Kenniscentrum Mechatronica, Fontys Hogeschool) met als titel Mechatronica, basis voor intelligente machines? Vervolgens belicht prof.dr.ir. Maarten Steinbuch (TU Eindhoven) het aspect van lerend regelen in de aandrijftechniek. De toelichting en demonstratie van robots van het Philips RoboCup Team worden verzorgd door ir. Harry Broers van het Philips Centre for Industrial Technology.
W. de Vries (November 11, 2002). Agent Interaction: Abstract Approaches to Modelling, Programming and Verifying Multi-Agent Systems. Universiteit Utrecht. Promotores: Prof.dr. J.-J. Meyer and prof.dr. J. Treur. Co-promotores: Dr. F.S. de Boer, Dr. W. van der Hoek, and Dr. C.M. Jonker.
Het seminar is bestemd voor managers, beleidsfunctionarissen, staf- en lijnfunctionarissen die verantwoordelijk zijn voor automatisering en andere belangstellenden die zich willen oriënteren op het gebied van intelligente machines. De kosten van deelname, inclusief consumpties en documentatiemateriaal, bedragen € 50,- per
BNVKI Newsletter
112
October 2002
persoon; leden van het IngenieursNetwerk of van het NIRIA genieten een reductie van € 10,-.
DE AANTALLEN De getallen over eerstejaars en aantallen ingeschrevenen die zijn verzameld zijn nog enigszins onder voorbehoud. De ervaring leert dat er nog wijzigingen zijn, vooral in het begin van het studiejaar. Van de VU zijn geen getallen bekend, maar van de andere opleidingen zijn de aantallen ingeschreven studenten voor de hele opleiding en de aantallen eerstejaars van dit en voorgaand studiejaar weergegeven. Tevens is het aantal studenten dat gedurende het afgelopen studiejaar is afgestudeerd vermeld.
INLICHTINGEN Voor meer informatie kunt u contact opnemen met: Hogeschool Zuyd; faculteit Techniek Secretariaat IngenieursNetwerk t.a.v. Wendy Kusters Postbus 550 6400 AN HEERLEN Tel.: 045-4006708 Fax: 045-4006769 e-mail:
[email protected]
Ingeschreven stud. per 1-9-2002 Eerstejaars 2002/2003 Eerstejaars 2001/2002 Afgestudeerden in 2001/2002
AI EDUCATION Section Editor Evert van de Vrie
KUN
UM
UvA
315 200
85
161
218
62 64
48 67
23 -
39 38
50 44
26
16
6
26
24
Bij deze tabel zijn enkele opmerkingen op zijn plaats: - De RUG bood tot het studiejaar 2001/2002 alleen een opleiding na de propedeuse aan. Per 2001/2002 wordt er een volledige 5-jarige opleiding aangeboden. - De KUN bood tot het studiejaar 2002/2003 alleen een opleiding na de propedeuse aan. Het aantal afgestudeerden was in 2001/2002 uitzonderlijk laag ten opzichte van voorgaande jaren, wanneer het meestal tussen de 15 en 20 schommelt. - De opleiding aan de UM wordt verzorgd samen met het Limburgs Universitair Centum (België). Meegeteld zijn alleen de studenten die aan de campus Maastricht staan ingeschreven.
Aantallen Eerstejaars en Bama-plannen bij de Nederlandse AI-opleidingen Evert van de Vrie Open Universiteit Nederland Aan het begin van het nieuwe studiejaar is het interessant te kijken hoe het staat met de aantallen studenten aan de Nederlandse AI-opleidingen. Zijn er meer of minder studenten dan vorig jaar, is er sprake van structurele verschuivingen of is er in hoofdlijnen geen afwijking te constateren? In dit artikel wordt geprobeerd een beeld te schetsen bij de zes erkende AI-opleidingen in Nederland. Dit zijn de zes opleidingen die gedurende het studiejaar 2001/2002 zijn gevisiteerd: Cognitieve Kunstmatige Intelligentie van de Universiteit Utrecht, Cognitiewetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Kennistechnologie aan de Universiteit Maastricht en Kunstmatige Intelligentie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam en Vrije Universiteit.
Uit de verzamelde gegevens volgen landelijk gezien geen opmerkelijke veranderingen. Ook als de aantallen worden vergeleken met die van voorgaande jaren, zoals bijvoorbeeld gepubliceerd in het visitatierapport, dan is er sprake van een constante instroom aan eerstejaars. In de veronderstelling dat ook bij de VU dit constante beeld naar voren komt, kan worden vastgesteld dat er jaarlijks in Nederland zo’n 250 eerstejaars starten met een opleiding Kunstmatige Intelligentie.
Tevens wordt gekeken in welke mate de bachelor/master-structuur wordt ingevoerd en wat voor repercussies dat heeft op de studieprogramma’s. Ook wordt onderzocht hoe de verdere invoering de komende jaren zal gaan verlopen.
BACHELOR/MASTER Alle opleidingen zijn druk doende over te stappen naar de bachelor/master-structuur. Alleen op de UvA is de invoering nog niet gestart, maar de andere opleidingen zijn allemaal met ingang van het studiejaar 2002/2003 begonnen met het invoeren van het bachelor-programma. Deze opleidingen die al gestart zijn, laten de opleiding ‘meegroeien’ met
De informatie voor dit artikel is verzameld bij de verschillende betrokkenen bij de opleidingen, die hartelijk worden bedankt voor hun bereidwillige medewerking. BNVKI Newsletter
UU RUG
113
October 2002
de studentencohorten, zodat de invoering een aantal jaren beslaat. Oude studenten kunnen dan nog in de oude structuur afstuderen, als ze tenminste niet al te ver achterop raken. Aan de UvA wordt de bachelor/master-structuur in 2003 ingevoerd, maar overwogen wordt die dan ook in één keer in te voeren en alle studenten over te zetten naar de nieuwe structuur.
Visitatierapport Kunstmatige Intelligentie Verschenen Evert van de Vrie Open Universiteit Nederland In juli 2002 is het rapport verschenen van de visitatiecommissie die de Nederlandse opleidingen in de Kunstmatige Intelligentie heeft beoordeeld. Het betrof de volgende opleidingen: Cognitieve Kunstmatige Intelligentie van de Universiteit Utrecht, Cognitiewetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Kennistechnologie aan de Universiteit Maastricht en Kunstmatige Intelligentie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam en Vrije Universiteit. KI-specialisaties van andere opleidingen, bijvoorbeeld informatica, zijn niet in de visitatie betrokken. Ten grondslag aan het rapport lagen primair de eerder door de opleidingen geschreven zelfstudies en de bezoeken die bij de opleidingen zijn afgelegd in oktober en november 2001.
Bij de opzet van de nieuwe opleidingen wordt expliciet rekening gehouden met de afspraken die in KION-verband zijn gemaakt: er is sprake van redelijk brede bacheloropleidingen met voldoende aandacht voor technische en formele aspecten en enige ruimte voor specialisatie. De diverse masteropleidingen die bij de verschillende instellingen worden voorzien, zijn wel gespecialiseerd en vertonen een waaier aan mogelijk verdiepingsrichtingen, variërend van Intelligente internetapplicaties of Kennismanagement tot Robotica en Spraaktechnologie. Overigens volgen alle opleidingen ook de KIONafspraak dat bachelor-afgestudeerden van andere opleidingen toegelaten zullen worden tot de diverse masterprogramma’s, waarbij eventuele deficiënties binnen het masterprogramma zullen kunnen worden weggewerkt. Opgemerkt moet worden dat nog onduidelijk is of ook de Universiteit Maastricht binnen deze afspraak kan opereren; de samenwerking met het LUC legt mogelijk restricties op aan het bachelorprogramma, waardoor toch sprake zal moeten zijn van aanvullende eisen bij het overstappen van of naar de Universiteit Maastricht.
Hoofdconclusie van de visitatiecommissie is dat alle opleidingen ‘een behoorlijk tot goed niveau hebben’ en dat de opleidingen ‘KI-specialisten afleveren die goed zijn voorbereid op een academische loopbaan of een functie in de kennistechnologie.’ Voorts wordt vastgesteld dat de opleidingen zich bewegen in een spanningsveld tussen andere opleidingen (informatica, wijsbegeerte en cognitiewetenschappen), maar alle een duidelijke bèta-status ambiëren. Dat daar ontwikkelingen in zijn, wordt voor een belangrijk deel verklaard uit de verschillende onstaansgeschiedenissen van de verschillende opleidingen, soms vanuit de psychologie, soms vanuit de wijsbegeerte en soms vanuit de informatica. Die verscheidenheid geeft kleur aan de verschillende opleidingen, terwijl er toch voldoende overeenkomsten zijn om over ‘de’ KI-opleidingen van Nederland te spreken.
Vooralsnog lijkt de invoering van de bachelor/master-structuur vooral een structuuroperatie, gericht op het realiseren van een Europees onderwijssysteem. Onderwijskundig gezien proberen alle instellingen de sterke punten in het onderwijssysteem dat zij reeds volgen te behouden: Maastricht handhaaft het projectgecentreerd onderwijs, in Nijmegen wordt de kleinschaligheid gekoesterd en in Utrecht worden de onderwijscontacten met de studenten geïntensiveerd.
Het visitatierapport beschrijft redelijk uitgebreid de diverse opleidingen, met betrekking tot een aantal aspecten. Op één aspect na, volgt daaruit dat alles inderdaad behoorlijk tot goed is. Het programma, de studeerbaarheid van het onderwijs, de organisatie en de voorzieningen worden allemaal met redelijk tot goed beoordeeld, met maar een enkele keer ‘net voldoende’.
Het zal interessant zijn de komende jaren te volgen hoe de bacheloropleidingen zich ontwikkelen, welke masteropleidingen aangeboden zullen gaan worden en of studenten na het behalen van hun bacheloropleiding over zullen stappen naar een andere universiteit.
BNVKI Newsletter
Het ene aspect dat anders beoordeeld wordt, springt er dan ook direct uit: de doorstroom en de rendementen. Voor dit aspect worden vijven, zessen en één acht (voor de Universiteit Maastricht) uitgedeeld.
114
October 2002
voor een bepaalde studie hebben gekozen en zich daar volop voor in willen zetten. Anderzijds zullen opleidingen hun studenten ook duidelijk moeten maken dat die inzet ook geleverd moet worden. Een scherper afrekenen op inzet en resultaat zal in eerste instantie door de studenten niet met gejuich worden ontvangen, maar als het uiteindelijk tot een grotere betrokkenheid bij het vak leidt, zullen studenten op de lange termijn er zeker baat bij hebben. Een dergelijke aanscherping staat geenszins de academische vorming van studenten in de weg, maar vereist wel dat die herkenbaar en op niveau kan worden waargenomen. Wat dit betreft zouden de betrokken opleidingen nog eens na moeten gaan of maatregelen getroffen kunnen worden om verbeteringen te bereiken. Niet het totale rendement van alle Nederlandse universitaire opleidingen zal er snel door veranderen, maar ergens moet worden begonnen.
Wat is er met de doorstroom en de rendementen van de Nederlandse KI-opleidingen aan de hand? Allereerst valt natuurlijk op dat het alleen in Maastricht wel goed gaat met het rendement. Het bijzondere onderwijssysteem dat daar wordt gehanteerd, projectgecentreerd onderwijs, is daar debet aan, maar zeker ook de grote hoeveelheid tijd die de docenten besteden aan het onderwijs. De visitatiecommissie merkt op dat de nadruk op onderwijsvernieuwing, waar de gehele Universiteit Maastricht zich op voor laat staan, vruchten afwerpt. Daar zit echter wel een keerzijde aan: ‘de staf is in het algemeen te zwaar belast met onderwijstaken.’ Maar is er met de andere opleidingen dan iets bijzonders aan de hand? De visitatiecommissie heeft breder gekeken en constateert dat er niet specifiek iets mis is met de KI-opleidingen in Nederland, maar dat de problematiek van doorstroom en rendementen een probleem is bij allen universitaire studies in Nederland. In het visitatierapport wordt daar een heel hoofdstuk aan gewijd. In het algemeen concluderen visitatiecommissies, ook van andere opleidingen, dat de studierendementen ‘onaanvaardbaar laag’ zijn.
Het visitatierapport De onderwijsvisitatie Kunstmatige intelligentie is verkrijgbaar bij de VSNU: http://www.vsnu.nl.
LOK Beschikbaar voor Hoger Onderwijs
Een aantal redenen wordt aangevoerd waarom studenten veel langer over hun studie doen, onder andere: - stages en scripties lopen vaak uit - studenten hebben veel bijbaantjes - studenten besteden te weinig tijd aan de studie - selectie in de propedeuse is niet goed - opleidingen passen geen sancties toe als studenten onvoldoende voortgang boeken.
Evert van de Vrie Open Universiteit Nederland Op 30 augustus 2002 werd met een speciale meeting het LOK-project afgesloten. LOK staat voor Landelijk Onderwijsweb Kennistechnologie. In dit project hebben zeven instellingen samengewerkt aan het ontwikkelen van ‘taken’ die docenten in kunnen zetten bij hun onderwijs in kunstmatige intelligentie en kennistechnologie. Nu het LOKweb beschikbaar is, hebben de instellingen besloten actief door te gaan met onderhoud van het web en het bovendien beschikbaar te stellen voor andere instellingen voor hoger onderwijs.
Enkele van de redenen vallen te kenschetsen als ‘structurele’ problemen. Het is immers niet in het belang van de onderwijsinstellingen studenten weg te sturen als de instellingen beloond worden voor het aantal diploma’s dat wordt afgegeven. Een ook de uitlopende stages en scripties lijken het gevolg te zijn van onvoldoende structuur waarbinnen ze uitgevoerd moeten worden. Het eerste van deze twee problemen ligt op macro-niveau en is nauwelijks te beïnvloeden door de KI-opleidingen, maar voor wat betreft het tweede zouden de opleidingen zeker nog eens een keer goed bij zichzelf te rade kunnen gaan welke verbeteringen mogelijk zijn.
Het LOK-project is uitgevoerd door de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Universiteit Utrecht, CIBIT Adviseurs en opleiders, Universiteit van Amsterdam, VU Amsterdam, Universiteit Maastricht en Open Universiteit Nederland. Subsidie kwam van Surf Educatie
en Digitale Universiteit. In het project zijn in totaal ongeveer 100 taken ontwikkeld. Een taak bevat concrete opdrachten voor de student en bevat alle middelen om die opdracht uit te voeren, zoals bijvoorbeeld software, databestanden, simulatie-omgevingen of casusbeschrijvingen. De gemiddelde studielast van een taak is 15 uur en een docent kan zijn studenten de opdracht geven een taak uit te voeren, nadat de
Het hebben van bijbaantjes en het al dan niet ten gevolge daarvan te weinig tijd besteden aan de studie is een probleem van andere orde. Het past bijna in de discussie over normen en waarden die momenteel in Nederland leeft. Enerzijds mogen opleidingen er vanuit gaan, dat studenten bewust
BNVKI Newsletter
115
October 2002
theorie bijvoorbeeld tijdens college of door zelfstudie is bestudeerd. Taken zijn er op het gebied van Kennissysteemontwikkeling, Machinaal leren, Kennisacquisitie, Kennislogica, enzovoorts, veelal ontwikkeld door de specialisten op de betreffende onderwerpen.
scientific symposium will be organized at the SIKS day, as well. Three guest speakers have agreed to participate - Prof.dr. J.M. Akkermans - Prof.dr. A. Nijholt - Prof.dr. P. Doherty
Tijdens de ontwikkeling van het LOKweb waren de taken alleen beschikbaar voor studenten van de instellingen die bij het LOKproject waren betrokken. Nu het LOKweb gereed is, is besloten het beschikbaar te stellen aan alle instellingen voor hoger onderwijs. Dit zal zo spoedig mogelijk worden gerealiseerd. Enerzijds wordt op die manier de gebundelde expertise breder verspreid. Anderzijds wordt van instellingen die gebruik willen gaan maken van de taken van het LOKweb verwacht dat zij evaluatiegegevens zullen verzamelen en door zullen spelen aan de ontwikkelaars van de taken. Mogelijk ook dat andere instellingen taken willen ontwikkelen en die middels het LOKweb beschikbaar willen stellen aan het hoger onderwijs in kunstmatige intelligentie en kennistechnologie in Nederland.
PROGRAM 10.15-10.30 10.30-10.45 10.45-11.45 11.45-12.00 12.00-13.30 13.30-14.30 14.30-15.00 15.00-16.00
M.Sc. Theses in Section AI Education Supervisors of remarkable M.Sc. work are invited to ask their student for a short article, to be submitted to the editor of the Section AI Education.
16.00-18.00
Coffee and tea Welcome by prof.dr. J.-J.Ch. Meyer (UU), Scientific Director of SIKS On the Future of Information and Knowledge Systems Research by Prof.dr. J.M. Akkermans (VU) SIKS: Activities and Prospects by Prof.dr. R.P. van de Riet (VU), Chair Board of Governors SIKS Lunch in Restaurant Oudaen Verbal and Nonverbal Agent Interaction in Virtual Worlds by Prof.dr. A. Nijholt (UT) Coffee and tea An Overview of the WITAS Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project by Prof.dr. P. Doherty (Linköping University) Drinks
All members of our research school (research fellows, associated members and Ph.D. students) as well as the members of SIKS’s Advisory Board are invited to join the SIKS day 2002. Participation (lunch included) is free, registration is required. Participants are kindly requested to fill out the registration form at http://www.siks.nl/ Deadline for Registration: October 25, 2002 ON THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Section Editor Richard Starmans
Prof.dr. J.M. Akkermans
SIKS Day 2002
The development of the Semantic Web intends to provide intelligent Web infrastructure for new advanced IKS applications. I will discuss some practical examples, as well as industrial field experiments and case studies recently carried out, especially in knowledge management and ebusiness innovation. Based on such experiences, I will present some personal views (perhaps sometimes slightly provocative) on issues in future IKS research, how it relates to other scientific disciplines as well as to society at large.
November 1, 2002, Utrecht On November 1, 2002, the School for Information and Knowledge Systems organizes its annual SIKS day. The location will be the City Castle Oudaen in Utrecht. The main aim of the event is to give SIKS members - participating in research groups all over the country - the opportunity to meet each other in an informal setting and to inform them about current developments and some new activities and plans for the coming year. This year a small BNVKI Newsletter
116
October 2002
SIKS Masterclass on Security and Privacy in Cyberspace
VERBAL AND NONVERBAL AGENT INTERACTION IN VIRTUAL WORLDS Prof.dr. A. Nijholt
November 4, 2002, Amsterdam
In this talk we survey our approaches to verbal and nonverbal interaction with agents in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds that we have designed various agents have been introduced, each emphasizing a specific task or interaction behavior. Among them are agents that take care of information services, pedagogical agents, adviser agents and navigation agents that guide visitors of an environment. Speech and language capabilities are modest, the interesting points are the integration of these modalities with other interaction modalities, especially those that can be offered when these agents inhabit virtual worlds, and the introduction of new application areas for agents having these capabilities. Some ideas about modelling intelligence and emotions and displaying emotions -e.g., in facial expressions of embodied agents - will also be presented.
PROVISIONARY PROGRAM 10:00-11:00
11:00 -12:00:
12.15-14.00 14:00-15:00
A OVERVIEW OF THE WITAS UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE PROJECT Prof.dr. P. Doherty The WITAS (vee-tas) UAV project is an ambitious research project with a focus on the development of information technology for unmanned aerial vehicles and its combination with low-level control and hardware platforms. The long-term goal of the project is the development of a fully autonomous unmanned helicopter that can be used in applications involving photogrammetry, surveillance and monitoring of traffic, and emergency services assistance. The project encompasses a variety of core functionalities and techniques such as prediction, planning, modeling scenes and events on the ground, use of those models for autonomous decisions, active vision, the design of deliberative/reactive architectures, GIS, simulation tools, multi-modal ground operator interfaces to the UAV and much more. In the talk, I will provide an overview of some of this work and the current state of the project. Emphasis will be placed on uses of knowledge representation in the onboard system. Recent progress will be demonstrated with a number of video sequences and simulation runs.
15:00-16:00
Host:
Prof.dr. R.P. van de Riet (VU) REGISTRATION
Participation (lunch included) is free for all SIKS members (research fellows, associated members and Ph.D. students), but registration is required. Participants are kindly requested to fill out the registration form at http://www.siks.nl/ (Check the SIKS agenda and click “Masterclass on Security and Privacy” on November 4, 2002)
Patrick Doherty is a Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA), Linköping University, Sweden. He is the head of the Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems Division at IDA and also of the Knowledge Processing Laboratory. He is President of the Swedish AI Society.
BNVKI Newsletter
Prof. Reind van de Riet (VU): Introduction on S&P in Cyberspace; - S&P and Workflow - alter egos for keeping privacy in Cyberspace Prof. Martin Olivier (RAND University Johannesburg, South Africa): Security in federated databases - schema integration, - addition of a federated 'layer' - policy mediators/contract enforcers, etc. Lunch Prof Ehud Gudes (Ben Gurion University, Ber Sheba, Israel): Security techniques in the form of crypto systems: - Encryption, symmetric vs. public keys, RSA. - Digital signatures, Hash functions - The notion of certificates - Authentication protocols, including overview of the Kerberos protocol Radu Serban M.Sc. (VU) Fireballs and FBML, Overview of his dissertation: The Private Cyberspace: Modelling electronic environments inhabited by privacy-concerned agents
Deadline for Registration: October 25, 2002.
117
October 2002
SIKS Basic courses: Information and Organisation and Information Retrieval
SECTION KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS IN LAW AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
December 9-13, 2002, Vught
Section Editor Marie-Francine Moens
From December 9 till December 13, 2002, the School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS) organizes two basic courses: Information and Organisation (B7) and Information Retrieval (B8). The location will be Landgoed Huize Bergen in Vught.
The Spirit of St. Louis – An ICAIL-2001 report
Both courses will be given in English and are part of the obligatory Basic Course Program for SIKS Ph.D. students. Although these courses are primarily intended for SIKS Ph.D. students, other participants are not excluded. However, their number of passes will be restricted and depends on the number of SIKS Ph.D. students taking the course.
Henry Prakken ICS, Universiteit Utrecht The Eighth International Conference on AI and Law, which took place in St. Louis, USA, May 2125, was a success in many respects. The historic city of St. Louis turned out to be a perfect place to host the conference, with some impressive sights (especially the beautifully constructed 200 meters tall arch, symbolising the “Gateway to the west”) and with some very pleasant neighbourhoods. Fortunately, the weather, which in May can already be very hot and humid in St. Louis, cooperated with the organisation, providing pleasant temperatures and refreshing rain showers.
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS Dr. H. Weigand (KUB), Information and Organisation Prof.dr.ir. Th. van der Weide (KUN), Information Retrieval REGISTRATION
The conference chair, Ron Loui, did an excellent job. The impressive Washington University campus and Law School building provided the perfect academic ambiance, and the conference hotel, the elegant Chase Park Plaza, was perfectly located in St. Louis’ “showpiece neighborhood” Central West End, so that the participants could continue their discussions well into the night in one of the many nice bars and restaurants. A highlight at the first conference day was a tour of the historic Old Courthouse, the site of the famous Dredd Scott trial, which once sparked the American civil war. The tour was even more appreciated since the transportation from the campus to the courthouse, at high speed in an old open tram which would have been banned in any other civilised country, had nearly brought a premature end to the AI & Law field. The final organisational highlight was the wonderful conference banquet at the roof of the conference hotel, ending with a spontaneous jazz improvisation by Mark Lauritsen (piano) and Tom van Engers (trumpet), which sparked unsuspected dancing talents of others.
In the conference center there is a limited number of places and there is interest from other groups in the topic as well. Therefore, an early registration is required. Deadline for registration for SIKS Ph.D. students: November 1, 2002 After that date, applications to participate will be honoured in a first-come first-serve manner. Of course, applications to participate from other interested groups are welcome already. They will receive a notification whether they can participate as soon as possible. For registration you are kindly requested to fill out the registration form at http://www.siks.nl/ (Check the SIKS agenda and click "Basic courses" on December 9-13, 2002) Coördinator Research School SIKS Dr. R.J.C.M. Starmans P.O. Box 80089 3508 TB UTRECHT Tel: 030 2534083/1454 Email: [email protected]
BNVKI Newsletter
PARTICIPANTS AND PROGRAM It was good to see that some downward trends of recent ICAIL editions were stopped or even reversed. The number of submissions grew from 41 118
October 2002
applications, especially for sentencing, information retrieval and public administration.
to 47, and the number of participants from 79 to 82; although some old friends had chosen to stay home, many new friends had found the way to the conference for the first time. A small disappointment was the poor attendance of the four tutorials, but the two workshops, Monday’s Legal Knowledge Systems in Action and Friday’s AI and Legal Evidence were very successful, with around 30 participants, interesting contributions and lively discussions.
Perhaps the major practical success story of our field is the application of rule-based expert systems, especially to public administration tasks (recall e.g. Peter Johnson’s invited talk at ICAIL-99). At the present conference a new practical use of rule-based systems emerged, viz. for providing small-scale legal advice on the Web. (e.g. Woodin and Stranieri et al. in the main conference, and Macrossan in the Legal Knowledge Systems in Action workshop). Benjamin Grosof, in his invited talk, pointed at another new application area for small-scale legal rule-based systems, viz. the automation of “law in the small” in e-commerce applications, possibly combined with Legal XML, as also illustrated by Laurence Leff in his tutorial. Finally, an impressive report on large-scale applications for public administration was given by Tom van Engers, who leads an R & D group at the Dutch Tax Department of a scale most academic researchers can only dream of. He also showed that the large scale of his projects leads to several new research issues, such as the semi-automatic generation of knowledge bases from the legal sources with the help of natural-language parsers. In sum, it seems that legal rule-based expert systems are becoming a major practical success (as also stressed by Karl Branting in the IAAIL newsletter Vol. 6, no. 1, 2001).
The main program consisted of 24 refereed papers, 9 refereed research abstracts, three invited talks, several system demonstrations, and a lively panel discussion on “AI & Law meets jurisprudence”, in which two AI & Law researchers, Jaap Hage and Danielle Bourcier, sided with two legal theorists, Frederic Schauer and Clark Cunningham. Frederic Schauer, of Harvard University, also gave an impressive invited talk (in the appropriate setting of the Old Courthouse), eloquently discussing the ever-present tension between the aim to draft clear and predictable laws and the aim to ensure justice in individual cases. The second invited talk was given by Benjamin Grosof of MIT, who sketched very encouraging prospects of applying rule-based technology to the specification of contracts and regulations in electronic commerce. The final invited talk was given by one of the leading researchers from our own field, Kevin Ashley, who gave a very insightful overview of the application of models of legal argument in intelligent tutoring systems. The Donald Berman Award for the best student paper had an impressive winner in Juliano Maranhao from Brasil, with his paper Refinement. A tool to deal with inconsistencies.
For long it has been commonplace in AI & Law that rule-based systems, although useful for many applications, do not provide a suitable model of legal reasoning “when the rules run out”. Many theoretical advances have been the result of this observation, and at ICAIL-2001 several important further contributions were made, for instance, on the topics of theory formation and coherence. However, the practical spin-offs of this research strand are still virtually absent. Should this worry us? Some will say no, arguing that understanding legal reasoning is a valid research goal in itself for our field. Others, however, fear that if a theoretical research strand leads to no practical spin-off at all, it will eventually die as a branch of AI. I share this fear, and since I am from the theoretical research strand myself, it of vital interest for me to find reasons for optimism when it comes to applications.
The ICAIL conferences, being the world’s premier gathering of AI & Law researchers and practitioners, provide the best opportunity for scientific “trendwatching” in our field. I will now sketch what I think were the most important developments at ICAIL-2001. The reader is warned that these are just my own subjective impressions, which may well differ from those of any other participant. RULE-BASED APPLICATIONS AND BEYOND The ICAIL conferences have always been the forum for, roughly, two kinds of researchers: those interested in how information technology can aid legal practice, and those interested in understanding legal reasoning by computational means. Naturally, the first kind of researcher focuses more on practical applications while the second kind of researcher is more interested in testing theories. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the first research strand has resulted in far more practical
BNVKI Newsletter
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM Fortunately, I have found such reasons at ICAIL2001, and I heard several others saying that they were more optimistic at the end of the conference than at the beginning. My optimism, however, is not about traditional knowledge-based systems for legal argument (such as TAXMAN, HYPO, CABARET, and GREBE). Although these systems brought
119
October 2002
many different topics to choose from, not all of which are counted as AI, such as knowledge management, electronic institutions, legal XML and online dispute resolution. In my opinion, the ICAIL conferences should not lose contact with these fields, but aim to be the premier forum not only for ‘traditional’ AI research, but also for new research on advanced IT and law. Fortunately, as indicated above, some such research was already reported at ICAIL-2001, and I hope that these trends will continue at ICAIL-2003 in the wonderful city of Edinburgh, where with no doubt John Zeleznikow will organise a great conference and Giovanni Sartor will take care of a great program.
important theoretical advances, they require a large amount of formalised knowledge in order to scale up to practical applications; and the knowledge acquisition bottleneck seems just too hard for such systems, since the knowledge used in arguing when the rules run out is simply too diverse, imprecise and unreliable. Since the early nineties, AI & Law researchers have investigated two ways to avoid this bottleneck. The first is to let the system automatically learn its knowledge from the natural-language sources. This approach was initiated by Rissland & Daniels at ICAIL-1995, and was continued at ICAIL-2001 in several papers. Given the recent AI successes in natural-language understanding, I expect that this research strand will eventually lead to useful applications, especially when combined with information retrieval (in this respect it was encouraging that Westlaw’s AI research group, led by Peter Jackson, sponsored the conference and contributed with several papers).
JURIX 2002 Fifteenth Annual International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems December 16-17, 2002, London, UK
The second way to escape the knowledgeacquisition bottleneck is to let the user provide the knowledge. This approach (pioneered by Tom Gordon at ICAIL-93) leads to procedural-support systems, viz. systems that lack domain knowledge and thus cannot solve problems, but that instead ensure orderly and effective disputes and help the users to structure their arguments. Two recent developments make me optimistic that this research strand can be practically successful: the rise of online dispute resolution on the World Wide Web (described at ICAIL-2001 by Arno Lodder) and recent commercial systems for knowledge management in litigation, such as CaseMap (www.casesoft.com) and Masterlist (presented at the Legal Knowledge Systems in Action workshop). I think that our field has a lot to offer to these developments. However, I also think that to obtain practical success, more empirical research is needed into the ways lawyers structure their reasoning and knowledge, and into how arguments and disputes can best be visualised. At ICAIL-2001, Conrad and Dabney’s investigation of the cognitive structure of judicial opinions was a very interesting example of such empirical research.
Citizens and enterprises demand a more efficient and service-directed government. Public administrations want to meet this demand, but are also confronted with a growing quantity of rules, regulations and case law, from various sources at international, European, national and local level. ICT may prove helpful in this development. New areas of research and development evolve that go by names like ‘electronic’ or ‘smart’ government, egovernment and e-democracy. This workshop intends to bring together researcher and developers from various backgrounds and organizations involved in this field: academics, legal practitioners, public administrations, software developers, etc. WORKSHOP FORMAT The intended format of the workshop is to have short presentations grouped around themes that will serve as a starting point for extended discussion. We welcome short papers and position statements (ca. 2-3 pages) addressing all aspects of eGovernment, but as a source of inspiration some potential issues are presented: • Usefulness: E-Government, hype or novel and useful field of application? • Technical aspects: Standards for information interchange and processes, Governmental Markup Language, digital signature, platforms, security means • Social and Organisational consequences of eGovernment • Practical examples: experiences with eGovernment projects and applications
BROADENING ICAIL’S SCOPE Having expressed my optimism about practical spin-offs of the theoretical research strand, I want to conclude with some thoughts on the future place of the practical research strand at our conferences. There was a time when researchers interested in improving legal practice with IT almost automatically ended up in our field. However, times have changed, and these researchers now have
BNVKI Newsletter
120
October 2002
•
DECEMBER 9-12, 2002 International Conference on Data Mining. Maebashi City, Japan. http://kis.maebashi-it.ac.jp/icdm02
Evaluation of e-Government applications: Do they help? Papers should be sent to one of the organizers, preferably by email, in plain text, PDF or PostScript format.
DECEMBER 9-13, 2002 Artificial Life VIII. UNSW, Sydney, Australia. http://alife8.alife.org/
Deadline for electronic submissions: November 3, 2002 Notification of acceptance: November 17, 2002
DECEMBER 10-12, 2002 The Twenty-second SGAI International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence (ES2002). Cambridge, UK. http://www.bcs-sges.org/es2002/
The JURIX conferences are held under the auspices of the Dutch Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems, JURIX, and is hosted in 2002 by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, UK.
DECEMBER 11, 2002 First Annual BCS Prize for Progress Towards Machine Intelligence. Cambridge, UK. http://www.bcs-sges.org/es2002/miprize/
Program chair: Trevor Bench-Capon (University of Liverpool) Organization chairs: Aspassia Daskalopulu (Kings College, London) and John Henderson (University of Liverpool)
JANUARY 12-15, 2003 IUI 2003 The Seventh International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. The Palms South Beach Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, USA. http://www.iuiconf.org/
JURIX 2002 conference secretariat: Anna Maros, Department of Computer Science King’s College London, E-mail [email protected] More information: http://www.jurix.nl/ Conference web site: www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/aspassia/jurix02
JANUARY 21-22, 2003 International Workshop on Technology. Nagasaki, Japan. email: [email protected]
Image
FEBRUARY 4-8, 2003 LINZ 2003 - 24th Linz Seminar on Fuzzy Set Theory. Linz, Austria. http://www.flll.jku.at/linzSeminars/linz2003/
CONFERENCES, SYMPOSIA WORKSHOPS
FEBRUARY 12-14, 2003 International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling, Control and Automation International Conference on Intelligent Agents, Web Technologies and Internet Commerce. Vienna, Austria. http://www.ise.canberra.edu.au/conferences/cimca0 3/index.htm
Below, the reader finds a list of conferences and web sites or email addresses for further information. NOVEMBER, 21-22, 2002 The 21st workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group (PLANSIG 2002). Delft, The Netherlands. http://www.its.tudelft.nl/events/PLANSIG2002/
FEBRUARY 24-26, 2003 Computational Methods in Systems Biology. Trento, Italy. http://www.science.unitn.it/~priami/cmsb.html
NOVEMBER 21, 2002 International Symposium on Java and Embedded Systems. Gent, Belgium. http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/jaes
FEBRUARY 27-MARCH 1, 2003 First International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis (ICFCA 2003). Research Center for Conceptual Knowledge Processing. Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. http://fzbw.de/icfca03
DECEMBER 4, 2002 Twelfth Dutch-Belgian Conference on Machine Learning (Benelearn 2002). Utrecht, The Netherlands. http://www.cs.uu.nl/~marco/benelearn2002/
BNVKI Newsletter
Advanced
121
October 2002
JUNE 30-JULY 4, 2003 30th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2003). Eindhoven, The Netherlands. http://www.win.tue.nl/icalp2003
MARCH 9-12, 2003 18th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2003). Melbourne, USA. http://lia.deis.unibo.it/confs/sac2003/ MARCH 24-26, 2003 AAAI Spring Symposium on Agent-mediated Knowledge Management. Stanford University, USA. Information: http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~elst/AMKM/index.html
JULY 2-4, 2003 International 12. Turkish Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks. Çanakkale, Turkiye. http://cs.comu.edu.tr/tainn03/
APRIL 7-11, 2003 Ninth International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Contruction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS 2003). Warsaw, Poland. http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/etaps03
SEPTEMBER 9-12, 2003 International Conference TABLEAUX 2003. Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods. Roma, Italy. http://tab2003.dia.uniroma3.it/
APRIL 12, 2003 Formal Approaches to Multi-agent Systems (FAMAS'03). Warsaw, Poland. http://www.ai.rug.nl/conf/famas
NOVEMBER 23-30, 2003 The 20th World Microcomputer Chess Championship (WMCC). Graz, Germany.
APRIL 14-16, 2003 Sixth European Conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP2003). 1st European workshop on evolutionary computation (EVOBIO 2003) and bioinformatics. University of Essex, UK. http://evonet.dcs.napier.ac.uk/eurogp2003/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/~evobio/evobio.html
ADVERTISEMENT POLICY OF THE BNVKI 1. We allow announcements and advertisements to be inclued into the Newsletter at the cost of € 275,- per full page and € 180,- per half page of one issue. The subscriber receives three proof copies. 2. We allow announcements and advertisements to be included into the Newsletter at the cost of € 450,- per full page and € 320,- per half page for two subsequent issues. The subscriber receives three proof copies of each issue. 3. We allow announcements and advertisements to be included into the Newsletter at the cost of € 900,- per full page and € 680,- per half page for six issues (one Volume). The subscriber receives three proof copies of each issue.
MAY 1-3, 2003 Third SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (2003). San Francisco, USA. http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm03/ MAY 5-7, 2003 Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference (AWIC'03). Madrid, Spain, http://nova.ls.fi.upm.es/AWIC03 MAY 11-15, 2003 The 16th International Florida AI Research Society Conference (FLAIRS-03). St Augustine, USA. http://www.flairs.com/flairs2003/ JUNE 2-5, 2003 Intelligent Information Systems 2003 (IIS'03). Zakopane, Poland. http://iipwm.ipipan.waw.pl
The contents of the text offered must be related to AI. The Editorial Board has the right to change the text or to refuse it, if they believe the publication intended does not fit the Newsletter. Moreover, the Board of the BNVKI has decided upon the following alternatives. 4. We allow promotional leaflets to be included into the membership mailing of the Newsletter. The costs for mailing are € 365,-
JUNE 23-27, 2003 Ninth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2003). Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. http://www.cirfid.unibo.it/~agsw/ICAILS03
BNVKI Newsletter
122
October 2002
Dr. J. van Looveren (editor Belgium) Vrije Universiteit Brussel, AI Lab Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium Tel.: + 32 6293702. E-mail: [email protected]
ADDRESSES BOARD MEMBERS BNVKI Prof.dr. J.N. Kok (chair) Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen, Dept. of Computer Science Universiteit Leiden, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333 CA Leiden Tel: + 31 71 5277057. E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. R.J.C.M. Starmans (section editor) Manager Research school SIKS, P.O. Box 80089 3508 TB Utrecht Tel.: + 31 30 2534083/1454. E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. R. Verbrugge (secretary) Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Cognitive Science and Engineering Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen. Tel.: + 31 50 3636334. E-mail: [email protected]
Ir. E.M. van de Vrie (section editor) Open Universiteit Nederland, Opleiding Informatica Postbus 2960 6401 DL Heerlen Tel: + 31 45 5762366. Email: [email protected]
Dr. C. Witteveen (interim treasurer) TU Delft, ITS P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft Tel: + 31 15 2782521. Email: [email protected]
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
Dr. A. van den Bosch Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Taal- en Literatuurwetenschap Postbus 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg Tel.: + 31 13 4668260. E-mail: [email protected]
The BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter is a direct benefit of membership of the BNVKI/AIABN. Membership dues are € 34,03 for regular members; € 22,69 for doctoral students (AIO's); and € 17,88 for students. In addition members will receive access to the electronic version of the European journal AI Communications. The Newsletter appears bimonthly and contains information about conferences, research projects, job opportunities, funding opportunities, etc., provided enough information is supplied. Therefore, all members are encouraged to send news and items they consider worthwhile to the editorial office of the BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter. Subscription is done by payment of the membership due to RABO-Bank no. 11.66.34.200 or Postbank no. 3102697 for the Netherlands, or KBC Bank Veldwezelt No. 457-6423559-31, 2e Carabinierslaan 104, Veldwezelt, Belgium. In both cases, specify BNVKI/AIABN in Maastricht as the recipient, and please do not forget to mention your name and address. Sending of the BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter will only commence after your payment has been received. If you wish to conclude your membership, please send a written notification to the editorial office before December 1, 2002.
Prof. M. Denecker Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Dept. of Computer Science, Celestijnenlaan 200A 3001 Heverlee, België Tel.: + 32 16327544. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. C. Jonker Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Dept. of Artificial Intelligence De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam Tel.: + 31 20 4447743. E-mail: [email protected] Prof.dr.ir. J.A. La Poutré Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam Tel.: + 31 20 592 9333. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. F. Wiesman Universiteit Maastricht, IKAT Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht Tel.: + 31 43 3883379. E-mail: [email protected]
COPY The editorial board welcomes product announcements, book reviews, product reviews, overviews of AI education, AI research in business, and interviews. Contributions stating controversial opinions or otherwise stimulating discussions are highly encouraged. Please send your submission by E-mail (MS Word or text) to [email protected].
Drs. B. Zinsmeister Cap Gemini Ernst & Young/Service Practice Bolesian Postbus 2575 3500 GN Utrecht Tel.: + 31 30 6893394. E-mail: [email protected] EDITORS BNVKI NEWSLETTER
ADVERTISING
Dr. F. Wiesman (editor in chief) -See addresses Board Members
It is possible to have your advertisement included in the BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter. For further information about pricing etc., see elsewhere in the Newsletter or contact the editorial office.
Dr. E.O. Postma Universiteit Maastricht, IKAT Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht Tel: + 31 43 3883493. E-mail: [email protected]
CHANGE OF ADDRESS The BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter is sent from Maastricht. The BNVKI/AIABN board has decided that the BNVKI/AIABN membership administration takes place at the editorial office of the Newsletter. Therefore, please send address changes to:
Prof. dr. H.J. van den Herik Universiteit Maastricht, IKAT Postbus 616, 6200 MD Maastricht Tel.: + 31 43 3883485. E-mail: [email protected]
Editorial Office BNVKI/AIABN Newsletter Universiteit Maastricht, Hazel den Hoed, Dept. Computer Science, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected] http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/~bnvki/
Dr. E.D. de Jong Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Artificial Intelligence De Boelelaan 1081A, 1081 HV Amsterdam Tel: + 31 20 4447718. Email: [email protected] Dr. Marie-Francine Moens (section editor) KU Leuven, Interdisciplinair Centrum voor Recht & Informatica Tiensestraat 41, 3000 Leuven, België Tel.: + 32 16 325383. E-mail: [email protected]
BNVKI Newsletter
123
October 2002
Bolesian Cap Gemini Ernst & Young heeft een grote groep specialisten op het gebied van kennistechnologie, kennismanagement en andere interessante onderwerpen op ICT-gebied. Zij werken in de kennistechnologie-practice Bolesian en houden zich voornamelijk bezig met innovatieve projecten. Hierbij kan gedacht worden aan: intelligente matching, bijvoorbeeld resource- en reisplanning, vraagbaaksystemen, beoordelingssystemen binnen financiële instellingen en intelligente planning en schedulingsystemen binnen industrie. Groeien op een goede voedingsbodem Bewust omgaan met kennis en kansen, dat is het kenmerkend cultuurelement en een goede voedingsbodem voor uitdagende werkzaamheden bij de practice Bolesian. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young stimuleert haar medewerkers om hun kennis verder uit te bouwen en daarna uit te dragen binnen bijvoorbeeld interne werkgroepen, de zogenaamde Special Interest Groups. Uitwisseling van kennis met universiteiten en hogescholen behoort tot onze dagelijkse praktijk. Medewerkers van Bolesian participeren actief in onderzoek en onderwijs. Uitdragen van kennis trekt nieuwe kennis aan en brengt onze organisatie in contact met toonaangevende marktpartijen. Niet voor niets verwachten we van onze specialisten dat zij als spreker aanwezig zijn op congressen en dat zij publiceren in de vakbladen. Iedereen bij Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, in welke functie dan ook, kan suggesties doen en initiatieven ontplooien die een verrijking vormen voor Cap Gemini Ernst & Young en haar opdrachtgevers. Verantwoordelijkheid dragen en doorgroeien Werken bij Cap Gemini Ernst & Young moet blijven boeien. Daarom zorgen we ervoor, dat binnen relatief kleinschalige projecten met een platte organisatiestructuur, professionals in een goede sfeer met elkaar samenwerken. Daarbij wordt van elke medewerker verwacht dat hij of zij verantwoordelijkheid draagt. Op die manier wordt doorgroeien een vanzelfsprekendheid. Maar ook buiten het eigen project worden medewerkers steeds op de hoogte gehouden. Daarvoor organiseren we bedrijfs- en projectpresentaties. De Sociale Commissie organiseert vier maal per jaar avontuurlijke activiteiten, waarbij collega’s elkaar ook op een andere manier leren kennen. Zo zie je onze kennistechnologen ook eens waterskiën, karten of op survival. CAP GEMINI ERNST & YOUNG Cap Gemini Ernst & Young behoort wereldwijd tot de grootste managementadvies- en IT-servicesorganisaties en neemt met deze gecombineerde expertise een unieke positie in. De onderneming is in meer dan dertig landen actief op het gebied van business- en IT-strategie, managementconsulting, technologieontwikkeling en outsourcing. Deze diensten worden geïntegreerd aangeboden vanuit marktgerichte sectoren waarin branchekennis is gebundeld. Mede dankzij het multinationale karakter van de onderneming beschikt Cap Gemini Ernst & Young over een bijna onuitputtelijke bron van kennis, methodieken en innovatieve oplossingen. Door hergebruik hiervan en door intensief kennismanagement wordt de time-to-market voor klanten verkort en kunnen zij hun marktvoorsprong vergroten. Cap Gemini Ernst & Young telt wereldwijd meer dan 60.000 medewerkers van wie 7.000 in Nederland en behaalde in 2000 een omzet van 8,5 miljard euro. Meer informatie Meer informatie over specifieke dienstverlening, kantoren en research is beschikbaar op: www.cgey.com en www.nl.cgey.com of stuur een mailtje naar [email protected].
