MindForth Programming Journal (MFPJ) 2010 August 17

Huh?

I could more or less agree that processing natural language well means intelligence. (Hofstaedter). An acquaintance of mine, a linguist, had some ideas and has had help of a programmer in Java. I've seen a demonstration of his analysis of a small story, and it really is able to identify objects in the story. (Really identify in the sense that the ``her'' on the last line, is arguably related to ``girl'' in the first line.) It has some inroads to understanding where a new topic starts, and even where an old topic is picked up. This may be world class, state of the art research etc. but your attempts are so pathetic compared to this.

The difference is probably that he doesn't refuse to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Groetjes Albert

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I there a published version of the program which recognises that "her" refers to the girl. I have though of ways of tagging pronouns and finding out what their noun is. One method is to work backwards and find the first noun which agrees in number and gender. I think something more sophisticated must be hapenning.

- Ian Parker

Unlikely: "Mentifex" is a well known crackpot.

His "achievements", such as they are, are approximately equivalent to the level of Terry Winograd's "shrldu", (written something like thirty years ago); but he posts each minor change as though it were the birth of Skynet, and never responds to other posts.

In other works, he's a crackpot and a troll: ignore him.

Definitely. Those linguists have collected properties for all words in the English language. For a sentence like "Jesus is god" they can build on a database that knows that god is a substantivum, a person, male, unconcrete etc. The program I've seen correctly identifies subjects, objects verbs etc. in non-trivial sentences, then builds from there. That is not to say that it could make sense of the incoherent crap that Mendifex feeds his baby with.

His ongoing work is confidential. I'll see whether I can dig up some references. Meanwhile those linguistic databases are public domain (as they should) and you could use them.

Groetjes Albert

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Wrong on two accounts. The above quote of Ian is not about Mendifex, it was about a program I have seen working.

Secondly, Terry Winograd shrldu stands as one of the great achievements in AI, and ...

Fully agree, but you realise what an insult that is to Winograd?

Groetjes Albert

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Why? Winograd wrote his SHRDLU more than 40 (not 30 as stated above) years ago when it was a breakthrough. Today it isn't, thus writing any comments on someone writing yet another SHRDLU is irrelevant to Winograd.

Consider gliders. Lilienthal built his gliders like around 120 years ago, it was a major breakthrough then. Today, if someone comes up with a "fresh" idea of building a "kite" that flies by himself without bond to the ground, and presents this as a major breakthrough in aviation, one has all rights to call him a crackpot or anything else. That has nothing to do with Lilienthal since he did what noone had done before him. Today one can read almost anything about building a glider in a library, or join aircraft company and build planes. Even as a hobbyist one can build and fly gliders much better than Lilienthal's or aircraft more powerful than Wrigth's Flyer.

Sorry to go off-topic, but I think there is a world of difference between a "glider" and something like Lilienthal's "hang-glider". While Lilienthal made some impressive flights in his weight shift control hang-gliders, it was the Wrights that invented the first glider with 3-axis control in 1902. While weight shift hang-gliders exist yet today they remain athletic toys with no practical use. However today's latest design gliders and even jet airliners still use the 3-axis control principle invented by the Wrights which was the real major breakthrough in flight IMO.

-Doug

There are a number of engineering concepts. Is Lift/Drag in the concept dictionary? I could make a list of terms specifically concerned with one topic, say aviation.

The word "better" to me is L/D + wing loading a measure of stall.

Heck why write

But getting back to concepts. If I am designing an aircraft I use certain concepts. I have found from experience that linguists are all arts trained. If you go into a technical field like aviation, the concepts involved do not seem to be there. CP Snow talked about 2 cultures.

What are the concepts associated with "stall". In aviation it means minimum flight speed. The speed at which increasing the angle of attack reduces lift. It means different things in different contexts. A full context, arts linguists note includes aviation.

A concept dictionary and a Von Neumann context free language is vital for MOLTO

Existing dictionaries like the Oxford English dictionary will provide a concept dictionary. You need to wade through it though. Have MOLTO requested any help from the OED team?

What you are working on is exactly what MOLTO will need. I just wonder how far people have got both in MOLTO and elsewhere.

- Ian Parker

His programs are utterly trivial compared to shrdlu. Putting them in the same league again is an insult to Winograd.

I respect a hobbyist who successfully builds a glider much more than I do Mendaxfex. His program would not be a contender in a Loebner contest.

Reproducing the level of AI of shrdlu in Forth would be a highly respectable achievement.

Groetjes Albert

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If something has performance better than indicated in Wiki, it is a true breakthough. Mind I believe the challenge for aircraft designers, particularly light aircraft designers is to achieve performance closer to what Rutan has shown is possible.

The Cessna for example is a very old design. Anything would be a breakthrough compared with that. Wiki as I have indicated expresses the state of the current art.

In the same way Google Translate is "State of Art". When we point out genders in Hebrew, for example. Google has decided that driving a car and playing football ALWAYS has the male form of the verb. Catering for the many women drivers Israel has, and their women's football team would be a breakthrough therefore.

Google BTW has been arrogant in their responses.

- Ian Parker

That really emphasized Aleksej's point: Lilienthal's weight-shift glider was a tremendous achievement when he did it, but today there's room for argument about whether it should just be called a "glider" or have a qualifier.

Well, OK, he *hasn't* managed to recreate 40 year old AI concepts...

The Wright brothers developed warping surfaces as a means of controlling an aircraft. Lilienthal' used weight distribution. This clearly would not work in a large powered aircraft. They dis gain patents for the technique.

Stability in aircraft is in fact an interesting point. Birds are unstable, all aircraft up to the F16 were stable. The F16 was the first aircraft to be provided with a fly by wire system. Unstable aircraft have an advantage in lift/drag. On Concorde the tail plane was pressing down, dragging and hindering lift. On the F16 the tailplane lifts. You need a computer to control an F16 which is why it was not done before.

In recent times alternatives to ailerons and elevators (Wright's warping) have been devised. Drill holes in a wing and such air in. This technique reduces the moving surfaces need. It also provides the potential of a method of controlling turbulence. The ins and outs of this, particularly in modern aviation, are quite interesting. Holes in the wings can delay stall and can thus replace flaps.

I really ought to cross post this in rec.aviation.military

- Ian Parker

The wing warping in essence was just another way to install ailerons. The major part of the warping occurred at the trailing edge of the tips, just like ailerons. Wright wing warping = ailerons = roll control only. The Wrights did not use warping for pitch or yaw control. Instead they invented and used conventional elevator and rudder.

They even identified the advantages of a longer wing (higher aspect ratio) for improved glide (L/D ). They also identified the problem of adverse yaw which led to the movable rudder to counteract, just like most aircraft today especially long-winged gliders.

The lack of control is what killed Lilienthal. The Wrights died of non-aviation related causes.

Sure, lots of variations can be used. But I would estimate that the vast majority of new aircraft built yet today use something that closely resembles the Wright's 3-axis control (with ailerons doing essentially the same job as wing warping).

-Doug

The vast majority do indeed. Chord ratio is an interesting point. Indeed a high chard ratio will increase L/D at high speeds, at low speeds thick wings provide more total lift.

One incentive for looking for novel control methods is UAVs, particularly at the smaller end. If you have something the size of a large insect there is an incentive to investigate novel control systems. Another incentives is that holes in the wing are being used to reduce turbulence. Turbulence is in essence chaos. If you are reducing turbulence you might as well also get rid of ailerons and elevators. Computers have in fact increased the range of options.

- Ian Parker

BTW - In rec.aviation.military most of the contributors are very conservative and many do not understand the fundamental principles.

Hi, Regarding the Mindforth, project, I don't know enough to offer an overall critique.

I like the idea of multi-year projects that explore a single, continuous line of research, as I believe that this benefits our field tremendously.

Presumably those who snipe at this project have taken a long, deep look at the code and the underlying ideas.

My main concern or question about this line of research is that, offhand, it seems to me that much of the knowledge of the IA (intelligent agent) is hardwired into code. I'd like to see an explanation by the developer of underlying (declarative) knowledge representations, if any. Or at least some notion that the IA can modify its own knowledge and/or "learn" in some fashion.

Rules about the use of "I", "me", the verb to-be, and so on seem to be stuck into code, rather than developed as part of a more flexible representation.

Even so, I respect the notion that someone is pursuing a long term project along whatever path, as much is learned along the way. This contrasts sharply with most research (in the US at least), that is year-to-year, hand-to-mouth, survivie-to-the-next-funding-cycle, and so on.

Regards, Amnon

Take a look at

It would, were he as good a programmer as he claims to be, but he's not. The main talent he displays in public is self-promotion.

I did, many years ago when I first encountered him. All I remember about it was a profound sense of disbelief that anyone would claim that it represented any kind of breakthrough whatsoever, as it seemed trivial and obvious.

Not by Arthur - he's still banging the same nail he started with over twenty years ago (and, amusingly, claimed was 99% finished in June 1999).

He has nothing to teach anyone else in the field either, so it's pretty much been a total waste of time.

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To me the projects we should be looking at are the following.

MOLTO - This is the EU language program. I have already referenced this. I would like to know in more detail how they are attacking multiple language translation without preferring one language as GT does (English). A Von Neumann language that would be implied by MOLTO's objectives is indeed the first step to AGI.

Web 3.0 - This implies the ability to put in links automatically. MOLTO will in fact produce links.

Mizar The basis of Mizar is Tarski-Grothendieck set theory.

All these things are interconnected. I would like to see something which would interface up and connect to the above.

- Ian Parker

I feel I should add a few things.

2) I have brought in Mathematics. In fact MOLTO aims to be able to translte mathematical statements. As AI consists in putting concepts into a formal basis all AI (ultimately) must be presentable in OpenMath. I must be able to do this with any statement even something like Politics which one does not associate with mathematics. I don't know whether MOLTO are aiming to base their "Grundsprache" on OpenMath.

- Ian Parker