This issue of the ECSTER Newsletter features the following news items:
Under the auspices of ECCAI, a proposal has been developed for
a new, European publication system for Artificial Intelligence.
ECSTER starts a colloquium debate - positions statements by
Shanahan, Miller, and Lifschitz in this issue.
Lifschitz starts "Page of Positive Reviews"
Linköping University Electronic Press has started operation
These news items have one thing in common: they are signs of an
on-going shift in publication patterns, due to the existence of
the Internet as a viable publication mechanism. It may lead to much
bigger changes than merely the use of electronic transmission instead
of paper and post office for sending the articles from author to
reader; it may also lead us to reconsider the present peer-review
mechanism which precedes publication.
The familiar publication pattern for research results, based
on anonymous peer reviw prior to publication in an established
journal or - particularly in computer science - in a quality
conference proceedings, has dominated during the last 50 years.
A number of questions are now being asked by researchers in many
disciplines as online publication emerges and finds its own best
modus operandi. Do we need printed journals? Do we need publishers?
How shall we deal with the long publication delays? Should peer
review be done before or after first publication? What should
be the balance between open and anonymous review?
The recent developments which are reported in the present issue of the
ECSTER Newsletter have this in common:
they all indicate new directions that are made possible by online,
Internet-based exchange of research results.
Proposal for a new, European publication scheme
The recent ECAI (European Conference on AI) dedicated an evening
session to the question of a possible new, European AI journal which
would be organized in a novel way and make the best use of the
electronic medium. Proceeding from the recommendations that were made
during that evening session and the discussions that have followed it,
a concrete proposal has now been developed. It has been written by
Erik Sandewall with discussions, in particular, with Wolfgang Wahlster
and Georg Gottlob.
The basic idea in this proposal is to distinguish between a paper-based
journal - the AICom - and an electronic medium: the Electronic Transactions
on Artificial Intelligence, or ETAI . The ETAI will be based on a
principle of open, posteriori review : articles are first published
based only on local self-control within each research group; then they are
subjected to open review (non-anonymous) using electronic discussion
groups, and after a certain period of open review they can be considered
for certification , that is, for promotion to a status corresponding
to conventional journal publication today.
The ECSTER Newsletter and, more broadly, the services of the ECSTER
colloquium have served as an example of what can be done with the electronic
medium. It is observed that similar structures have emerged in other
branches of AI as well, and it is foreseen that such activities will
continue to expand.
The proposed ETAI publication scheme offers a number of advantages for
the authors. By considering research results as published prior to review,
it helps to protect the author's priority right to his or her results.
By allowing for open review, it facilitates for authors of earlier,
related work to contribute their comments, critical as well as constructive,
and thus to influence the article. By separating publication from
certification, it makes it possible for reviewing mistakes to be corrected:
even if the certification of an article is delayed, the author still retains
his or her original date of publication when the work is finally recognized.
The full proposal
is of course available online.
There is also an accompanying
article discussing the general publishing principles which underly
the proposal.
Page for positive, open reviews started by Lifschitz
In a move which parallels the ETAI initiative, Vladimir Lifschitz
has started a page of positive reviews (PPR)
which features open reviewing of research articles in logicist AI.
At present (December 16), the PPR has collected 8 reviews. Although
these reviews are in fact very positive, one can easily see a
possibility that reviews containing critique as well as praise could
be published on the PPR, and that interesting debates could emerge.
The present editor considers the PPR as an indication of the right way
to go.
ECSTER colloquium debate on approaches to reasoning about actions and change
Several approaches to reasoning about actions and change co-exist
at present in the literature. The major divide seems to be between
the situation calculus on one hand, and approaches using explicit
time on the other hand. It may not be easy for the readers of
this literature to see how the different approaches relate, and
what are their respective weaknesses and strengths. Sometimes, it
is even difficult for the researchers in the area to make this
analysis. For example, in this recent KR paper, Ray Reiter writes:
There have been a few earlier papers on formalizing natural actions
and continuous time. Shanahan's approach [30] is embedded
in the event calculus (Kowalski and Sergot [11]);
Sandewall [27] relies on a temporal logic. Accordingly, these
proposals are difficult to compare with ours, based as it is on
the situation calculus.
After a suggestion by Ray, ECSTER invites researchers in this area
to an on-line colloquium exchange of views on different
approaches to reasoning about actions and change .
The purpose of the debate is to clarify what are the major
alternative approaches to reasoning about actions and change
in contemporary research , and also to identify and compare
the capabilities and the limitations of those approaches .
A separate debate page
has been set up and will contain successive debate contributions.
It presently contains an introduction by Erik Sandewall and
position statements by Murray Shanahan, Rob Miller, and Vladimir
Lifschitz. All contributions which are sent to the present
editor will be added to the debate page.
Also, for readers who wish to receive each debate contribution as
an E-mail message, we are going to set up a mailgroup. Send
a message to the Newsletter editor
in order to be included in this mailgroup.
(Note: the service will be closed between December 28 and January 2 due
to vacation travel).
Initial statements in the Colloquium Debate
Current Research on Reasoning About Actions and Change: Topics for a Debate
Erik Sandewall
Several approaches to reasoning about actions and change co-exist
at present in the literature. The major divide seems to be between
the situation calculus on one hand, and approaches using explicit
time on the other hand. It may not be easy for the readers of
this literature to see how the different approaches relate, and
what are their respective weaknesses and strengths. Sometimes, it
is even difficult for the researchers in the area to make this
analysis. For example, in this recent KR paper, Ray Reiter writes:
... read the continuation here.
Reasoning about Actions: A Position Statement
Murray Shanahan
AI needs an action formalism that is expressive, and that incorporates a
solution to the frame problem that's robust in the face of the phenomena
it can represent. The formalism should be expressive enough to represent
at least the following phenomena.
Actions with indirect effects (ramifications)
Concurrent action
Non-deterministic action
Narrative time
Continuous change
A rigorous argument that the formalism in question solves the frame
problem should be supplied.
Here comes the controversial bit.
... read the continuation here.
Comparing Action Formalisms: A Position Statement
Rob Miller
Here are some fairly miscellaneous thoughts about comparing alternative
approaches to Reasoning about Action. ...
(1) When comparing and evaluating formalisms, we need to be careful
not to form too strong associations between particular methodologies
(e.g. deduction and entailment methods, default reasoning techniques)
and particular ontologies . I can think of a few occasions...
(2) As a community, we should be encouraging work on comparing action
formalisms and ontologies, and we should be critical of papers which don't
contain adequate comparisons with other work (and especially with work
based on different ontologies). There is now a fair body of work exploring how
the Event Calculus and the Situation Calculus correspond, so there's really no
excuse for lack of comparisons in this case at least.
... read the continuation here.
Approaches to Reasoning About Actions: A Position Statement
Vladimir Lifschitz
1. Explicit time vs. the situation calculus. The following situation
calculus formula seems to have no counterpart in languages with explicit
time:
value(f,result(a1,s)) = value(f,result(a2,s)) . (1)
It says that the value of f at the next instant of time does not depend
on which of the actions a1, a2 is going to be executed. For
instance,...
4. Why are there so many action languages? An action language is a
formal model of the part of natural language that is used for describing
the effects of actions. Whenever we improve our understanding of that
part of natural language, this improved understanding may be expressed
by defining a new dialect of "script-A." I expect that...
6. Explicit information about causal directions. Causality differs from
material implication in that it is not contrapositive...
... read the continuation here.
News from the Linköping scene
Linköping University Electronic Press starts operation
Linköping University has set up a special organization for electronic
on-line publication, called the Linköping University
Electronic Press , or E-Press for short. Its primary mission
is to perform unrefereed electronic publishing of scientific
articles - like a preprint archive, with a guarantee that what has
been published there remains available.
The existence of organizations like the Linköping E-Press is presumed
by the proposed publication scheme for ETAI. One important part of
the idea is that they can make research articles available
electronically at the expense of the authoring institution , and without
a need to charge the reader for the access.
Major grant awarded by the Wallenberg Foundation
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has awarded a grant of
40 million Sw.Crowns (about 5 million ECU) for research on
Information
Technology for Autonomous Aircraft high-level
autonomous decisions will include reasoning about actions,
spatial, and temporal reasoning, and is therefore directly related
to ECSTER interests. Other subprojects address computer vision,
VLSI design, and simulation.