Links

(A Regular Column of SIGART's intelligence magazine)

Syed S. Ali

Defining an AI Resource

The goal of this column is to provide readers with an up to date account of available tools and data resources that would be useful in constructing intelligent systems. This and future articles will reflect the breadth of interests of the people who construct such systems, including people who build AI software to experiment with ideas about the nature of thought and behavior, as well as people who build AI software to solve problems that are too complex to be solved by more direct methods. This diversity of opinion is what makes the field of AI research both fractious and exciting, as can be seen by the way that different AI researchers characterize the field¹:

• The goal of work in artificial intelligence is to build machines that perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. (Nilsson, Nils J., Problem-Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971): vii.)

• Research scientists in Artificial Intelligence try to get machines to exhibit behavior that we call intelligent behavior when we observe it in human beings. (Slagle, James R., Artificial Intelligence: The Heuristic Programming Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971): 1.)

• B. Raphael $\ldots$ has suggested that AI is a collective name for problems which we do not yet know how to solve properly by computer. (Michie, Donald, ``Formation and Execution of Plans by Machine,'' in N. V. Findler and B. Meltzer (eds.), Artificial Intelligence and Heuristic Programming (New York: American Elsevier, 1971): 101-124; quote on p. 101.) (Note that this implies that once we do know how to solve them, they are no longer AI!)

• What is or should be (AI researchers') main scientific activity-studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans. (McCarthy, John, Review of ``Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey,'' Artificial Intelligence 5(1974) 317-322; quote on p. 317.)

• By ``artificial intelligence'' I therefore mean the use of computer programs and programming techniques to cast light on the principles of intelligence in general and human thought in particular. (Boden, Margaret, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (New York: Basic Books, 1977): 5.)

To be inclusive, I will define AI to encompass all of the above.

This month I will begin by considering numerous pointers to good, general purpose resources and meta-resources. In future issues, we will sharpen the focus and consider resources for specific AI sub-fields (e.g., knowledge representation, planning and acting, discourse processing, natural language generation). Readers should feel free to suggest topics and resources for AI sub-fields of their interests.

Finding General AI resources

As anyone who has conducted a search using any of the search engines with the term ``Artificial Intelligence'' knows, there is no shortage of available resources. Unfortunately, AI being as diverse as it is, much of the information is not relevant to our needs. So, without further ado, here is my top eight (top ten lists are popular, but clearly eight is a far more important number to computer science than ten) AI resources that will quickly allow you to learn what you need or want to know and help focus your search for a particular AI resource (note that these are in no particular order).

7

Mark Kantrowitz's Artificial Intelligence Repository, available at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/repository.html, is a well organized, searchable, meta-resource that includes annotated pointers to software, AI FAQs, AI programming language resources, and newsgroups. It is a good starting point for finding AI software and learning about AI programming languages.

6

Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig's AI on the Web page, available at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/ai.html, is a single (if long) page that organizes its links around the chapter topics of their textbook, AI: A Modern Approach (the latter is a great resource as well).

5

The Canadian National Research Council's Institute for Information Technology's Artificial Intelligence Resources, available at http://ai.iit.nrc.ca/ai_point.html, is a comprehensive meta-resource with pointers to just about any online AI resource you might need. This is an excellent resources if you are looking for information on a specific topic. It is a bit overwhelming if you are just browsing or trying to learn about AI.

4

Denis Susac's Mining Co. Guide to AI, available at http://ai.miningco.com, is a well organized and up to date selection of pointers. It is oriented to system builders and experimenters and includes a newsletter, bulletin board and chat room.

3

Denis Howe's Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing, available at http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html, while not specific to AI, is a useful resource when you encounter an unfamiliar AI term (pop quiz: simulated annealing anyone?) Failing this you could try http://www.whatis.com which contains links to numerous online dictionaries.

2

BotSpot's FAQ page, available at http://www.botspot.com/faqs/index.html, is an agent-oriented (as well as hype-oriented) collection of resources for building agents. The focus is on bot-building (a ``bot'' is a software robot which may or may not be intelligent) but the FAQ pages have a lot of useful links. The many bots on display at BotSpot are, themselves, interesting examples of applied AI.

1

Bill Manaris' AI Education Repository, available at http://www.cacs.usl.edu/~manaris/ai-education-repository/, is a useful (if small) set of pointers to resources for AI education. This page is most useful to people trying to locate available educational resources and material for an AI course. This page has links to AI textbooks, AI course syllabi, sample programming assignments, sample written assignments, on-line tutorials on specific AI topics, tools and environments for the classroom or lab, and papers related to AI pedagogy. It is not as exhaustive as the other links, but the focus is on education.

0

SIGART's AI resources directory is available at http://sigart.acm.org/ai/.

You might have noticed that I've not included any personal web pages, search engines, or portal indices (Yahoo, Excite, Snap, etc). These resources tend to have links that are of uneven quality or broken. I also rejected sites that were ``under construction'' or had numerous broken links. This list is short and may have missed some interesting resources. Email me if there is something that should be considered for this list, an updated version of which is available on the web.

Writing Next Issue's Column

The next issue of Links will focus on the topic of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR). Specifically: what is it; why do we need it; what's out there; and my comments on some freely available KRR systems.

If you have any comments on this column (or suggestions for topics for future ones) or interesting resources, please email me at: syali@usa.net. This article (and updates to it) is available online at http://tigger.cs.uwm.edu/~syali/links.html with links to all the resources mentioned.

Footnotes

... field¹

This is an abridged list of definitions compiled by William J. Rapaport of SUNY-Buffalo.