Overview

The SPAIR group normally meets every other week to discuss influential work that has shaped the field of AI, including readings from philosophy, history, natural science, mathematics and engineering. Normally, we will read papers which have been published over 15 years ago that have spawned a new research direction, killed off an existing one, revived another, or that have otherwise shaped the way we presently think about AI. Discussion is informal and can take many detours to provide a larger context and build parallels with other work.

The group began in October 2007 thanks to Thomas Finsterbusch. It is currently on hietus for the summer.

"You have to know the past to understand the present."
    - Dr. Carl Sagan

Reading Suggestions

1.

T Winograd, 1972, "Understanding Natural Language" (pick a chapter)
(3 points: 3 up, 0 down)
2.

A Newell & HA Simon, 1956, "The logic theory machine--A complex information processing system" (url)
(2 points: 4 up, 2 down)
3.

R.Fikes & N. Nilsson, 1971, "STRIPS: A New Approach to the Application of Theorem Proving to Problem Solving" (pdf)
(2 points: 3 up, 1 down)
4.

Marvin Minsky, 1974, "A Framework for Representing Knowledge" (html)
(2 points: 2 up, 0 down)
5.

R. Schank & R. Abelson, 1977, "Scripts, plans, goals and understanding" (pick a chapter)
(2 points: 2 up, 0 down)
6.

B. Buchanan & E. Shortliffe, 1984, "Rule-Based Expert Systems: The MYCIN Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project" (html)
(1 points: 1 up, 0 down)
7.

D Whitley, 1994, "A genetic algorithm tutorial" (pdf)
(-1 points: 1 up, 2 down)

Please email any suggestions you have to ikarpov.

Past Readings

Rudolf Kalman, 1960, "A New Approach to Linear Filtering and Prediction Problems" (pdf)
(6 points: 8 up, 2 down)
A.M. Turing, 1950, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (pdf)
(5 points: 6 up, 1 down)
James Allen, 1984, "Towards a general theory of action and time" (pdf)
(5 points: 5 up, 0 down)
JE Laird et al., 1987, "SOAR: an Architecture for General Intelligence" (acm portal)
(5 points: 5 up, 0 down)
Rodney Brooks, 1991, "Intelligence without Representation" (pdf)
(5 points: 5 up, 0 down)
AL Samuel, 1959, "Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers" (pdf)
(4 points: 5 up, 1 down)
Marvin Minsky, 1960, "Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence" (html)
(4 points: 5 up, 1 down)
A Newell & HA Simon, 1976, "Computer science as empirical inquiry: symbols and search" (acm portal)
(4 points: 5 up, 1 down)
Ned Block, 1981, "Psychologism and Behaviorism" (pdf)
(4 points: 4 up, 0 down)
JR Searle, 1980, "Minds, brains, and programs" (html)
(3 points: 3 up, 0 down)

Meeting Schedule

The group is currently on break for the summer due to members traveling.

Click on the event to see which paper we will be reading for that date.

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