From nsn  Sat Mar  6 22:54:38 2010
From: nsn (Nick Nicholas)
Subject: Re: AI Project
To: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan)
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1993 10:28:41 +1000 (EST)
Cc: lojbab@grebyn.com (Bob LeChevalier)
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Message-ID: <MAUnBcqmrNJ.A.Sz.u20kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

John Cowan stood up, stood up some more, and spoke thus:

>> Is there anything Lojbanic and AI-related that you would recommend I attack?
>Surely you jest, doi pendo be mi.  The Obvious Thing is the long-desired
>postprocessor to the Lojban parser that spits out Prolog.  That would put
>a new spin on the "navigations" of the ckafybarja; by processing a description
>into a set of Horn clauses, it would be possible to ask questions in Lojban
>about the coffee bar and eventually get more or less sensible answers!
>(True top-end processing would have to go both ways under the control of
>a few pipes.)

>And wouldn't >that< be one up the nose for Schank and all his ilk!

Don't get me involved in *that* one! :)

Just had words with the AI lecturer, and he was quite happy to have me do this;
in his mind, it's excellent paedagogy. Let me clarify for Lojbab: I have
already studied AI as an undergrad, and AI is a compulsory subject in the
CogSci program, but the project I am doing instead of coursework is an AI
project, not a CogSci project.

The problem I have now is: how do I shoehorn this project, which could go
on forever (especially with tanru) into something I can spend at most 80
hours on (and I'd prefer 60)? We will need to decide what domains of the
language we'll have to leave out: this will need to work on a subset of
the language. And I'm sorry to get pushy at this dictionary-producing time,
but I'd like some ideas from you soon: I want to put a proposal on Prof.
Caelli's desk by the end of the week. (It's already second week of the
thirteen-week semester). Of course, I could continue work on the project
after this semester, though the net.love-of-my-life coming over for a visit
in July may slow things down :)

Momenton senpretende paseman mi retenis kaj # [Victor Sadler, _Memkritiko_ 90]
   kultis kvazaux                           &  (NICK NICHOLAS. Melbourne.
      senhorlogxan elizeon                  #   Australia. IRC: nicxjo.
         (Dume:                             &   nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au .)