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SHRDLU

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Re: SHRDLU

#11

Post by ColinWright »

dang wrote: post #5
chippy wrote: post #2

More information including images of graphical 3-D version: http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/ and an online version of part of the system http://www.grammaticalframework.org/~peter/shrdlite/shrdlite...

Thanks—we changed the url to that first one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU .

And yet the original pointed to an article that has a better overview, some details not in the one you changed it to, and more, actually contains the link that you've now set it to.

In short, you've replaced a link to an excellent overview that has a link to more material, with a less useful link. I know we have our disagreements, but this just seems out and out wrong. As I've said before, I find this immensely frustrating.

Re: SHRDLU

#12

Post by worldsayshi »

1. So yes its intelligence is highly specific but it certainly seems like a program like this could be evolved to become very useful for some application. Why hasn't that happened?

2. One big problem when interacting with systems like this I suppose would be that you have to know what is supported by its grammar in order to use it. The best solution I can see to that problem would be to add some sort of smart as-you-type suggestion feature. Making it smart enough would require some research of its own though but probably well worth it.

edit: Somewhat related is a tool for working with grammar for computer applications (parsing and translating between abstract and concrete and between different concrete representations): Grammatical Framework (http://www.grammaticalframework.org/)

Re: SHRDLU

#13

Post by fractalsea »

zeratul wrote: post #7

Maybe it's also good idea to revisit the reason why these systems are not widely in use. They all operate under so called "closed-world" assumptions. It means that the knowledge about the world is very limited. Once the limitation is lifted the system has to deal with non-monotonic reasoning ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monotonic_logic ) and that leads to multiple inheritance problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Why is the fact that it is NP-hard a fundamental problem for real-world systems? Sure, it is hard to solve in the mathematical sense, but in the real world it appears as though approximate algorithms for practically all well-known NP-hard problems exist (check wiki pages), and are very effective and efficient.

Re: SHRDLU

#14

Post by dang »

ColinWright wrote: post #11
dang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks—we changed the url to that first one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU .

And yet the original pointed to an article that has a better overview, some details not in the one you changed it to, and more, actually contains the link that you've now set it to. In short, you've replaced a link to an excellent overview that has a link to more material, with a less useful link. I know we have our disagreements, but this just seems out and out wrong. As I've said before, I find this immensely frust…

Ok, we've changed it back.

Please follow the HN guidelines and email us when you have a complaint about moderation. Procedural nitpicking in the threads makes them worse.

Re: SHRDLU

#15

Post by sherjilozair »

zeratul wrote: post #7

Maybe it's also good idea to revisit the reason why these systems are not widely in use. They all operate under so called "closed-world" assumptions. It means that the knowledge about the world is very limited. Once the limitation is lifted the system has to deal with non-monotonic reasoning ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monotonic_logic ) and that leads to multiple inheritance problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Why are close-world assumptions bad for all cases? There might be cases limited to a domain where the computer does not need to know about the world too much. Consider, the language of geometry problems given in high school math books. Surely, to understand that, one doesn't need to have world knowledge, but only ideas about what intersect means, and so on. This way, SHRDLU can be modified to understand geometry problem statements. The same way, it could also work for other domain-limited applications. A general solution might have to go to probabilistic systems, as current research suggests.

Re: SHRDLU

#16

Post by [deleted] »

ColinWright wrote: post #11
dang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks—we changed the url to that first one from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU .

And yet the original pointed to an article that has a better overview, some details not in the one you changed it to, and more, actually contains the link that you've now set it to. In short, you've replaced a link to an excellent overview that has a link to more material, with a less useful link. I know we have our disagreements, but this just seems out and out wrong. As I've said before, I find this immensely frust…

[deleted]

Re: SHRDLU

#17

Post by seanmcdirmid »

zeratul wrote: post #7

Maybe it's also good idea to revisit the reason why these systems are not widely in use. They all operate under so called "closed-world" assumptions. It means that the knowledge about the world is very limited. Once the limitation is lifted the system has to deal with non-monotonic reasoning ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monotonic_logic ) and that leads to multiple inheritance problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w…

I get that inheritance is involved in semantic reasoning, but it seems to be quite different from the OOP inheritance linked in the wiki article.

Re: SHRDLU

#18

Post by S4M »

mjac wrote: post #8

The source code is very well commented, a high quality piece of engineering.

It's seems to be in a Lisp dialect that predates common lisp unfortunately.

Re: SHRDLU

#19

Post by lispm »

S4M wrote: post #18
mjac wrote: post #8

The source code is very well commented, a high quality piece of engineering.

It's seems to be in a Lisp dialect that predates common lisp unfortunately.

Fortunately it is the Lisp dialect much of Common Lisp was based on: Maclisp.

Re: SHRDLU

#20

Post by S4M »

lispm wrote: post #19
S4M wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's seems to be in a Lisp dialect that predates common lisp unfortunately.

Fortunately it is the Lisp dialect much of Common Lisp was based on: Maclisp.

And is there a way it from my machine without installing MacLisp? is there some way to translate MacLisp into Common Lisp?
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