Addendum: Annotated Clues & Explanations

ANNOTATED CLUES & ANSWERS

EXPLANATIONS

Abbreviations & Acronyms:

AFTRA: According to the description at their Web site: "The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) is a national labor union representing over 70,000 performers, journalists and other artists working in the entertainment and news media."

Agrawal, Rakesh: see Data-mining pioneer joins Microsoft, by Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com (May 15, 2006).

AIBO. See:

• this article from the 27 April 2006 AI ALERT, and
• the paper: CMRoboBits - Creating an Intelligent AIBO Robot. By Manuela M. Veloso, Paul E. Rybski, Scott Lenser, Sonia Chernova, and Douglas Vail. AI Magazine 27 (1): Spring 2006, 67.

AI Magazine 13(3): see the Fall 1992 issue.

AI Societies: AI International's collection includes SCCC, the Sociedad Chilena de Ciencia de la Computación, and ECCAI (see below).

Alan Mackworth: As stated in Sony CSL's Brief History of Robot World Cup: "The idea of robot playing soccer/football game was first mentioned by Professor Alan Mackworth (University of British Columnbia, Canada) in a paper titled On Seeing Robots presented at VI-92, 1992. and later published in a book Computer Vision: System, Theory, and Applications, pages 1-13, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1993."

Anne Foerst: see these interviews from our collection.

Arm, Stanford: see Victor Scheinman's Stanford Arm in the Computer History Museum's 1969 Timeline.

ARPA / DARPA: see ARPA-DARPA: The History of the Name.

Ashby: see the AI in the news column in the Winter 2006 issue of AI Magazine.

ASK Systems: "ASK systems are a form of hypermedia based on the metaphor of having a conversation with an expert (or a group of experts). In this conversation, the user provides questions and the ASK system provides the answers. In a real conversation, both participants influence the flow of discussion. In an ASK system, the same holds true. The user influences the flow by selecting which questions to pursue and the ASK system influences the flow through the answers it provides."

Austin Tate is the Director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute and Professor of Knowledge-Based Systems, University of Edinburgh.

Bombe:

• Bletchley hums again to the Turing Bombe, by Ben Fenton. Telegraph.co.uk (September 7, 2006)
• Solving the Enigma- History of the Cryptanalytic Bombe, by Jennifer E. Wilcox (January 2001), available from the National Security Agency's Web site
• Tony Sale's notes for his Enigma and the Bombe lecture.
• U.S. Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe Exhibit, available from the National Security Agency's Web site

Bruce Buchanan's Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: If a link brought you here, then the answer can be found there: CHI | Golem | Llull | Ludd | Nomad | RUR

Bush, Vannevar: wrote As We May Think (Atlantic Monthly, July 1945).

Clowes, Max: see Aaron Sloman's Tribute to Max Clowes: "He would start the 'Computers and Thought' course by introducing students to a simple puzzle-solving program and erect thereon a highly motivating interpretation: treating it as a microcosm of real life, including the student's own goal-directed activities in trying to create a working program. (Perhaps this is not unconnected with a slogan he defended during his earlier work on human and machine vision: 'Perception is controlled hallucination' - hallucinating complex interpretations onto relatively simple programs helps to motivate the students and give them a feel for the long term potential of computing)."

DEMO: the Dynamical & Evolutionary Machine Organization at Brandeis University ... and short form of demonstration.

ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence Member Societies. Visit their site for links to their member societies including: AEPIA | AIIA | APPIA | BNVKI | EETN | OGAI | SSAISB

Ecobot II: see this article in the AI in the news collection -> September 9, 2004: Self-sustaining killer robot creates a stink. By Duncan Graham-Rowe. New Scientist News. ""It may eat flies and stink to high heaven, but if this robot works, it will be an important step towards making robots fully autonomous. ..."

ENIAC. See:

• John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC Computer, An Exhibition in the Department of Special Collections Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, by Asaf Goldschmidt and Atsushi Akera.
• University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering & Applied Science's ENIAC Museum Online - Celebrating 60 Years of Computing 1946-2006.

Fellow: see the AAAI Fellows list for the Fellow's initials.

HAL: Some say that the HAL Nine Thousand computer in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, got its name by starting with IBM and then moving back one letter in the alphabet from I, B and M. Others say that it's an acronym for Heuristic Algorithmic Logic. For more info about HAL, see our Science Fiction page.

Herbert: see Stottler Henke's Artificial Intelligence History - 1957:

• Herbert Gelernter > Geometry Theorem Prover
• Herbert Simon > General Problem Solver

Higgings Professor: Yes, there is My Fair Lady's Professor Henry Higgins (the linguist who tutored Eliza Doolittle, namesake of Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza), but the correct answer is AAAI's past-president, Barbara Grosz, the Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at Harvard University and Dean of Science at the Radcliffe Institute.

Insemination: From the AI in the news archive -> July 5, 2002: Producers use A.I. to change herd genetics. By Lana Johnson. Mobridge Tribune. "Cattle producers looking to improve the breeding quality of their herd have already completed, or are in the midst of, an A.I. program. No, it's not artificial intelligence. It's artificial insemination. 'It's the quickest, most inexpensive way to get dramatic changes in genetics in a herd in a single year,' said A.I. technician Susie Ellison, 42, of Isabel."

• Compare: 73 DOWN in AI Crossword Puzzle #2.

Kat-5: see A Triumph for New Orleans, from NOVA.

Koller, Daphne: see this article in the AI in the news collection -> September 29, 2004: Koller honored with MacArthur Fellowship for work using computational methods. By Matthew Early Wright. Stanford Report.

• Daphne is also an AAAI Fellow.

MacHack: see Getting Going, from the Computer History Museum's online exhibit: Mastering the Game - A History of Computer Chess.

MEME: "In the 1970s, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' in his book The Selfish Gene to refer to aspects of human culture and how they evolve in a way that's analogous to how genes evolve. Since then, the study of memes has become an evolving meme itself. A meme is an idea or thing that is passed from person to person and is either adopted for its usefulness or other purpose -- in some cases becoming a wildly popular idea that can't be stopped -- or abandoned to die a quick and ignoble death. A meme can be a song or snippet of a song, a dance, an urban legend, an expression or behavior, a product brand or even a religion." - excerpt from Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes. Kim Zette interviews British scholar Susan Blackmore. Wired (February 29, 2008).

MENACE. As stated in Donald Michie's CV: "Michie began his first experiments in 1960. His tic-tac-toe machine MENACE demonstrated the basic principle of a self-reinforcing learning mechanism. MENACE employed Michie's conceptually simple general-purpose learning algorithm BOXES which could also discover robust control strategies for the pole-and-cart problem, but was soon employed industrially to evolve strategies for automatic control, such as controlling a steel mill."

Michie, Don: Check out The very early days, an interview (available in PDF, Quicktime, and Realmedia) with Donald Michie, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, and currently a visitor at NSW University of Technology. "Interested in AI from 1942, Donald Michie conceived, founded and directed the UK's first AI laboratory at Edinburgh, and has since been active in AI projects around the World. ... His talk will cover the period from 1942, when Alan Turing was a colleague at Bletchley Park, up to 1965, when the Edinburgh AI laboratory was truly launched. He will cover the theories, the practice, the personalities and the politics, and on past form may be expected to do so without pulling any punches." This is just one of the 4 presentations given at the October 2002 seminar, Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers.

Nathaniel Rochester:

• IBM 701 Photo Album
• AI conference returns to College after 50 yrs. By Alex Belser. The Dartmouth Online( July 18, 2006)

The Origins of Cyberspace auction:

• Christie's overview
  • Auction results
• Genius on the Block - The foundations of the computing age go up for auction. By Stephen Cass. IEEE Spectrum (July 2005).
• Net history buffs find bargains at Christie's. By Marguerite Reardon. CNET News.com (February 23, 2005) and the accompanying slide show: Images from computing's history.
• Do I Hear $1,000 for the Univac? By Bernice Yeung. Wired (December 2004).

OWL: see this W3C overview of the OWL Web Ontology Language.

Palo: Palo Alto is where you'll find Stanford University. But did you know that PALO is the name of a probabilistic hill-climbing algorithm?

Pam & Sam: PAM (Plan Applier Mechanism) & SAM (Script Applier Mechanism) were developed by Roger Schank & Robert Abelson at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Pearl:

• Judea Pearl's homepage
• Pearl the NurseBot Helps the Elderly at Home. Carnegie Mellon Today (June 2006).

Raj-Hug: See Reflections on the First AAAI Conference, by Robert Balzer. AI Magazine 26(4): Winter 2005, 21–23: "I had earned my degrees at CMU and was quite familiar with the local lore -- which included the legendary 'Raj-Hug' in which Raj puts his arm around someone's shoulder and makes a request which is inevitably granted."

RAND. According to A Brief History of RAND: "It was on May 14, 1948, that Project RAND -- an outgrowth of World War II -- separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, nonprofit organization. Adopting its name from a contraction of the term research and development, the newly formed entity was dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States."

RAP: see this description of The RAP System [Reactive Action Packages] from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at  the University of Chicago.

Rays:

• Ray Solomonoff
  • homepage at IDSIA
  • AI conference returns to College after 50 yrs. by Alex Belser. The Dartmouth Online( July 18, 2006
• Ray Kurzweil
  • A Brief Career Summary from Kurzweil Technologies

Restaurant:

• Late for the Train: see Some Recollections about the Early Days of AAAI, by Bruce G. Buchanan. AI Magazine 26(4): Winter 2005, 13–16.
• Restaurant Script: see Chapter 3 of Roger Schank and Richard Abelson's 1977 book, Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding.

Robin Murphy: see this article in the AI in the news collection -> September 14, 2001: Search-and-Rescue Robots Tested at New York Disaster Site. By Bijal P. Trivedi. National Geographic Today.

Rosen, Charles = Shakey Vintner: See Charles Rosen -- expert on robots, co-founder of winery. By Wyatt Buchanan. San Francisco Chronicle (December 20, 2002). "Charles Rosen, who pioneered artificial intelligence in the 1960s and 1970s and helped found one of California's best known wineries, died in Atherton on Dec. 8, one day after his 85th birthday. ... Mr. Rosen did his groundbreaking artificial intelligence work while at Stanford Research Institute, known now as SRI International, a Menlo Park nonprofit research and development organization. His success came from his ability to find the edge of creative thought and innovation in his discipline and to push past the known limits, friends and colleagues say, developing things like neural networks in machines and Shakey, the first robot to see and learn on its own."

• Additional articles can be found on the AI TOPICS Tributes page.
• Also see: Shakey

SABRE. As noted by David Waltz in his essay, Artificial Intelligence: Realizing the Ultimate Promises of Computing (for this CRA Web document): "Advanced user interfaces: PEGASUS is a spoken language interface connected to the American Airlines EAASY SABRE reservation system, which allows subscribers to obtain flight information and make flight reservations via a large, on-line, dynamic database, accessed through their personal computer over the telephone."

SAGE: see the AI in the news column in the Winter 2006 issue of AI Magazine.

• Also see the 1950's film clip of SAGE in action that was shown in this 1986 episode of Computer Chronicles available via the AAAI Video Archive.

Senator: If you check the list of AAAI officials, you'll find Ted Senator, Secretary-Treasurer.

Shakey:

• See this review from NPR of the book, Shakey: "- nickname Neil Young's pals gave him after they watched some home movies he had made. 'His camera was none too steady,' says Jimmy McDonough, who used the nickname as the title of his new biography of the rock and roll icon."
• See Shakey's page at The Robot Hall of Fame.
• Also see: Charles Rosen (Shakey Vintner)

SHRDLU: see Terry Winograd's explanation of How SHRDLU got its name.

Simon Says:

• Simon Says, from Kids Games
• Herbert A. Simon's Nobel Prize Lecture, Rational Decision-Making in Business Organizations (December 8, 1978)

SIR: see the 1964 MIT Technical Report, SIR: A Computer Program for Semantic Information Retrieval, available from ACM Portal.

Smee, Alfred (1851). The Process of Thought Adapted to Words and Language: Together with a Description of Relational and Differential Mechanics, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman.

Spirit: see Mars Exploration Rover Mission Web site.

Swale:

• Creativity by Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), the SWALE Project Home Page
• results of the 1984 Kentucky Derby

Ted:

• Turbine Engine Diagnostics (TED), by Richard Helfman, Ed Baur, John Dumer, Tim Hanratty, and Holly Ingham. AI Magazine 20(1): Spring 1999, 69-76. "Turbine engine diagnostics (TED) is a diagnostic expert system to aid the M1 Abrams tank mechanic find-and-fix problems in the AGT-1500 turbine engine. TED was designed to provide the apprentice mechanic with the ability to diagnose and repair the turbine engine like an expert mechanic."
• Ted Shortliffe

Teddington: The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), located in Teddington, Middlesex, was home to ACE, the Automatic Computing Engine (see this page at AlanTuring.net), and the site of the 1958 Teddington Conference. Also see this entry in Bruce Buchanan's Brief History of Artificial Intelligence.

TIKTOC: "... L. Frank Baum, who gave us the Wizard of Oz. Baum wrote of several robots and described the mechanical man Tiktok in 1907, for example, as an Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking Mechanical Man ... Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live.'" - from A (Very) Brief History of Artificial Intelligence, by Bruce G. Buchanan. AI Magazine 26(4): Winter 2005, 53–60.

Trenchard More: "Thirty-one AI experts lectured the morning, afternoon, and evening sessions of AI@50, after an historic gathering in Baker Library on Wednesday afternoon, July 12, to honor the five surviving founders of AI and unveil the plaque commemorating the original Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence that created AI as a research discipline in 1956. Present for that occasion were John McCarthy, back then a Dartmouth mathematics professor who first coined the term 'artificial intelligence' to apply for a grant to fund the 1956 conference, along with four other founding colleagues - Marvin Minsky, Oliver Selfridge, Ray Solomonoff, and Trenchard More." - from the homepage for the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years.

Turing at Bell Labs:

• Code-Breaker - The life and death of Alan Turing. Jim Holt's review of David Leavitt’s, The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Norton/Atlas). The New Yorker (February 6, 2006). "By 1942, Turing had mastered most of the theoretical problems posed by the Enigma. Now that the United States was ready to throw its vast resources into the code-breaking effort, he was dispatched as a liaison to Washington, where he helped the Americans get their own Bombe-making and Enigma-monitoring under way. Then he headed to New York, where he was to work on another top-secret project, involving the encryption of speech, at Bell Laboratories, which were then situated near the piers in Greenwich Village. While at Bell Labs, he became engrossed with a question that came to occupy his postwar work: was it possible to build an artificial brain?"
• 2 resources from The Alan Turing Home Page, maintained by Andrew Hodges, author of Alan Turing: the Enigma:
  • Updates: "AMT's arrival in New York without identifying papers is clearly described in his own report written two weeks later. See this transcript."
  • The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook: Alan Turing as UK-USA link, 1942 onwards. "Alan Turing was a top-level link between Britain and the United States, and his visit to America between November 1942 and March 1943 was a landmark in the Intelligence collaboration that, with its continuation after 1945, has shaped the global post-war order. ... Alan Turing's work in the United States also required him to report on the secret speech encipherment system that was being built at Bell Laboratories in New York for high-level transatlantic communication."

UBS. See their November 10, 2005 news release, UBS Investment Bank launches automated mortgage underwriting.

Utes:

• Ute Indian
• The Aussie Slang Dictionary -> U

VCR: before the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) there was the Video Cassette Recorder.

waltz: Had the "w" been capitalized (and the cross words otherwise), then David would have been the word.

Warren: See this entry in Bruce Buchanan's Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: Warren (McCulloch) fits with the cross words, Walter (Pitts) doesn't!

XCON, an eXpert CONfigurer:

• 1999 AAAI Classic Paper Award: John McDermott. R1: An Expert in the Computer Systems Domain, presented at the First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-80), Stanford University, Stanford, California. See footnote 6: "During this first stage, Rl's name was XCON."

ZIPF: see the AI TOPICS Namesakes page