Reasoning with Classification in Interactive Knowledge Elicitation

This paper describes METIS, a system based upon a Method of Elicitation of Taxonomies used to Identify conceptual Structures. METIS is an interactive tool using a minimal core of structured descriptions, in order to acquire objects and to discriminate them. This core is progressively extended through the acquisition and recognition of a lot of objects; it represents a generalization hierarchy. The knowledge acquisition. and therefore the building of the generalization hierarchy, is guided by the taxonomy of classes associated to objects. The knowledge acquisition principle is incremental and uses the formalism of cooceptual graphs. We have applied METIS to the ichthyological field (i.e., the part of zoology dealing with fishes) as partofa research conventiori with U.R.2.C (i.e., research unit on environmentand aquatic resources of topical river valleys) from ORSlOM (i.e., the French cooperative research institute for the purpose of development)

Induction and the discovery of the causes of scurvy: a computational reconstruction

AbstractThe work presented here addresses the problem of inductive reasoning in medical discoveries. The discovery of the causes of scurvy is studied and simulated using computational means. An inductive algorithm is successful in simulating some essential steps in the progress of the understanding of the disease and also allows us to simulate the false reasoning of previous centuries through the introduction of some a priori knowledge inherited from pre-clinical medicine. These results confirm the good results obtained by other AI researchers with an inductive approach of discovery, and illustrate the importance of the social and cultural environment on the way the inductive inference is performed and on its outcome

The new ethical trilemma: Security, privacy and transparency

International audienceNumerous ethical and societal issues are related to the development of nanotechnology. Among them, the risk for privacy has long been discussed. Some people say that technology is neutral and that it does not really change the nature of problems, which are mainly political, while others state that its contemporary developments considerably amplify them; there are even persons who assert that it will make privacy protection obsolete. This paper discusses those different positions by making reference to the classical Panopticon that is an architecture for surveillance, which characterizes the total absence of privacy. It envisages the possible evolutions of the Panopticon due to the development of nanotechnologies. It shows that the influence of nanotechnology on privacy concerns cannot be dissociated from the influence of computers and biotechnologies, i.e. from what is currently called the NBIC convergence. Lastly, it concludes on the new ethical trade-off that has to be made between three contradictory requirements that are security, transparency and privacy

Automatic Detection of Reuses and Citations in Literary Texts

For more than forty years now, modern theories of literature (Compagnon, 1979) insist on the role of paraphrases, rewritings, citations, reciprocal borrowings and mutual contributions of any kinds. The notions of intertextuality, transtextuality, hypertextuality/hypotextuality, were introduced in the seventies and eighties to approach these phenomena. The careful analysis of these references is of particular interest in evaluating the distance that the creator voluntarily introduces with his/her masters. Phoebus is collaborative project that makes computer scientists from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (LIP6-UPMC) collaborate with the literary teams of Paris-Sorbonne University with the aim to develop efficient tools for literary studies that take advantage of modern computer science techniques. In this context, we have developed a piece of software that automatically detects and explores networks of textual reuses in classical literature. This paper describes the principles on which is based this program, the significant results that have already been obtained and the perspectives for the near future

La conception innovante des objets à intelligence incorporée

International audienceCet article rend compte d'une collaboration entre trois laboratoires de recherche publique et une Petite et Moyenne Entreprise, fabriquant de terminaux pour la télévision numérique , appelée dans cet article l'entreprise " High Tech ". Positionnée sur un marché qui a connu un effondrement des prix avec l'arrivée des constructeurs Asiatiques, majoritairement Chinois, " High Tech " a voulu explorer des solutions innovantes pour restaurer ses marges. Des procédures ont été adoptées en vue de faire émerger ces solutions à travers un processus de co-conception de produits et d'usages. En présentant ces procédures, notre objectif est de contribuer à l'approfondissement d'une problématique socio-informatique, celle visant à assister informatiquement la conception des objets à intelligence incorporée (OII). Nous montrerons qu'une stratégie de conception des OII dépend de la coopération entre informaticiens, ergonomes, sociologues et usagers et que le rôle de l'assistance informatique est d'aider à organiser cette coopération