Abstract. We define the main factor of intelligence as the ability to comprehend, formalising this ability with the help of new constructs based on descriptional complexity. The result is a comprehension test, or C-test, exclusively defined in terms of universal descriptional machines (e.g universal Turing machines). Despite the absolute and non-anthropomorphic character of the test it is equally applicable to both humans and machines. Moreover, it correlates with classical psychometric tests, thus establishing the first firm connection between information theoretic notions and traditional IQ tests. The Turing Test is compared with the C-test and their joint combination is discussed. As a result, the idea of the Turing Test as a practical test of intelligence should be left behind, and substituted by computational and factorial tests of different cognitive abilities, a much more useful approach for artificial intelligence progress and for many other intriguing questions that are presented beyond the Turing Test.

In this article I argue that the organizational involvement of large scale information technology packages, such as those known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), has important implications that go far beyond the acknowledged effects of keeping the organizational operations accountable and integrated across functions and production sites. My claim is that ERP packages are predicated upon an understanding of human agency as a procedural affair and of organizations as an extended series of functional or cross-functional transactions. Accordingly, the massive introduction of ERP packages to organizations is bound to have serious implications that precisely recount the procedural forms by which such packages instrument organizational operations and fashion organizational roles. The conception of human agency and organizational operations in procedural terms may seem reasonable yet it recounts a very specific and, in a sense, limited understanding of humans and organizations. The distinctive status of framing human agency and organizations in procedural terms becomes evident in its juxtaposition with other forms of human action like improvisation, exploration or playing. These latter forms of human involvement stand out against the serial fragmentation underlying procedural action. They imply acting upon the world on loose premises that trade off a variety of forms of knowledge and courses of action in attempts to explore and discover alternative ways of coping with reality. Key Words: Human agency, behaviour, information infrastructures, integration, organizational action, procedural action, procedural knowledge, standardization

Computer programming environments for learning should make it easy to create worlds of responsive and autonomous objects, such as video games or simulations of animal behavior. But building such worlds remains difficult, partly because the models and metaphors underlying traditional programming languages are not particularly suited to the task. This dissertation investigates new metaphors, environments, and languages that make possible new ways to create programs -- and, more broadly, new ways to think about programs. In particular, it introduces the idea of programming with "agents" as a means to help people create worlds involving responsive, interacting objects. In this context, an agent is a simple mechanism intended to be understood through anthropomorphic metaphors and endowed with certain lifelike properties such as autonomy, purposefulness, and emotional state. Complex behavior is achieved by combining simple agents into more complex structures. While the agent metaphor enables...

This paper argues that in addition to the familiar approach using formal contexts, there is now a need in artificial intelligence to study contexts as social constructs. As a successful example of the latter approach, I draw attention to `interpretation' (in the sense of literary theory), viz. the reconstruction of intended meaning of a literary text that takes into account the context in which the author assumed the reader would place the text. An important contribution here comes from Wendell Harris, enumerating the seven crucial dimensions of context: knowledge of reality, knowledge of language, and the authorial, generic, collective, specific, and textual dimensions. Finally, two recent approaches to interpretation, due to Jon Barwise and Jerry Hobbs, are analyzed as useful attempts which also come to grips with the notion of context. It must be noted that there has been a considerable body of contributions connecting linguistic structure with social context. For example, anthropo...

The status of research methodology employed by studies on the application of AI techniques to solving problems in engineering design, analysis, and manufacturing is poor. There may be many reasons for this status including: unfortunate heritage from AI, poor educational system, and researchers' sloppiness. Understanding this status is a prerequisite for improvement. The study of research methodology can promote such understanding, but most importantly, it can assist in improving the situation. This paper introduces concepts from the philosophy of science and builds on them models of worldviews of science. These worldviews are combined with a research heuristics or research perspectives and criteria for evaluating research to create a layered model of research methodology. This layerd model can serve to organize and facilitate a better understanding of future studies of research methodologies. The paper discusses many of the issues involved in the study of AI and AIEDAM research methodo...

The purpose of this work is to improve understanding of existing and proposed decision systems, ideally to improve the design of future systems. A "decision system " is defined as a collection of information-processing components-- often involving humans and automation (e.g., computers)-- that interact towards a common set of objectives. Since a key issue in the design of decision systems is the division of work between humans and machines (a task known as "function allocation"), this report is primarily intended to help designers incorporate automation more appropriately within these systems. This report does not provide a design methodology, but introduces a way to qualitatively analyze potential designs early in the system design process. A novel analytical framework is presented, based on the concept of "semi-Structured " decision processes. It is believed that many decisions involve both well-defined "Structured " parts (e.g., formal procedures, traditional algorithms) and ill-defined "Unstructured " parts (e.g., intuition, judgement, neural networks) that interact in a known manner. While Structured processes are often desired because they fully prescribe how a future decision (during "operation") will be made, they are limited by what is explicitly understood prior to operation. A system designer who incorporates Unstructured processes into

Author's personal copy www.elsevier.com/locate/artint The AI and HCI communities have often been characterized as having opposing views of how humans and computers should interact. As both of them evolve, there is a deeper contrast that cuts across these communities, in how researchers conceive the relationship between knowledge and design. By examining the rationalistic and design orientations underlying bodies of work in both disciplines, we highlight relevant differences and possibilities for effective interaction with computers.

In 2020, digital systems will be an integral part of the interaction between people. They will help both in the maintenance of each person’s individual perspective, and in the interplay between peoples ’ differing perspectives; they will help people and organizations respond effectively to local circumstances, and maintain the coherence as necessary for effective concerted action. To make this possible, digital systems will be far more engaged with their users, and will be far more supportive of the change, ambiguity and inconsistency intrinsic to social activity. Human-computer interaction will therefore come to be constitutive, not merely of the interface between person and machine, but of many aspects of human society.

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