AI Magazine Volume 11 Number 1 (1991)(1990) (© AAAI) Research in Progress of linguistic phenomena. The com- Directions in AI Research putational work concerns questions of adequate processing models and algorithms, as embodied in the and Applications at actual interfaces being developed. These topics are explored in the Siemens Corporate Research framework of three projects: The nat- ural language consulting dialogue and Development project (Wisber) takes up research- oriented topics (descriptive grammar formalisms and linguistically adequate grammar specification, handling of Wolfram Buettner, Klaus Estenfeld, discourse, and so on), the data-access Hans Haugeneder, and Peter Struss project (Sepp) focuses on the practi- cal application of state-of-the-art technology, and the work on gram- mar-development environments ■ Many barriers exist today that prevent particular, Prolog extensions; and (4) (Ape) centers on the problem of ade- effective industrial exploitation of current design and analysis of neural networks. quate tools for specifying linguistic and future AI research. These barriers can The lab’s 26 researchers are orga- knowledge sources and efficient pro- only be removed by people who are work- nized into four groups corresponding cessing methods. ing at the scientific forefront in AI and to these areas. Together, they provide Wisber is jointly funded by the know potential industrial needs. Siemens with innovative software The Knowledge Processing Laboratory’s German government and several research and development concentrates in technologies, appropriate applications, industrial and academic partners. the following areas: (1) natural language prototypical implementations of AI The goal of the project is to develop interfaces to knowledge-based systems and systems, and evaluations of new a knowledge-based advice-giving databases; (2) theoretical and experimen- techniques and trends. system in the domain of financial tal work on qualitative modeling and In addition to its responsibilities to consultation. nonmonotonic reasoning for future knowl- the company, the lab aims at estab- edge-based systems; (3) application-specif- lishing close contacts with the out- The group's ic language design, in particular, Prolog side scientific community. In part, extensions; and (4) design and analysis of this contact is made by sharing tech- general strategy neural networks. nical results and advances in AI This article gives the reader an overview for validating its of the main topics currently being pursued technology and its theoretical foun- theoretical work is in each of these areas. dations. Furthermore, lab researchers support a two-way exchange of infor- to build prototypi- mation through publications and Many barriers exist today that pre- talks on current work as well as activ- cal tools and vent effective industrial exploitation ities as referees, teachers at tutorials, integrate them of current and future AI research. and conference organizers. into a system. These barriers can only be removed The remainder of this article gives by people who are working at the the reader an overview of the main scientific forefront in AI and know topics currently being pursued in The natural language analysis com- potential industrial needs. each of the four groups. ponent is the laboratory’s responsi- The Knowledge Processing Lab- bility. It is based on a lexical-func- oratory within Siemens Corporate Natural Language tional grammar (LFG)–type parser Research and Development in Technology (Block and Hunze 1986; Block and Munich, Germany, aims at breaking Haugeneder 1988) but handles long- down these barriers. With over Current state-of-the-art natural lan- distance phenomena more in the 350,000 employees and a product guage interfaces have many limita- spirit of the slash categories of the line ranging from coffee makers to tions. Among these are a linguistic generalized phrase structure gram- mainframe computers, Siemens is coverage that is too narrow, restricted mar. It uses discourse representation one of the world’s leading high-tech types of dialogue interaction, insuffi- theory (DRT) as the framework for its companies. Its interest in leading- cient robustness, and modeling of semantic and discourse representa- edge technologies such as AI is the application domain that is too tion (Hunze 1988; Frederking and understandable. implicit. Gehrke 1988). A KL-TWO–type repre- The Knowledge Processing Labora- To develop interfaces that do not sentation formalism is used for con- tory’s research and development con- exhibit these limitations, the Natural ceptual modeling. A grammar centrates in the following areas: (1) Language Technology Group is compiler developed by the laboratory natural language interfaces to knowl- engaged in basic research and in the allows grammars to be perspicuously edge-based systems and databases; (2) development of actual applications. written but efficiently processed. theoretical and experimental work The theoretical work encompasses Because morphology is of critical on qualitative modeling and non- such elements as the development of importance in German, we also monotonic reasoning for future expressive formal representations for developed a morphological analyzer knowledge-based systems; (3) appli- linguistic knowledge and empirically using the same formalism as for syn- cation-specific language design, in tested, formally explicit descriptions tactic analysis. Additionally, we 20 AI MAGAZINE Copyright ©1990 AAAI. All rights reserved. 0738-4602/89/$4.00 Research in Progress implemented a component for han- facilities. The next version of this control strategies (Haugeneder and dling and accessing large lexicons on interface will employ left-corner Gehrke 1987) using an agenda con- the basis of discrimination trees and parsing, making use of bottom-up trol mechanism. These capabilities random-access methods (Gehrke and information in addition to the top- have been used extensively in the Block 1986). A sizable, restrictively down information already used. development of heuristic search formulated German grammar is Work also continues on extending strategies that are independent of the being developed as part of this work Sepp’s linguistic coverage, especially underlying grammar formalism (Hau- using government and binding con- with regard to quantifiers, ellipses, geneder and Gehrke 1988). Ape is cepts within an LFG representation and comparative constructions (the implemented in Interlisp-D on a (Schachtl 1988). These components latter are currently handled by semi- Siemens 58xx. run in Interlisp-D on a Siemens 58xx formal expressive features). Enlarging To provide a focus for future work, (Xerox 1100) workstation. the functionality and user friendli- we have adopted the ambitious goal Sepp (SESAM preprocessor) is a ness of Sepp’s domain-tailoring tools of developing a linguistic core pro- natural language interface to database will also be tackled (Schmid 1988). cessor (LCP) that will bring together systems supporting the standard The development of the system is the results of the work in the three query language SQL (Block and being performed in Prolog on SUN preceding projects. LCP will be an Schlereth 1987). Included are tools workstations, with Siemens MX integrated, application-neutral natu- for adjusting the domain-indepen- (Unix-based) computers as target ral language–processing component dent language processor to a specific machines. having linguistic capabilities ade- database. Sepp functions as a transla- The Ape (augmented transition quate for a variety of interface uses. tor, producing SQL queries in a two- network [ATN] programming envi- LCP is envisioned not only as being phase process. Natural language ronment) grammar-development parameterized with respect to domain queries are mapped into SQL queries environment is a highly interactive but also as being usable as a natural through an intermediate abstract, development and testing environ- language interaction component in object-centered internal representation. ment for the ATN formalism based multimodal user interfaces. The natu- The current version of Sepp is being on an active chart parser (Haugened- ral language facilities of LCP will used in a pilot project by an organi- er and Gehrke 1986). This system include the analysis of natural lan- zation outside Siemens to access allows the specification and debug- guage input as well as the generation information in its large, real-world ging of network-style grammars of natural language output. In its database. This experience will give us using an extensive graphic interface final version, it will have comprehen- feedback on the system’s language and provides a highly flexible tool sive coverage and be robust in the coverage, habitability, and overall for defining and testing various face of ungrammatical input, attentive SPRING 1990 21 Research in Progress to its discourse context, and alert to As implemented, this framework the implications of a variety of speech The statement of deals with hierarchical models and acts. Of course, the initial version a problem should allows focusing within these models will be significantly limited compared at the same time (Struss 1988a, 1988b), handles to the eventual LCP, with develop- dynamic device models (Dressler and ment proceeding incrementally. be an executable Freitag 1989), and integrates fault Participants: H. Haugeneder, H. U. computer program models exploiting the extended Block, R. Frederking (until June 1989), ATMS (Struss