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C00005 00003	.LTR(Professor Donald Knuth)
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%6S%5 Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Stanford, California 94305
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	Douglas B. Lenat
	Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
	Stanford University
	Stanford, California  94305
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Sincerely,
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Douglas B. Lenat
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.LTR(Professor Donald Knuth)
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
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Dear Don,

I enjoyed talking to you about the "Automated Mathematician" project. Some
afterthoughts:

We didn't have much time to discuss your reactions to the ideas; if you
disagree with any of them, I'd greatly appreciate a note about that.
Enclosed is a fuller description of the proposed system, and a copy of the
knowledge which will be given initially to the system.

After reading the notes on de Bruijn's AUTOMATH lectures, I see that there really
%2is%* something there after all; the papers I had looked at earlier were by other
authors, and presupposed a working knowledge of that language.  Like Esperanto,
it is unfortunate that most scientists and mathematicians %2don't%* know
AUTOMATH;  but because of that lack  
I feel I must still orient the communication to
a more traditional, math-textbook type of language.
AUTOMATH forces you to always know precisely what you're saying; this alone would
drive away most of the prospective users.
Seriously: AUTOMATH is better suited to proof %2checking,%*
than to the
investigative flights of imagination needed to %2propose%* interesting new conjectures.


Yesterday I gave a seminar here at the A.I. lab, and received a couple interesting
warnings. One is that even though the little clumps of knowledge are able to
locally decide what is interesting, the system might be swamped by
a multitude of slightly-worthwhile things to do, and 
not be able to recognize
the %2globally%* most
interesting pursuits.
How do you  recognize when something has significant interest, as opposed to
apparent, local interest?  Is true significance just a matter of hindsight?

I hope to hear from you soon. In any event, I'll schedule another meeting when
the system is programmed.

.DBL