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C00002 00002	STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTERESTS
C00006 00003	COMMITMENT TO ACADEMIC CAREER
C00007 ENDMK
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STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTERESTS

My main  research interest  is Discovery:   can we  understand how  people
synthesize new  ideas?  I  test my  hypotheses about  human creativity  by
building  computer  programs  (AM  and  Eurisko)  which  attempt  to  make
discoveries.  Sometimes the  results are  just what we  expected (as  with
AM's use  of  analogy),  sometimes  they  are  amusing  (as  when  Eurisko
redefined the criteria for interestingness and then declared that what  it
had already done  was interesting), and  occasionally they are  gratifying
(as when  Eurisko's unconventional  fleet  design won  the 1981  and  1982
Traveller TCS tournaments) or even  electrifying (as when AM  rediscovered
cardinality,  or  when  Eurisko  discovered  what  we  expect  to  be  the
fundamental primitive device in  3D VLSI technology).  Experimenting  with
these  programs  leads  to  criticism  and  improvement  of  the  original
hypotheses, to a  slightly deeper understanding  of human creativity,  and
thus to the next  round of improvements in  the programs.  The  long-range
goal of such research is to  exploit the synergy between man and  machine,
tapping into the  differences in processing  abilities and limitations  of
each.

Many issues  must be  dealt with  in constructing  such programs:  how  to
represent common sense and expert knowledge concretely; how the program is
to judge the  worth of new  concepts and conjectures  it proposes; how  to
constrain the generation of such concepts  and conjectures to a small  set
of highly plausible and promising  ones.  The programs must make  tactical
decisions about when to reason  symbolically and inductively (and  slowly)
versus quickly using only statistical methods.

During the  1983-5 period,  my specific  plans for  extending the  machine
discovery programs are  (i) to recode  them in such  a fashion that  other
researchers in machine learning can easily inspect them and use parts from
them in their own work, (ii) to add a sufficient man-machine interface  to
enable researchers outside  our narrow subfield  to use the  program as  a
black box "learning module" for  their own systems, (iii) continue  having
Eurisko perform in difficult task  areas, specifically the design of  VLSI
circuits, and (iv) use the results of the first three activities to extend
the nascent Theory of Heuristics we developed during the past two years.


COMMITMENT TO ACADEMIC CAREER

After receiving  my  PhD in  1976,  I  became an  assistant  professor  at
Carnegie-Mellon University,  and then  assumed that  position at  Stanford
University.  I have designed and  introduced several new courses here  and
at CMU, and have enjoyed teaching, advising, and the "idea  amplification"
that is  only possible  within  academia.  I  hope  to receive  tenure  at
Stanford, and have clearly made a commitment to an academic career.