Contents:

• Overview
• Internet Requirements
• Practice Problems
• Problems to be Submitted
• Extra Credit

Topic: Artificial Intelligence
Related Reading: Ch. 13 and notes (skip 13.2, 13.6)
Due: 8pm Tuesday, 7 December 2004

This assignment relies on a lab associated with the Meyer book and the associated software. You will need to have an external Internet connection to run this software (or use the CD that came with that text).

• Exercises 1-5 of Ch. 13 (p. 444)

• Exercise 33 of Ch. 13 (p. 446); answer in back of text

• Exercise 37 of Ch. 13 (p. 446); answer in back of text

• Exercise 39 of Ch. 13 (p. 446); answer in back of text

1. (5 points)

   Answer Thought Question #1 of Ch. 13 (p. 448)

2. (5 points)

   Do Exercise 1 of Lab 13 of the Meyer text; answer questions 2-5 along the way. (Semantic Network simulator)

   For questions 2, 3 and 4, please write down the rule that you added as part of your submitted solution.

   For questions 5 and 6, when asked to take a screenshot, you should instead cut-and-paste the contents of the "Deduced facts:" window into your submitted solution.

3. (10 points)

   Many statements in a natural language, such as English, contain ambiguity for a variety of reasons. As humans, we can often (though not always) distinguish between possible meanings. Resolving such ambiguities is a great challenge for software.

   The textbook and the lecture notes discuss several sources of ambiguity, giving many examples of such ambiguities.

   For each of the five types of ambiguity below we want you to do the following.

   • Create your own example of an English statement which has such an ambiguity.

     Your example must be different from the examples given in the text book or lecture notes.

   • Justify your answer, explaining the ambiguity, and giving two or more possible interpretations of your statement. (Ideally, several of the interpretations might be 'reasonable' as opposed to one obvious interpretation and one senseless interpretation)

   1. Lexical ambiguity
   2. Syntactic ambiguity
   3. Referential ambiguity
   4. The need for rules of conversation
   5. The need for real-world, topical knowledge

Figure 13.4 of the text and the corresponding discussion involve a variant of the game of Nim. Interestingly, the text book never explicitly stated the most important conclusions. Assuming that both players use optimal strategies, who will win the game, Player 1 or Player 2? Explain why.

By the way, the text explained that they used a very simplified version of the game as an example. If you would like, you may play the computer in a more interesting version of the game Nim. Let me know if you are able to beat the computer. I still haven't.