Introduction Welcome to the October 2005 issue. My main topic this month is an introduction to evolutionary art - genetic algorithms and other evolutionary programming techniques for generating text, visual art, and music. I’ll continue next month - if you can recommend any particularly splendid examples, please contact me. New Release of Logic Programming Associates WinProlog Logic Programming Associates have released version 4.6 of WinProlog, with lots of improvements and enhancements....

Introduction Welcome to our September issue. The main feature this month continues August’s AI-in-Python theme with a look at Python for robotics and the Pyro robot-control software. We also have a selection of quotes, and some computer-generated humour. As ever, comments and suggestions are welcome. An Arc Through AI Space I came across a few of the quotes below while looking up references for another article. It’s an article that hasn’t yet worked out, but I thought it would be fun to use them to trace a path through the past - and perhaps future - development of AI....

Introduction A few months ago, I discovered the Python code repository for the textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Peter Norvig and Stuart Russell. There’s some good stuff there, and this inspired me to find out what else Python had to offer AI. A lot, is the answer, and that’s the topic of this month’s main feature. If you have no interest in Python, I hope the examples may still be useful as demonstrations of assorted AI techniques and how they can be taught....

Introduction This month, I’ve written another AI Alphabet. I hope - one of the entries will explain this - that after reading it, you will be thinking globally and breadth-first, not locally and depth-first. Logic Programming in C++ with LC++ Adi Shavit wrote to tell me about the LC++ library, developed by Brian McNamara and Yannis Smaragdakis, at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~yannis/lc++/. The library uses macros to enable users to write in a Prolog-like syntax inside C++ programs....

Introduction In our March issue, I explored some of the neural-net applets around the Web. One, intriguing because of the slowly growing network of lime green dots which writhes around inside as if struggling to escape, was the DemoGNG applet for competitive learning, written by Hartmut Loos and Bernd Fritzke at Bochum University. The applet says it implements “neural gases” and “growing neural gases”; since I’d not come across these before, I decided to write about them for this issue....

Introduction In July 2002, I went to the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group conference in Cardiff. After arriving early and discovering the shops hidden away in Cardiff’s Victorian shopping arcades, I decided to buy a few items in order to make a point at the conference. Marker pens, fluorescent card, safety pin and a pair of 1970s-retro flared trousers: result, worn with the trousers, one badge proclaiming “Spreadsheets have not evolved since flares were last in fashion”....

Introduction One of the joys of living in the 21st Century is that I keep coming across entire areas of research whose existence I never suspected. This month, I write about one of these, Level-of-Detail AI, a technique used to simulate large numbers of background characters in virtual worlds and computer games. There’s an article on good style in AI programming, and, following up an email from one of our readers, a look at the new book On Intelligence....

Introduction Back in 1995, applets seemed so wonderful. James Gosling, one of Java’s developers, recalls a demonstration he gave to a group of Internet and entertainment professionals: As the talk began, Gosling noticed that many people were only casually paying attention. After all, what was so exciting about a new language driving a page of text and illustrations in a clone of Mosaic? Then Gosling moved the mouse over an illustration of a 3D molecule in the middle of the text....

New Downloads Course notes and samples for an introductory Prolog course are now available from the downloads section of www.ainewsletter.com. The course includes a logic-base approach to a normal business application, airline pricing and booking; numerous exercises in recursion and nested structures; and a frame-based system with property list matching utilities that can be used for ontologies and numerous other applications. Introduction Welcome to the February AI Expert. As promised last month, I have the do-it-yourself on Inductive Logic Programming, and another do-it-yourself on the Copycat analogical-reasoning program, which explores the emergent subcognitive behaviour that its authors believe to be the crux of creativity....

Introduction Welcome to a new year and the January AI 2005 Expert. This month, I decided to take a cue from the Christmas special issue magazines and do something a little different. So I’ve put together an alphabetical Artificial Intelligence miscellany for your delight and delectation. AI being as rich and diverse as it is, there’s a lot of variety: new and old; applied and pure; people and programs; from AI-complete problems to a zomboid Santa Clause....