Morgenstern, Leora

Interpretation of published papers

Code, Nr	Citation
1	`http://www-formal.stanford.edu/leora/cs` Leora Morgenstern Leora Morgenstern How to get in touch Leora Morgenstern IBM T.J. Watson Research Center 30 Saw Mill River Road, Mail Stop H1B54 Hawthorne, NY 10532 leora@watson.ibm.com 914-784-7151 Link to the Common Sense Problem Page Research Interests
2	`NIL` I work in the area of formal knowledge representation. My areas of research include reasoning about knowledge and belief, non-monotonic reasoning, and reasoning about time and planning. I'm especially interested in combinations of the above, such as non-monotonic temporal reasoning (including the infamous Yale Shooting Problem) and multi-agent non-monotonic reasoning.
3	`http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~msingh` Most of my work is theoretical, but I am also interested in applying my research to commercial applications. I have developed expert systems for benefits inquiry in medical insurance, and for product configuration in life and property insurance (joint work with Moninder Singh ). I am currently investigating how this work can be extended to intelligent help desks. I am also developing an intelligent agent for browsing the web (joint work with Moninder Singh ). The focus is on using knowledge about a specific domain (such as real estate or jobs) to comprehend arbitrary web pages. In addition, I am working with Juhnyoung Lee, Edith Schonberg, and Mark Podlaseck on an electronic commerce tool for website analysis. Some Papers (postscript plus mini-abstracts) Inheritance:
4	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/inv2.ps` Inheritance Comes of Age: Applying Nonmonotonic Techniques to Problems in Industry (Click here for the journal paper) Why isn't nonmonotonic reasoning more visible in industry today? Mostly because researchers have focussed on difficult toy problems instead of useful solvable problems, and because researchers haven't concerned themselves with technique and tractability issues. I discuss an application of nonmonotonic reasoning which was successfully used in industry: an extension of inheritance --- inheritance of well-formed formulae --- that is considerably more powerful than standard inheritance with exceptions. This is a good overview of the two papers listed below. Click on the title for the postscript version; click here for the dvi version. (Conference paper:Invited talk, Proceedings, Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence , Morgan Kaufmann, 1997 Journal paper: Artificial Intelligence , 1998)
5	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/ijcai97b.ps` An Expert System Using Nonmonotonic Techniques for Benefits Inquiry in the Insurance Industry (with Moninder Singh) Describes BenInq, an expert system used in the medical insurance industry by both customer service representatives, who answer questions about the extent of a patient's coverage for medical care, and policy modifiers, who frequently change coverage rules. Reasoning is performed by inheriting business rules, represented as formulae of first-order logic, in a semantic network in which formulae are attached to the nodes. (Proceedings, Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence , Morgan Kaufmann, 1997)
6	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/kr96.ps` Inheriting Well-formed Formulae in a Formula-Augmented Semantic Network What happens when we expand the notion of an inheritance network so that we can inherit well-formed formulas as well as attributes? This paper explores this issue in detail, and introduces the notion of a FAN, a formula-augmented semantic network. (Proceedings, Fifth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, , Morgan Kaufmann, 1996)
7	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/inherit.ps` New Problems for Inheritance Theories This paper explores several issues discovered in the context of developing an expert system for a medical insurance company, including the inheriting formulae in a network, the interaction of subtyping and subevents, and non-unary inheritance. Click here for the figures. Click here for the dvi version (without figures). (Working papers, Third Symposium on Logical Formalization of Commonsense Reasoning ) Temporal and Nonmonotonic Reasoning The Problem with Solutions to the Frame Problem The frame problem, the problem of efficiently determining which things remain the same in a changing world, has been with us for over twenty-five years. Despite a massive effort, it remains unsolved, thus giving ammunition to anti-logicists. Does a solution to the frame problem exist? If so, why has it thus far eluded AI logicists? This paper argues that virtually all research on the frame problem has been fundamentally flawed and suggests the proper path for investigating the problem. Click on the title for the postscript version; click here for the dvi version. (in K. Ford and Z. Pylyshyn (eds): The Robot's Dilemma Revisited , Ablex, 1996>
8	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/mat1025.ps` Motivated Action Theory (with Lynn Stein) Describes Motivated Action Theory, a non-monotonic temporal theory that handles the Yale Shooting Problem and related issues. MAT is based on the principle that models are preferred if they contain events that happen for a reason. ( Artificial Intelligence ,71,1-42,1994)
j-aij-71-1	Lynn Andrea Stein and Leora Morgenstern. Motivated action theory: a formal theory of causal reasoning. Artificial Intelligence Journal, vol. 71 (1994), pp. 1-42.
9	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/time94.ps` A Proper Ontology for Reasoning about Knowledge and Planning Linear time doesn't allow hypothetical reasoning; branching time doesn't handle prediction properly. Both prediction and hypothetical reasoning are needed for good planning theories. This paper presents an ontology, known as relativized branching time that can handle both. Click here for the dvi version. (Working Papers, TIME-94 )
10	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/manml.ps` Epistemic Logics for Multiple Agent Nonmonotonic Reasoning I (with Ramiro Guerreiro) Much commonsense reasoning requires that agents reason about the ways in which other agents reason. Thus, there is a need for theories that can handle multiple agent (or nested) non-monotonic reasoning. This paper describes MANML, a theory that supports such reasoning. Click here for the dvi version. (Working Papers, Second Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, 1993)
11	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/emat.ps` Knowledge and the Frame Problem Extends Motivated Action Theory to the multiple-agent case; first investigation of the issues involved in multiple-agent non-monotonic reasoning. Click here for the dvi version. ( International Journal of Expert Systems, 3(4), 1991. Also in K. Ford and P. Hayes (eds): Human and Machine Cognition: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, JAI Press
12	`http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/leora/em.ps` And Other KR issues Applications of Logicist Knowledge Representation to Enterprise Modelling (with Benjamin Grosof) How formal logic can be used to specify the workings of a business. Click here for the dvi version. ( Proceedings of the First International Conference on Enterprise Modelling Technology , MIT Press, 1992)
13	`http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/minsky.html` Academic Family Tree Marvin Minsky (MIT) begat Gerald Sussman (MIT), who begat Drew McDermott (Yale), who begat Ernie Davis (NYU), who begat me (IBM). In turn, I begat Lynn Stein (MIT), who begat Ian Horswill (Northwestern) and Ellen Spertus (MIT). Ian Horswill begat Jon Handler (Afferent).