LUNCHEON PLENARY 

Tuesday, Noon - 1:30 p.m. 

(Pavilion Salon C)

A View on the State of AI and new Computing Paradigms

Dr. Toshinori Murakata, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH USA

Overview: This speech consists of two almost independent titles: "A View on the State of AI" and "New Computing Paradigms." The first part is based on speaker's extensive experience described above and gives a macroscopic overview of the current state of practical AI. For example, we constantly hear about exciting AI research projects and promising new AI technologies. But are they really as exciting or as practical as is claimed? In the past, what have we tried and succeeded or failed at? What lessons have we learned from these experiences? What are possible approaches in the future? A personal view of these topics will be presented in this part.

The second part, "New Computing Paradigms," will discuss recent development of computer architectures based on totally new principles other than silicon chips. After a brief overview of the new architectures, two areas of speaker's recent interest will be introduced: chaos computing and micro/nano fluidics computing. In short, chaos computing aims at implementing basic computing elements such as logical gates, bit-wise adders and memory for both sequential and parallel processing, by employing nonlinear phenomena. Chaos computing may also lead to “dynamic architecture,” where the hardware design itself can evolve during the course of computation. Micro/nano fluidics computing does not aim at replacing silicon chips – its typical speed will be much slower than silicon-based. Rather, this field can be considered as an extension of recent development of micro/nano fluidics technology, which generally deals with tiny fluidics devices of order of, for example, 1 micron (10-6 m). Incorporation of basic computing elements such as logical gates with micro/nano fluidics may open up new types of applications.
 

Biography: Toshinori Munakata is Professor of Computer and Information Science Department at Cleveland State University. His areas of interest include applications of artificial intelligence and new computing paradigms. He has served as the Guest Editor of three well-received Special Issues for the Communications of the ACM, focusing real-world applications of AI (March 1994, Nov. 1995, and Nov. 1999). The CACM readership represents about 85,000 professionals from every computing discipline and more. He also served as an Associate Editor, the IEEE Expert (currently IEEE Intelligent Systems), 1987 – 1991. He co-authored a commentary article with a Nobelist Herb Simon on the 1997 Deep Blue vs. Kasparov World Chess Championship match. He has been an invited speaker at over 120 institutions for the past 15 years. In addition to technical papers, Dr. Munakata has published two books, most recently 'Fundamentals of the New Artificial Intelligence: Beyond Traditional Paradigms,' Springer-Verlag, 1998.