[TriLUG] AI software for Linux

[Sam Kalat]

If you're interested in neural networks, take a look at
http://fann.sourceforge.net/ (Fast Artificial Neural Network Library).
 For genetic algorithms, you might look at
http://gaul.sourceforge.net/ or http://lancet.mit.edu/ga/.  The
disclaimer is all I've done with these toolkits is looked to see what
was out there, open-source or otherwise, how mature they are, what
algorithms they use, and what kinds of things they are supposed to be
used for.  I don't know the nooks and crannies of packages, I know
more about approaches.

I do know that you need to be careful about what you are hoping for
from one of these systems.  I don't use them because they are fickle. 
It has little to do with implementation and everything to do with the
way that they work.  If you have exactly the right kind of problem -
say, one where you know what the pieces of the solution are, but not
how those pieces assemble - and you are clever in the way you set up
your system, there is a chance you'll get something useful, and then
it is your job to make sense of it.  Neural networks and GAs are
nowhere near as flexible as you would think, but you might find
yourself in the niche where they are exactly what the doctor ordered.

Specifically for scholton: likewise an "AI system for doing research
into various topics" is too broad a statement of your problem to know
how you should tackle it.  I'm guessing you'd want natural language
processing, both in the sense of interpreting a query and in looking
for relevant documents, and maybe doing automatic summaries.  The
trouble at this point is not processing power, but algorithms, since
nothing out there actually makes *sense* out of text.  This is why the
best we can really do so far is search engines, and what you might
think about constructing is ultimately a ruleset for filtering search
engine results.

If you're thinking of freelance AI algorithm development, there's
actually a lot you can do, but that takes you way off the road to the
original system you want to have.

Sam Kalat



On 5/5/05, sholton at mindspring.com <sholton at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I'm interested, too.
> 
> I'm looking to build an AI system for doing research into various topics.
> 
> Ideally, I'd like this implemented on a text interface that I could access from
> anywhere, either through a web interface or perhaps just by mailing the
> research request into the system and having a procmail filter handle it.
> 
> The system would respond with helpful suggestions for promising areas
> of research.  Hopefully, the engine implementing this could be parallelized
> and run on hardware which could be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
> 
> The replies would be valid XML for easy downstream processing.
> 
> If anyone can offer helpful suggestions for promising areas of research,
> please email them (valid XML only, please) to me.   ;-)
> 
> Okay, I'll shut-up now....
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Frye <mattfrye at gmail.com>
> Sent: May 4, 2005 2:27 PM
> To: TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
> Subject: [TriLUG] AI software for Linux
> 
> I'm doing a bit of research and am looking for recommendations of
> software kits, etc for developing AI (particularly evolutionary)
> algorithms.  I've got a line on a few candidates, but don't have the
> time to needle through the nooks and crannies on each and every
> package.
> 
> Anyone had experience in this area and found a particular set of tools
> to be efficient, etc?
> 
> Matt Frye
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