AI and Network Management: AAAI Fall Symposium Proposal

Interested in accelerating the use of artificial intelligence and knowledge sharing in network management and defense? Short fuse, but let prospective organizers know today. Be part of a proposed "Catalysts for Infusion of AI into Network Management and Defense" at the AAAI Fall 2010 Symposium. Contact me if you're interested in attending, monitoring symposium results, co-organizing, or if you just think it's a cool idea.

Problem Statement

To some extent, many existing network and service management suites incorporate ontologies, rules and perform reasoning.  They implement some form of knowledge management.  They collect, filter, aggregate and summarize vast amounts of data using dynamic algorithms that must change when network infrastructure changes. Yet with a few notable exceptions, these AI-like capabilities may not be identified as AI. This matters because, despite a relatively consistent base of domain knowledge, reusable extensible frameworks that leverage existing bodies of knowledge in AI have not evolved.  The resulting capabilities gaps are significant both to practitioners and enterprises, who face numerous challenges that could be mitigated by wider use of intelligent systems. These gaps include:

• Delays in supporting network-enabled applications in specialized user communities
• Errors and misconfigurations caused by opaque device interdependencies
• Unnecessary complexity in the deployment of new network technologies or equipment upgrades
• Weakened network defenses
• Event data overload
• Inability to represent network performance and security data in ways that satisfy human-computer interface needs

Symposium Goals and Methods

The proposed Symposium seeks, though techniques that leverage current collaboration technologies, to identify opportunities to infuse network management products with resources and capabilities from the AI body of knowledge.

Read more at the Secure Decisions web site (where I work). ◦

AI and Network Management: AAAI Fall Symposium Proposal

True or False? Psych, Music and Neuro Quiz Items From "This Is Your Brain on Music"

• Number of neurons in the human brain?  100,000,000,000, or one hundred billion (p. 87).
• Is pitch processed by hearing systems and then interpreted by the brain? Pitch is represented directly in the brain, unlike almost all other attributes of musical sound (p.29).
• Does Eastern music use microtonal scales? While it's commonly thought that "Eastern" music uses microtonal scales, in fact most cultures don't discriminate differences smaller than a semitone, or half step (p. 28)
• What Pink Floyd song is written in 7/4 time? The Pink Floyd song "Money" is written in the infrequently heard 7/4 meter, great for tripping up some toe-tappers.
• Which popular rock group intentionally changed their tuning away from A440, the usual standard?  Led Zeppelin. 

Source:  This Is Your Brain on Music: Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin (Plume, 2006)

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True or False? Psych, Music and Neuro Quiz Items From "This Is Your Brain on Music"