PRESENTATION OF THE SEMINAR ON NEW TRENDS ON INTELLIGENT

SYSTEMS AND SOFT COMPUTING.

Granada, October 2003

J.L. Castro

Welcome to everybody to the first seminar of the Ph. D Program of Analysis, Design
and Applications of Intelligent Systems. This will be the inaugural edition of what (I
hope) will be a long number of seminars within this PhD Program.

The idea of these seminars was to show to our Ph D students a forward-looking view
of the research on topics of the program. In such a way, we pursue the following
objectives:

- Presenting state of the arts

- Presenting new trends
- Showing a window to the researcher world
- Discussing about general questions about the research on the topics in question:
o Publications policy
o Research Methodology
o The role of research on the society
o The impact of research

In this first seminar we will start with a general vision of the topic of our Ph. D
program: Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems, which can be considered as the
general topic of the program. In future seminars we will tackle more specific topics.

Although it is a PhD seminar, some people has shown an interest in the seminar, and it
has become in an open seminar, with the presence of many people outside the program.
Thanks a lot of for your presence.

The speakers

For achieving these objectives we have invited to four of the most important
researchers on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems:

• D. Dubois, I.R.I.T. Université Paul Sabatier. Toulouse Cedex. France.

Didier Dubois is a Research Advisor at IRIT, the Computer Science Department of Paul
Sabatier University in Toulouse, France and belongs to the French National Centre for
Scientific Resarch (CNRS). He holds a Doctorate in Engineering from ENSAE,
Toulouse (1977), a Doctorat d'Etat from Grenoble University (1983) and an Honorary
Doctorate from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, Belgium (1997). He is the co-
author, with Henri Prade of two books on fuzzy sets and possibility theory, and several
edited volumes, among which the book Fuzzy Information Engineering with R. Yager
and H. Prade (J. Wiley, New York, 1997). With Henri Prade he has coordinated the
HANDBOOK of FUZZY SETS series published by Kluwer (7 volumes, 1998-2000, 2
of which he co-edited). He has contributed more that 100 technical journal papers on
uncertainty theories and applications. He has been an Associate Editor of the IEEE
Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, of which he is now an Advisory Editor. He is a
member of the Editorial Board of several technical journals, such as International
Journal on Approximate Reasoning, and Information Sciences among others. Since
January 1, 1999, he has been co-Editor in Chief of Fuzzy Sets and Systems. He is a
former president of the International Fuzzy Systems Association (1995-1997). He is a
recipient of the NNC 2002 Pioneer Award. His topics of interest range from Artificial
Intelligence to Operations Research and Decision Sciences, with emphasis on the
modelling, representation and processing of imprecise and uncertain information in
problem solving tasks.

• J. Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences. Systems Research Institute.

Janusz Kacprzyk received his M.S. degree in computer science and automatic control in
1970 from Warsaw University of Technology in Poland. He received his Ph.D. degree
in systems analysis in 1977, and his D.Sc. ("habilitation") degrees in 1994, both from
the Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. From
1970 to present he has been employed at the Systems Research Institute, Polish
Academy of Sciences, currently as full professor and Deputy Director for Research. In
1981-83 and in the springs of 1986 and 1988, he was a visiting professor at various
American universities. His research interests include the use of soft computing, mainly
fuzzy logic, in various areas related to intelligent systems, notably, decision making and
optimization, control, database querying and information retrieval. Recently, he is
working on the use of computing with words paradigms in various areas related to the
above. In 1991 - 1995 he was a Vice-President of IFSA, and in 1995 - 1999 he was a
member of the IFSA Board. He is one of fifteen Fellows of IFSA. Since 1999 he has
been a member of EUSFLAT Board. Janusz Kacprzyk is the editor in chief of a two
book series published by the Springer-Verlag group (Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg and
New York): "studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing" and "Advances in Soft
Computing" and serves on the editorial board on more than 10 respected journals

• E. Trillas, Depto. Inteligencia Artificial. Fac.Infomática. Univ.Politécnica de

Madrid. Spain.

Enric Trillas is full professor in the Politechnic University of Madrid. He was

president of CSIC and general director of INTA. He received his undergraduate
degree and his Ph. D. from the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. He serves on
the editorial board of a number of journals. He introduced fuzzy logic into Spain,
and can be considered the “scientific father” of many fuzzy logic Spanish
researchers. He has published over 200 articles and 5 books. In addition to his
pioneering work in Probabilistic Metric Spaces, from 1989 he has made
fundamental contributions in Fuzzy Logic, with the study of fuzzy connectives,
introducing t-norms, t-conorms, negatios, etc.. and he has made important
contributions in approximate reasoning, with the study of implications and
inference.
 • R. Yager, Iona College. New Rochelle. New York. USA

Ronald R. Yager is a fellow of the IEEE, the New York Academy of Sciences and the
Fuzzy Systems Association. He has served at the NSF as program director in the
Information Sciences program. He was a NASA/Stanford visiting fellow as well as a
research associate at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as a
lecturer at NATO Advanced Study Institutes. He received his undergraduate degree
from the City College of New York and his Ph. D. from the Polytechnic University of
New York. Currently, he is Director of the Machine Intelligence Institute and
Professor of Information and Decision Technologies at Iona College. He is editor and
chief of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems. He serves on the editorial
board of a number of journals including the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems,
Neural Networks, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, IEEE Intelligent Systems,
Fuzzy Sets and Systems, the Journal of Approximate Reasoning and the International
Journal of General Systems. He is one of the co-founders of the conference of
Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty (IPMU). He has published
over 500 articles and fifteen books. In addition to his pioneering work in the area of
fuzzy logic he has made fundamental contributions in decision making under
uncertainty and the fusion of information. His current research interests include E-
Commerce, data mining, information retrieval, aggregation theory and the
development of technologies for a more intelligent internet.

Structure of the seminar

The structure of the seminar will be the following:

1. Each participant will present an one hour talk (45m presentation, 15m questions)
on new trends on a specific topic of Intelligent Systems and Soft Computing.

- D. Dubois: New trends on Intelligent Systems and Soft-Computing:

Possibility Theory
-
- R. Yager: Methods for Intelligent Learning.

- J. Kacprzyk: New trends on Intelligent Systems and Soft-Computing:

Towards an increased role of Natural Language.

- E. Trillas : Some Personal Remarks on the future of Fuzzy Logic.

2. In a round table, the participants will discuss about some general questions about
New trends on Intelligent Systems and Soft-Computing:

- Soft computing: research topic or engineering tools?

- Research Methodology: How to contrast soft computing techniques.
 - Publications: Soft computing Journals, versus Intelligent Systems
Journals, versus AI Journals.
- The role of Intelligent Systems in the setting of Information
Technologies.
- The impact of Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems in real life.
- Other important aspects on the future of Intelligent Systems and Soft
Computing.

We hope you make the most of the seminar. I am sure your attendance will be worth,
thank you very much for your presence.

INTRODUCING SOFT COMPUTING AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS

What Is Soft Computing?

Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in that, unlike hard
computing, it is tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation. In
effect, the role model for soft computing is the human mind. The guiding principle of
soft computing is: Exploit the tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and
approximation to achieve tractability, robustness and low solution cost. The basic ideas
underlying soft computing in its current incarnation have links to many earlier
influences, among them Zadeh's 1965 paper on fuzzy sets; the 1973 paper on the
analysis of complex systems and decision processes; and the 1979 report (1981 paper)
on possibility theory and soft data analysis. The inclusion of neural computing and
genetic computing in soft computing came at a later point.

At this juncture, the principal constituents of Soft Computing (SC) are Fuzzy Logic
(FL), Neural Computing (NC), Evolutionary Computation (EC) Machine Learning
(ML) and Probabilistic Reasoning (PR), with the latter subsuming belief networks,
chaos theory and parts of learning theory. What is important to note is that soft
computing is not a melange. Rather, it is a partnership in which each of the partners
contributes a distinct methodology for addressing problems in its domain. In this
perspective, the principal constituent methodologies in SC are complementary rather
than competitive. Furthermore, soft computing may be viewed as a foundation
component for the emerging field of conceptual intelligence.

• Fuzzy Systems
• Neural Networks
• Evolutionary Computation
• Machine Learning
• Probabilistic Reasoning
• Posibilistic Reasoning
Importance of Soft Computing

The complementarity of FL, NC, GC, and PR has an important consequence: in many
cases a problem can be solved most effectively by using FL, NC, GC and PR in
combination rather than exclusively. A striking example of a particularly effective
combination is what has come to be known as "neurofuzzy systems." Such systems are
becoming increasingly visible as consumer products ranging from air conditioners and
washing machines to photocopiers and camcorders. Less visible but perhaps even more
important are neurofuzzy systems in industrial applications. What is particularly
significant is that in both consumer products and industrial systems, the employment of
soft computing techniques leads to systems which have high MIQ (Machine Intelligence
Quotient). In large measure, it is the high MIQ of SC-based systems that accounts for
the rapid growth in the number and variety of applications of soft computing.

The conceptual structure of soft computing suggests that students should be trained not
just in fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, genetic programming, or probabilistic reasoning
but in all of the associated methodologies, though not necessarily to the same degree.

What is an Intelligent System?

• It is a system.
• It learns during its existence. (In other words, it senses its environment and
learns, for each situation, which action permits it to reach its objectives.)
• It continually acts, mentally and externally, and by acting reaches its objectives
more often than pure chance indicates (normally much oftener).
• It consumes energy and uses it for its internal processes, and in order to act.

What does this definition imply?

• The system has to exist.

• An environment must exist, with which the system can interact.
• It must be able to receive communications from the environment, for its
elaboration of the present situation. This is an abstracted summary of the
communications received by the senses. By communications, in turn, we mean
an interchange of matter or energy. If this communication is for the purpose of
transmitting information, it is a variation of the flow of energy or a specific
structuring of matter that the system perceives.
• The IS has to have an objective, it has to be able to check if its last action was
favorable, if it resulted in getting nearer to its objective, or not.
• To reach its objective it has to select its response. A simple way to select a
response is to select one that was favorable in a similar previous situation.
• It must be able to learn. Since the same response sometimes is favorable and
sometimes fails, it has to be able to recall in which situation the response was
favorable, and in which it was not. Therefore it stores situations, responses, and
results.
• Finally, it must be able to act; to accomplish the selected response.