This award will provide supplementary support to enable Dr. Stephen Wong of Lehigh University to conduct collaborative research with Dr. Kazumasa Yokota for 12 months at the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology (ICOT) in Japan. Wong and Yokota will apply Wong's designs for cooperative artificial intelligence (AI) systems to develop a prototype to test this new class of computers. For contemporary AI, the basic mechanisms of reasoning and problem solving remain bound to a single, monolithic conception of knowledge and action. In order to solve more complex problems, AI systems will need to coordinate their problem solving techniques, developing collections of interactive, cooperative knowledge-based processes. ICOT's world- leading research on parallel inference computing and logic programming will complement Wong's model design of a cooperative AI system and facilitate the development of an operational cooperative AI system.
