FGCS Assessment

Gilles Kahn
INRIA Sophia Antipolis, FRANCE

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Introduction 

Assessing the FGCS project is a hard task, not only because there is little time and 
space to do so, but also because the scope of this project is very wide. I doubt if many 
people can read equally competently the work that has been performed in so many 
diverse areas: computer architecture, programming language design, database de-
     sign, natural language analysis and generation, genome research. I for one have 
     very little competence on natural language work, although I hear from a variety 
     of sources that this may indeed be one of the strongest points of your work in 
     the last phase of the project. 

The FGCS project is very broad, but everyone can see its unity of purpose. When 
listening to all the presentations and reading some papers, I wonder whether there 
has been enough time for true integration of the many components that have been 
developed in the seven laboratories. I suggest the following problem, to see what I 
have in mind. You have developed a theorem prover, MGTP. On the other hand, you 
have sophisticated tools to generate sentences and paragraphs in Japanese. Assume 
that you would like to connect these two components, so that the theorem prover 
produces proofs in natural language, that a Japanese mathematician would like. In 
particular, these proofs should not be too verbose, concentrate on the real difficulties 
and be socially acceptable. Is this a problem that can be solved in a matter of weeks 
or months with the software that you have developed, or do we need to start a new 
project? 

I have listened carefully to all the talks that reported the work of FGCS project, 
and I must say that they were all very high quality presentations. The laboratory 
chiefs show considerable experience, maturity in their scientific fields. Answers to 
questions are very direct and frank and do not try to cover up difficulties when there 
are some. As well, the demonstrations have shown strengths and weaknesses of the 
software. I appreciate the considerable amount of work needed in preparing such a 
thorough presentation of the FGCS achievements. This has confirmed an attitude that 
I have witnessed in the wonderful INRIA-ICOT meetings that I have attended: a 
completely frank exchange of views with scientists of high caliber, who are concentrat-
ing on basic research, and building software prototypes to demonstrate the validity of 
their fundamental ideas. 


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