Ephraim Nissan

A formalism for a case study in the watertime project: the city water system in Grenoble, from privatization to remunicipalization

The formal representation for legal or other narratives as introduced by Nissan (2001; 2002; 2003a; 2003b; 2003d; 2003a is adapted to the analysis of a case study in WaterTime, a project developed by David Hall and his collaborators in view of the development of a decision model for policy making, concerning the privatization of city water systems throughout the European Union. In WaterTime, the experience of several cities is analyzed and compared. In particular, Hall and Lobina (2001) have analyzed the privatization, in 1989, of the city water system in Grenoble, France. Eventually, corruption was proven, and the system was partly remunicipalized; court decisions led to its full remunicipalization. We sketch a symbolic representation of events in this narrative.

IDENTIFICATION AND DOING WITHOUT IT, I: A SITUATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF MISAPPLIED PERSONAL IDENTITY, WITH A FORMALISM FOR A CASE OF MULTIPLE USURPED IDENTITY IN MARIVAUX

A classification is given of situations of personal identity self-misascription. When devising a representational formalism, it is of interest to find out how well it would suit complex situations. For that purpose, and within the broader context of formally representing such narratives that involve personal identity being taken by persons other than the original holder, I present here a formalism as applied to elements from the plot of a play by Marivaux. Elsewhere (Nissan 2002a) I have presented a compatible formalism for representing important elements in Pirandellos play Henry IV (Pirandello 1922). The kind of representation shown in the current paper takes into account modes of communication between characters, taking somebody elses role, judicial authority, as well as concepts such as a legal persona, marriage, and other social circumstances such as master/subordinate relations.

IDENTIFICATION AND DOING WITHOUT IT, III: AUTHORITATIVE OPINIONS, PURPOSEFUL ACTION, RELABELED GOODS, AND FORENSIC EXAMINATIONS. THE CASE OF THE STUFFED BIRDS: ITS NARRATIVE DYNAMICS SET IN FORMULAE

A formal notation has been defined for the purposes of capturing a narrative, especially a legal narrative. In various papers, this technique has been applied to various accounts of individual (usually personal) identity being uncertain, and of a process of detection to the satisfaction of some agent(s). For example, in Part II, a narrative was formalized in which detecting the real personal identity of a given individual is associated with ones likeness: the man was eventually identified based on a portrait, notwithstanding his claiming a different identity. Portraits, or even likeness retention from processed remains (by taxidermy), are sometimes used to categorize a kind. In this paper, a case about deception in scholarship is set in formulae: in the 1990s, controversy surrounded an important bird collection; it was claimed that some specimens had been stolen, restuffed, and relabeled. It is shown how to represent this without trivializing the matter, and how to give proper leeway to conflicting considerations.

Intelligent technologies for nuclear power systems: heuristic and neural tools

The consecutive, partly overlapping emergence of expert systems and then neural computation methods among intelligent technologies, is reflected in the evolving scene of their application to nuclear engineering. This paper provides a birds eye view of the state of the application in the domain, along with a review of a particular task, the one perhaps economically more important: refueling design in nuclear power reactors.

Towards AI Formalisms for Legal Evidence

The discipline or artificial intelligence for law, for all its accomplishments, e.g., in modelling argumentation has generally not dealt with legal evidence. For the latter domain formalization was developped, instead, in forensic statitics, as well as in jury modelling. We claim that the time is ripe for endeavors aiming at constructing integrated evidence support systems for investigative and legal purposes, combining several paradigms. We introduce our own dramatis personae approach, within AI models of agents and planning.

SEPPHORIS: An augmented hypergraph‐grammar representation for events, stipulations, and legal prescriptions

Abstract SEPPHORIS is a knowledge representation formalism for descriptions, stipulations, or prescriptions, where the normative and the narrative are intertwined. The representation is illustrated using exemplification on a particular paragraph from an ancient source, the Mishnah, a cornerstone of the Jewish canonic law. The paragraph poses a certain problem—Paschal lambs ran away and cannot be identified individually—along with a solution‐cum‐prescription with a mathematical flavour.

Nested Beliefs, Goals, Duties, and Agents Reasoning About their Own or Each Other's Body in the TIMUR Model: A Formalism for the Narrative of Tamerlane and the Three Painters

This article develops two threads. The first thread argues that the narrative dimension of social interaction is important to societies of embodied agents: not only to animated avatars in virtual environments (for which, behaviour specification languages are useful, simplifying the distinct task of feeding a narrative into the system), but also, arguably, in societies of robots, because categories of patterns of action can arguably be usefully captured by modifications of levels of abstraction originally developed by structuralism for folktale studies. This first thread does not depend, for its validity, on the second thread. The other thread of this paper is to analyze a story of interaction among characters with different social positioning, such that reasoning on the body of one of them is central. We develop the analysis by resorting to episodic formulae, a method of representation developed by the present author and often applied during the last several years.

Kappa calculus and evidential strength: A note on Åqvist's logical theory of legal evidence

Lennart Åqvist (1992) proposed a logical theory of legal evidence, based on the Bolding-Ekelöf of degrees of evidential strength. This paper reformulates Åqvists model in terms of the probabilistic version of the kappa calculus. Proving its acceptability in the legal context is beyond the present scope, but the epistemological debate about Bayesian Law isclearly relevant. While the present model is a possible link to that lineof inquiry, we offer some considerations about the broader picture of thepotential of AI & Law in the evidentiary context. Whereas probabilisticreasoning is well-researched in AI, calculations about the threshold ofpersuasion in litigation, whatever their value, are just the tip of theiceberg. The bulk of the modeling desiderata is arguably elsewhere, if one isto ideally make the most of AIs distinctive contribution as envisaged forlegal evidence research.

Computer Applications for Handling Legal Evidence, Police Investigation and Case Argumentation

This book provides an overview of computer techniques and tools especially from artificial intelligence (AI) for handling legal evidence, police intelligence, crime analysis or detection, and forensic testing, with a sustained discussion of methods for the modelling of reasoning and forming an opinion about the evidence, methods for the modelling of argumentation, and computational approaches to dealing with legal, or any, narratives. By the 2000s, the modelling of reasoning on legal evidence has emerged as a significant area within the well-established field of AI & Law. An overview such as this one has never been attempted before. It offers a panoramic view of topics, techniques and tools. It is more than a survey, as topic after topic, the reader can get a closer view of approaches and techniques. One aim is to introduce practitioners of AI to the modelling legal evidence. Another aim is to introduce legal professionals, as well as the more technically oriented among law enforcement professionals, or researchers in police science, to information technology resources from which their own respective field stands to benefit. Computer scientists must not blunder into design choices resulting in tools objectionable for legal professionals, so it is important to be aware of ongoing controversies. A survey is provided of argumentation tools or methods for reasoning about the evidence. Another class of tools considered here is intended to assist in organisational aspects of managing of the evidence. Moreover, tools appropriate for crime detection, intelligence, and investigation include tools based on link analysis and data mining. Concepts and techniques are introduced, along with case studies. So are areas in the forensic sciences. Special chapters are devoted to VIRTOPSY (a procedure for legal medicine) and FLINTS (a tool for the police). This is both an introductory book (possibly a textbook), and a reference for specialists from various quarters.

Epistemic formulae, argument structures, and a narrative on identity and deception: a formal representation from the AJIT subproject within AURANGZEB

The modelling of deception is an active field in artificial intelligence. Episodic formulae were introduced, applied and refined in several previous articles, some of them concerned with identity, and some, with tasks of guessing agents’ minds. The AURANGZEB project is specifically concerned with combining this kind of representation with argument structure data (in particular, Toulmin’s). Two previous articles were concerned with the MURAD subproject, whereas this paper introduces the AJIT model. In MURAD, the kind of deception consisted of having a victim misunderstand a perpetrator’s real intentions. In AJIT, instead, a powerful agent is outsmarted by means of exchanged identities.