From: cgdemarc@ai.mit.edu (Carl de Marcken) Date: Thu, 14 Oct 93 14:48:37 EDT To: all-ai Subject: GSB 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 15th, seventh floor playroom It's been a long day. One of your 6.001 students just put Cheez Whiz (tm) in all the floppy drives and your hands are still sticky. You asked to meet with the head of your orals committee and he replied, "Why bother?" And as if that weren't enough, you just got a letter about your... Deadline: The Theory of Registration by Louis Reasoner and Ben Bitdiddle Rating: PSPACE-complete Copyright (C) 1993 Turing Machine Repair Company In Your Office You are in your office on the 8th floor. A Sparcstation is nearly buried beneath the papers and books piled high on your desk. There is a problem set on the Sparcstation keyboard. >examine self You appear to be a second year graduate student at the MIT AI Lab. >inventory You are carrying a letter, a black rod with a rusty star on the end, a 400-page printout of postscript commands, some LEGOs, a copy of "Perceptrons", and a "Nerd Pride" button. >get problem set Taken. >read it The problem set is from the core class you are currently taking, 6.888 -- "Some Cool Research Professor E. P. Hacker is Working on this Semester". The problem set is due today at 5:00. You haven't started yet. >work on problem set Nah. >read Perceptrons book The book discusses the four kinds of AI -- neural nets, fuzzy logic (I hear it's really big in Japan), expert systems, and psychometrics (pioneered at the Hoboken Institute of Technology). The authors seem to favor "The Society of Minsky" approach. >read letter The letter reads: Dear Area II Student: It has come to our attention that you have been slacking off and not getting any research done. This is unacceptable, although it is what we generally expect to see happen since you are all such a lazy lot, having spent your youth playing Apple ][ games instead of reading Polya's "How to Solve It" like us. In any case, we would *deeply* regret having to take drastic measures, such as forcing you to be last in line at GSL every week, so we'd like to take this opportunity to prevent you from registering unless you take some clear, quantifiable, formally provable steps towards improvement. To demonstrate your commitment to your research, please report to the 7th floor playroom on Friday, October 15, at 5:30PM sharp. Be prepared to interview the faculty member of your choice, or a mobot, depending on staffing and overhead considerations. Cheers, The Area II Committee Your Sparcstation just beeped. Your xbiff just changed color. >look at computer screen You read a newly-arrived email message: To: areaii-students@theory.lcs.mit.edu, hillary@whitehouse.gov From: an31415@anon.penet.fi (SPAM) Dear Fellow Victims, Many of you have recently gotten unfortunate letters from the Area II Committee telling you that you will be unable to participate in GSL unless you prostrate yourself before the reckless and overbearing authority figures running our department. This is unacceptable, and we wouldn't want to have to take drastic measures, such as putting explosives in the printers and then tracking toner all over the carpet. With this in mind, we, the members of SPAM (Students Pissed At Meyer), in protest of this disregard for our manifest *right* to a happy and safe GSL, will be holding a candlelight vigil on the third floor near the macintoshes. We urge all right-thinking members of the AI and LCS community to join us. Oh yes, and there will be food. Respectfully, Students Pissed At Meyer >look at watch Your Casio talking digital watch tells you that it's 5:25PM on Friday, October 15th, and then adds cheerfully, "It has been a pleasure to serve you. You've made a simple watch happy." >panic ARRRRGGGGHHHH! >wave rod Nothing happens. >xyzzy. plugh. plover. hello, sailor. Give it up; this is real life, not an adventure game. >out You walk out of your office... In the Hall You're standing in a featureless corridor lined with offices and decade-old posters and Far Side comic strips. The door to the office immediately across from yours is open. Far below, you see a misty canyon and some dwarves dancing. Oh no, my mistake. No dwarves. Sorry. You can head up or down the hall. >enter office UROP Sweatshop A graduate student wearing an executioner's hood is here overseeing a half dozen UROPs who are chained to their desks, working feverishly. They don't even look up as you enter. "Minimum wage ... HYAAAAH!" screams the overseer as he cracks his whip. >x UROPs The UROPs are miserable wretches. They look like they haven't slept in weeks and they keep muttering to themselves in desperate tones. One UROP in particular seems to be lost in a hypnotic trance, mumbling about infinite data structures and soldering some strange gadget. >get gadget You snatch the thingy away from the UROP. "Hey!" he yells, emerging from his scheme-induced fog. It looks like he's going to tell the overseer. >give nerd pride button to student The UROP's eyes light up. "Cool!" he says gleefully. He then slumps over his desk, passed out. *** Your score just went up *** >examine gadget It's pistol-shaped. A sticker on the side reads, "not gun". >out You escape without anyone noticing your thievery... In the Hall >down the hall In the 8th Floor Lobby You've walked down the hall and into 8th floor lobby. There are four elevators here. A sign on the wall reads, "Elevators out of order. We regret any inconvenience." >press down button You hear a scream. Nothing else happens. >shoot sign with gun There is a blast of negative energy, and the sign is transformed! >read sign The sign says, "Elevators out of order. We regret any inconvenience. Not!" >shoot sign with gun There is a blast of negative energy, and the sign is transformed! >read sign The sign says, "Elevators out of order. Not! We regret any inconvenience. Not!" >press down button One of the elevators opens. *** Your score just went up. *** >score You currently have 5 years before completion of your thesis, out of a possible 95. This gives you a rating of "Corporate Mogul Wannabe". >in Inside an Elevator You're in an elevator whose floor is strangely bumpy. There are buttons for floors 1 through 10 and B. >press 7 button The elevator starts moving. Soon after, the doors open. >out In the 7th Floor Lobby You're standing outside the elevators on the 7th floor. There is a sign here which lists professors and support staff, but curiously omits graduate students. >out In the Hall You're standing in a hall on the 7th floor. The posters and cartoons here are much more interesting. You can travel up or down the hall. >up the hall As you start to head up the hall, a three-foot-tall coke-can-shaped robot comes screaming around the far corner and heads straight for you, wailing, "Wuuuud yuuuu laiik a touuur!??! Wuuuud yuuuu laiik a touuur!??!" >shake leg Just as the robot is about to tackle you, you flail your left leg. The motorized machine suddenly stops dead in its tracks, drones "O...K... then fooooolouw meeee," turns towards the wall, and slams straight into it, sending a shower of behaviors everywhere. "Ooooooooo" it murmurs. >up the hall Oh no! Your advisor just rounded the corner! He may ask you about your thesis proposal! >east You quickly duck into the machine room before he spots you. In the Machine Room It is now pitch dark. If you proceed you will likely be eaten by a Vapnik. >wait You recognize the familiar sound of TK's laser camera firing in the hall. *** Your score just went up. *** >score You currently have 15 years before completion of your thesis, out of a possible 95. This gives you a rating of "Jerry Roylance". >out In the Hall You're standing in a hall on the 7th floor. Here you see the charred remains of your advisor. >look at watch Your watch informs you that it's 5:29PM. >up the hall You nimbly step over your advisor and continue down the hall... The 7th Floor Playroom There are dozens of enthusiastic lab members gathered here, drinking beverages of all kinds. You hear intermingled bits of many disparate conversations: "...Ackerman's? Hah, that's nothin'! Why, my function's SO large..." "...yes, but those who decline to have prosthetic brain/Newton interfaces added will simply be selected out..." "...and the really great thing about Buffalo sentences is they fall right out of Spectral Syntax..." "...but we were ROBBED at Casino Night..." "...here I am, a brain the size of a planet, and forced to work on conspiracy theory..." "...just interfrastically frob the graph structure until it wins..." "...so I hear Symbolics is making a comeback..." "...no, no, the Glatz machine *predated* FORTRAN-5 by at *least* two years..." "...By the way, Ian, I made a few changes to Polly's code..." [From an upcoming novel by Dave Baggett]