AI Magazine articles from December 2006

AI Magazine archives from December 2006

Editorial.
December 22, 2006... The 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was a watershed event, and its fiftieth anniversary has been observed with meetings, writings, and discussions about the past and future of the field. Our special issue to...

AAAI / IAAI return to Canada in 2007!(AAAI News)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Mark your calendars now for AAAI-07, which will be the second AAAI conference to be held in Canada. You will note a slight name change in the conference to account for this trend! We are delighted to announce this permanent change as we expand...

Artificial Intelligence and the Web special technical track.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... The Artificial Intelligence and the Web special track invites research papers on AI techniques, systems and concepts involving or applied to the web. Papers should either describe web related research or clearly explain how the work addresses...

Special technical track on integrated intelligent.(AAAI News)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Papers submitted to the II track should highlight synergistic effects of integrating components from distinct areas of AI to achieve intelligent behavior. They should articulate the innovative mechanisms used to combine multiple components and...

Senior member papers.(AAAI News)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... The senior member presentation track provides an opportunity for established researchers to give a broad talk on a well-developed body of research, an important new research area, or a thoughtful critique of trends in the field.

AAAI Nectar papers.(AAAI News)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... The Nectar (new scientific and technical advances in research) track invites papers that are based on important results already published in the proceedings of at least one major specialized conference in 2005 and 2006, as either a single paper...

Collocated events.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... AAAI is delighted to announce the collocation of the following events: * 23rd Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2007) July 19-22, 2007 (www.auai.org) * 2007 Trading Agent Competition (TAC) July 23-25, 2007...

AAAI-07 workshop program.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... The AAAI-07 workshops will be held Sunday and Monday, July 22-23, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The cochairs of the AAAI-07 workshop program are Simon Parsons (Brooklyn College, City University of New York) and Robert Givan (Purdue University)...

Student scholar and volunteer program.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... AAAI is pleased to announce the continuation of its student scholar and volunteer programs. The student scholar program provides partial travel support for students who are full-time undergraduate or graduate students at colleges and...

Third annual Artificial Intelligence and interactive digital entertainment conference (AIIDE-07).(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... AIIDE-07 will be held June 6-8, 2007 at Stanford University in Stanford, California. AIIDE is the definitive point of interaction between entertainment software developers interested in AI and academic and industrial AI researchers. Sponsored...

Mark your calendar with these important deadlines!(AAAI News)(Calendar)
December 22, 2006... January 22 AIIDE-07 papers due January 23 IAAI-07 electronic papers due January 25 AAAI-07 student abstracts due February 1 AAAI-07 electronic technical and special track abstracts due February 2 AAAI-07...

2007 Fall Symposium Series.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... AAAI is pleased to announce the continuation of the Fall Symposium Series! FSS-07 will be held in Arlington, Virginia just outside of Washington, DC November 8-11, 2007. The program will feature approximately eight symposia, as well as a...

2007 Spring Symposium Series.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... The 2007 Spring Symposium Series will be held March 26-28 at Stanford University and will feature nine symposia on the following subjects: * Control Mechanisms for Spatial Knowledge Processing in Cognitive / Intelligent Systems. Holger...

AAAI fellows nominations solicited.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... The 2007 fellows selection committee is currently accepting nominations for AAAI Fellow. The AAAI fellows program is designed to recognize people who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence over at...

2007 special award nominations.(AAAI News)
December 22, 2006... AAAI is pleased to announce the continuation of its two special awards in 2006, and is currently seeking nominations for the 2007 AAAI Classic Paper Award and the AAAI Distinguished Service Award. The 2007 AAAI Classic Paper Award will be given...

Member news.(American Association for Artificial Intelligence's Randall W. Hill Jr. appointed to Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... AAAI Member Randall W. Hill Jr. has been chosen to lead the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Hill has worked at USC for the past 11 years, first as a project leader at the Information Sciences...

AAAI Executive Council minutes.(AAAI News)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)(Conference notes)
December 22, 2006... The AAAI Executive Council Meeting was held at the Seaport Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts on July 17, 2006. Attending: Alan Mackworth, David Aha, Ron Brachman, Steve Chien, Oren Etzioni, Lise Getoor, Yolanda Gil, Maria Gini, Eric Horvitz,...

Finance.(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Financial report)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Finance committee chair Ted Senator briefly reviewed the current financial state of the organization, noting that a $600,000 operating deficit is budgeted for 2006. The executive committee has been working toward a sustainable operating deficit...

CRA report.(Standing Committee Reports)(Computing Research Association)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... (This report was given early due to schedule conflicts for CRA liaison Tim Finin.) Tim Finin reported that the Computing Research Association task force on the image of IT was establishing a full-time position to create and implement solutions...

Awards/fellows/nominating.(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence )(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Awards committee chair Ron Brachman reported that seven new fellows had been elected in 2006, with a high (over 50 percent) international representation. Rather than just having a dinner this year, the fellows gathered in Cambridge for the 2006...

Conference.(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Conference news)
December 22, 2006... AAAI-07 program cochair (and future conference committee chair) Yolanda Gil reviewed the new programs for AAAI-06, including the special track on AI and the web, the special track on Integrated Intelligence Capabilities, the Nectar papers, the...

Conference outreach (formerly Grants).(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Conference outreach committee chair Lise Getoor directed council members attention to the current conference sponsorship guidelines. With the elimination of outside conference grants, the program has transitioned into one primarily aimed at...

Membership.(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... AAAI membership levels have remained constant for the past several years. However, they have not reflected the recent growth in conference participation. Alan Mackworth reminded the council that the current chair's term is complete, and that a...

Publications.(Standing Committee Reports)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence )
December 22, 2006... Publication chair and AI Magazine editor David Leake reported that the next several issues of AI Magazine were lined up with special issues on innovative applications of artificial intelligence and mixed-initiative assistants, as well as a...

Symposium.(Standing Committee Reports)
December 22, 2006... Symposium committee associate chair Karen Myers reported that the 2006 Spring Symposium at Stanford University was well attended with eight symposia. A call for proposals for the 2007 meeting was distribut ed at AAAI-06. The Fall Symposium will...

Annual business meeting (break).(Standing Committee Reports)(new appointments at American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... The meeting then broke for the AAAI annual business meeting, during which the installation of newly elected councilors David Aha, David Musliner, Michael Pazzani, and Holly Yanco was completed. Retiring councilors Steve Chien, Yolanda Gil,...

AAAI name change.(New Business)(Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence)
December 22, 2006... Alan Mackworth introduced a proposal from the executive committee to rename AAAI. The proposed name would be the "Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence," retaining the current acronym. The proposal is a result of several...

AAAI fund raising process.(New Business)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence )(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Alan Mackworth noted that the current level of fundraising is considerably below what other smaller organizations achieve. Part Of this problem may lie with the current decentralized approach, and the lack of a formal plan. In addition, the...

Strategic planning.(New Business)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Past president Ron Brachman noted that the strategic planning committee would be meeting during AAAI-06, and that it was a good opportunity to get their feedback on important issues. Aside from the name change proposal, the council also...

Independent auditor's statement.(AAAI News)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Viewpoint essay)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... The Board of Directors American Association for Artificial Intelligence Menlo Park, California I have audited the statement of financial position of American Association for Artificial Intelligence as of December 31, 2005 and the related...

Notes to financial statements, December 31, 2005.(AAAI News)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)
December 22, 2006... Note 1: Summary of Significant Accounting Policies A. Method of Accounting: The financial statements are presented on the accrual basis of accounting. As required by Financial Accounting Standards No. 124 investments are stated at fair...

A proposal for the Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence: August 31, 1955.
December 22, 2006... * The 1956 Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence was initiated by this August 31, 1955 proposal, authored by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon. The original typescript consisted of 17...

Happy silver anniversary, AI!(AAAI President's Message)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)
December 22, 2006... * Artificial intelligence (AI), on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its naming, is a "kid, finally grown up." In this letter to his field, Feigenbaum recounts AI's stumbles and successes, its growing pains and maturation, to a place of...

AI@50: we are golden!(AAAI President's Message)(Alan K. Mackworth of American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Cover story)
December 22, 2006... * Artificial intelligence (AI), on the 50th anniversary of its naming, is an autonomous discipline. The field has an established record of success, as exemplified by three recent achievements presented at AAAI-06/IAAI-06. It is now mature...

(AA)AI more than the sum of its parts.(AAAI Presidential Address)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Conference news)
December 22, 2006... * Recent thinking has it that AI, 25 years ago a unified field with a shared vision of creating intelligent machines, has devolved into a loosely connected set of distinct specialty areas with little communication or mutual interest between...

What do we know about knowledge?(IAAI/AI Magazine 2006 Robert Engelmore Award Address)
December 22, 2006... * Intelligent systems need knowledge. However, the simple equation "knowledge is power" leaves three major questions unanswered. First, what do we mean by "knowledge"; second, what do we mean by "power"; and third, what do we mean by "is"? In...

AI meets Web 2.0: building the Web of tomorrow, today.(Conference news)
December 22, 2006... This article is derived from the 2005 Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence conference invited talk "AI Meets Web 2.0: Building the Web of Tomorrow, Today" presented by Jay M. Tenenbaum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I invited Marry...

A personal account of the development of Stanley, the robot that won the DARPA Grand Challenge.(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
December 22, 2006... * This article is my personal account on the work at Stanford on Stanley, the winning robot in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Between July 2004 and October 2005, my then-postdoc Michael Montemerlo and I led a team of students, engineers, and...

Review of Thinking about Android Epistemology.(Book review)
December 22, 2006... * This article is a review of Thinking about Android Epistemology by Kenneth Ford, Patrick Hayes, and Clark Glymour. Cambridge, MA: AAAI Press/The MIT Press. In the recent past, scientists have attempted to mimic conditions of the early...

The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years.(Reports)
December 22, 2006... * The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next 50 Years (AI@50) took place July 13-15, 2006. The conference had three objectives: to celebrate the Dartmouth Summer Research Project, which occurred in 1956; to assess how...

Reports on the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-06) Workshop program.(Reports)(Conference news)
December 22, 2006... * The Workshop program of the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence was held July 16-17, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts. The program was chaired by Joyce Chai and Keith Decker. The titles of the 17 workshops were AI-Driven...

AAAI's National and Innovative Applications Conferences celebrate 50 years of AI.(AAAI-06/IAAI-06 Highlights)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Conference news)
December 22, 2006... * The Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Nineteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference commemorated fifty years of artificial intelligence research in Boston, Massachusetts this past...

Report on the Nineteenth International FLAIRS Conference.(Reports)
December 22, 2006... * The Nineteenth International FLAIRS Conference (FLAIRS-19) was held 11-13 May 2006 at the Crowne Plaza Melbourne Oceanfront Hotel in Melbourne Beach, FL. The general cochairs were Philip Chan and Debasis Mitra, from the Florida Institute of...

Winter calendar of AI events.(Artificial intelligence)(Calendar)
December 22, 2006... January 2007 JANUARY 6-12 IJCAI-07: Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Hyderabad, India * Sponsors: IJCAI, TPATI * Contact: Ramon Lopez de Mantaras IIIA-CSIC, Campus UAB, Bellaterra 08193...

The electronic Paul Revere.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lincoln Laboratory)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... James J. Haggerry, Jr. Collier's. February 3, 1956: pages 82-85. "Lexington is the home of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, whose scientists have developed a superintelligent electronic 'brain' which reduces to a bare...

She tamed the thinking machine.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(Grace Murray Hopper from Vassar College)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Louise Levitas. Science Digest. March 1956: pages 53-55. [Condensed from This Week Magazine.] "Univac, one of the so-called 'thinking machines' whose lightning calculations with simple arithmetic are already scaring the average thinker, is now...

Math made malleable.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(Norbert Wiener of Massachusetts Institute of Technology)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Newsweek. March 5, 1956: page 94. "Norbert Wiener is the M.I.T. mathematics professor who has pioneered the science which he calls cyberonetics * (automatic controlling devices, automatic factories). As is now well known, cybernetics points to...

Intelligence amplifier.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... TIME. May 7, 1956: page 70. "Computer experts are fascinated by the question: Will thinking machines ever be as intelligent as the human brains that create them? Dr. W. Ross Ashby of Britain, a mathematically minded psychiatrist, believes that...

Union warned by TUC against automation fears.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(Trades Union Congress)(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... Reuters; appearing in The Christian Science Monitor. May 29; 1956: page 6. "Leaders of Britain's Trades Union Congress, representing 8,000,000 workers, have warned their members not to let good industrial relations be upset by 'the...

"Brain" computes new tune for TV.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(ballad composed by electronic computer to be produced by Datatron Inc. )(Brief article)
December 22, 2006... The New York Times. July 3, 1956: page 51. "The first ballad to be composed by an electronic computer will be played July 15 in a science show on television. The tune was composed by the Datatron, an electronic brain of the ElectroData division...

Gambling robot wins high.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories)
December 22, 2006... Science News Letter. August 18, 1956: page 102. "A gambling robot that has been successfully beating the majority of its human opponents is in operation at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J. Nicknamed SEER, the electronic...

Homage to Orwell.("Always Interesting" : AI in the news)(George Orwell)(In memoriam)
December 22, 2006... Editorial. The Nation. October 6, 1956: page 278. "No sooner did we get rid of one nightmare about the future than another besets us. It was somewhat reassuring to learn recently from Mr. Anthony West, with the tentative concurrence of Mr....