What Can Artificial Intelligence Really Do?

This Summer's International Conference on AI is a Great Place to Find Out

• International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI-01)
• August 4-10, 2001
• Seattle, Washington

In the half century since the birth of Artificial Intelligence, there has been tremendous progress. Movies like this summer's A.I. by Steven Spielberg romanticize AI. There is no better place to learn more about the real field of AI, meet the researchers advancing the field, and see the latest capabilities of robots than at this summer's International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI-01) in Seattle.

Bill Gates is keynote speaker

Bill Gates will kick off the Conference as the keynote speaker. Gates' talk, "AI in the Computing Experience: Challenges and Opportunities," will give insight into his views on directions for AI.

The real AI

"I am HAL 9000 computer production number 3." This is one of the most recognized lines in the history of cinema, evoking a montage of impressions from one of the most carefully researched and crafted science fiction stories of all time.

Now in its namesake year, the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is closely examined in a talk "The HAL 9000 Computer and the Vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey" by David G. Stork. Stork is the author of HAL's Legacy: 2001's computer as dream and reality (MIT Press), and PBS documentary 2001: HAL's Legacy. Stork will compare the movie's visions of AI with the reality today.

The seven-day IJCAI-01 conference will bring together leading researchers in many of the sub-fields that comprise AI, such as vision, knowledge representation, machine learning, planning, intelligent agents, robotics, and many more. Presentations on the next generation of the World Wide Web, spoken and pen-based gesture communication, speech translation systems, and many other cutting edge application areas are part of the conference. The diversity and depth of the program are best seen by scanning the conference Web site at www.ijcai-01.org.

Robots

The conference also includes several robot competitions that pit robots of all sizes from many of the premier robot research labs around the world. This year the competitions include:

• Soccer competition called "RoboCup", www.cs.cmu.edu/~robocup2001, for virtual, small and medium robot teams
• Mobile Robot Competition for medium and large robots. There will be two events -- Search and Rescue and hors d'oeuvres serving (always a crowd pleaser)
• Botball Tournament for robots built by middle and high school students.

Innovative uses of AI in business

Cutting edge business applications -- both deployed and still being developed -- will be honored at the Thirteenth Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI-01), collocated with IJCAI. Companies and organizations including Terra Lycos, the U.S. Marine Corps, IBM, NASA, and the Ontario Cancer Institute are this year's winners. Applications range from "electronic elves" (intelligent agents) that function much as office assistants, agents that adapt and learn for personalized Web searching, a context-sensitive spell checker, an Internet search engine, and many more.

About IJCAI-01

IJCAI-01 is sponsored by the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Inc, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, AT&T Labs, Boeing, SemanticEdge Technologies, Microsoft, and NEC Research. IJCAI-03 is slated for Acapulco, Mexico.

For registration go to: www.ijcai-01.org.

About AAAI

Founded in 1979, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, www.aaai.org, is a nonprofit scientific membership society devoted to advancing the science and practice of AI. Its mission is to: (1) advance the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying intelligent thought and behavior, (2) facilitate their embodiment in machines, (3) serve as an information resource for research planners and funders concerning trends in AI, and for the general public, and (4) improve the training of the current and the coming generation of AI researchers and practitioners.

Contact En Park of Blue Sky Communications, 425-444-2485, en@sprintmail.com, for American Association for Artificial Intelligence.