AAAI News AAAI News

Spring News from the Association for the Advancement of Artiﬁcial Intelligence

AAAI Announces The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Holte, Ariel Felner, Guni Sharon, Robot (Wolfram Burgard, Armin B. Nathan R. Sturtevant) New Senior Member! Cremers, Dieter Fox, Dirk Hähnel, Gerhard Lakemeyer, Dirk Schulz, Wal- AAAI-16 Outstanding AAAI congratulates Wheeler Ruml ter Steiner, and Sebastian Thrun) Student Paper Award (University of New Hampshire, USA) Toward a Taxonomy and Computa- Boosting Combinatorial Search on his election to AAAI Senior Member tional Models of Abnormalities in through Randomization (Carla P. status. This honor was announced at Images (Babak Saleh, Ahmed Elgam- Gomes, Bart Selman, and Henry the recent AAAI-16 Conference in mal, Jacob Feldman, Ali Farhadi) Phoenix. Senior Member status is Kautz) designed to recognize AAAI members Burgard and colleagues were honored IAAI-16 Innovative who have achieved significant accom- for significant contributions to proba- Application Awards plishments within the field of artificial bilistic robot navigation and the inte- Each year the AAAI Conference on intelligence. To be eligible for nomina- gration with high-level planning Innovative Applications selects the tion for Senior Member, candidates methods, while Gomes, Selman, and recipients of the IAAI Innovative must be consecutive members of AAAI Kautz were recognized for their signifi- Application Award. These deployed for at least five years and have been cant contributions to the area of auto- application case study papers must active in the professional arena for at mated reasoning and constraint solv- describe deployed applications with least ten years. ing through the introduction of measurable benefits that include some randomization and restarts into com- aspect of AI technology. The applica- plete solvers. Wolfram Burgard and Congratulations to tion needs to have been in production Carla Gomes presented invited talks use by its final end-users for sufficient- the 2016 AAAI Award during the conference in recognition ly long so that the experience in use of this honor. Winners! can be meaningfully collected and For more information about nomi- reported. The 2016 winners were as fol- Tom Dietterich, AAAI President, nations for AAAI 2017 Awards, please lows: Manuela Veloso, AAAI Past President contact Carol Hamilton at hamil- and Awards Committee Chair, and Rao [email protected]. Deploying PAWS: Field Optimization Kambhampati, AAAI President-Elect, of the Protection Assistant for Wildlife presented the AAAI Awards in February AAAI-16 Outstanding Security (Fei Fang, Thanh H. Nguyen, at AAAI-16 in Phoenix. Paper Awards Rob Pickles, Wai Y. Lam, Gopalasamy R. Clements, Bo An, Amandeep Singh, AAAI Classic Paper Award This year, AAAI's Conference on Artifi- Milind Tambe, Andrew Lemieux) cial Intelligence honored the following The 2016 AAAI Classic Paper Award Ontology Re-Engineering: A Case two papers, which exemplify high was given to the authors of the two Study from the Automotive Industry standards in technical contribution papers deemed most influential from (Nestor Rychtyckyj, Baskaran Sankara- the Fifteenth National Conference on and exposition by regular and student narayanan, P Sreenivasa Kumar, Deep- Artificial Intelligence, held in 1998 in authors. ak Khemani, Venkatesh Raman) Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The 2016 AAAI-16 Outstanding Paper Award Deploying nEmesis: Preventing Food- recipients of the AAAI Classic Paper Bidirectional Search That Is Guaran- borne Illness by Data Mining Social Award were: teed to Meet in the Middle (Robert C. Media (Adam Sadilek, Henry Kautz,

Lauren DiPrete, Brian Labus, Eric Port- man, Jack Teitel, Vincent Silenzio)

Special Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Blue Sky Awards AAAI-16, in cooperation with the CRA Computing Community Consortium (CCC), honored three papers in the Senior Member track that presented ideas and visions that can stimulate the research community to pursue new I CWSM directions, such as new problems, new application domains, or new method- ologies. The recipients of the 2016 Blue Sky Idea travel awards, sponsored by the CCC, were as follows: Indefinite Scalability for Living Com- Please Join Us for ICWSM-16 putation (David H. Ackley) in Cologne, Germany! Embedding Ethical Principles in Col- lective Decision Support Systems (Joshua Greene, Francesca Rossi, John The Tenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media will be Tasioulas, Kristen Brent Venable, Brian held May 17–20 at Maternushaus and GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Williams) Sciences in Cologne, Germany. This interdisciplinary conference is a forum Five Dimensions of Reasoning in the for researchers in computer science and social science to come together to Wild (Don Perlis) share knowledge, discuss ideas, exchange information, and learn about cut- ting-edge research in diverse fields with the common theme of online social 2016 AI Video Competition media. This overall theme includes research in new perspectives in social Winners theories, as well as computational algorithms for analyzing social media. ICWSM is a singularly fitting venue for research that blends social science The tenth annual AI video competi- and computational approaches to answer important and challenging ques- tion was held during AAAI-16 and sev- tions about human social behavior through social media while advancing eral winning videos were honored dur- computational tools for vast and unstructured data. ing the awards presentation. Videos were nominated for awards in six cate- ICWSM-16 will include a lively program of technical talks and posters, gories, and winners received a invited presentations, and keynote talks by Lise Getoor (University of Cal- “Shakey” award during a special award ifornia, Santa Cruz) and Amr Goldberg (Stanford Graduate School of Busi- ceremony at the conference. Our ness). thanks go to Sabine Hauert and Charles Isbell for all their work on this Workshops and Tutorials event. The winners of the three awards The ICWSM Workshop program will continue in 2016, and the Tutorial Pro- were as follows: gram will return. Both will be held on the first day of the conference, May Best Video 17. For complete details about the workshop program, please see Machine Learning Techniques for www.icwsm.org/2016/program/workshop. Reorchestrating the European Anthem (François Pachet, Pierre Roy, Mathieu Registration Is Now Open! Ramona, Marco Marchini, Gaetan Registration information is available at the ICWSM-16 website Hadjeres, Emmanuel Deruty, Benoit (www.icwsm.org/2016/attending/registration). The early registration dead- Carré, Fiammetta Ghedini) line is March 25, and the late registration deadline is April 15. Best Robot Video For full details about the conference program, please visit the ICWSM-16 A Sea of Robots (Anders Lyhne Chris- website (icwsm. org) or write to [email protected]. tensen, Miguel Duarte, Vasco Costa, Tiago Rodrigues, Jorge Gomes, Fer- nando Silva, Sancho Oliveira) Best Student Video Deep Neural Networks Are Easily Fooled (Anh Nguyen, Jason Yosinski, Jeff Clune)

110 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News

Congratulations to the 2016 AAAI Fellows! Each year a small number of fellows are recognized for their unusual distinction in the profession and for their sustained contributions to the field for a decade or more. An official dinner and ceremony were held in their honor during AAAI-16 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Giuseppe De Giacomo (University of Rome La Sapienza, Maja J. Mataric (University of Southern California, USA) Italy) For significant contributions to the advancement of multi- For significant contributions to the field of knowledge rep- robot coordination, learning in human-robot systems, and resentation and reasoning, and applications to data integra- socially assistive robotics. tion, ontologies, planning, and process synthesis and verifi- Eric Poe Xing (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) cation. For significant contributions to statistical machine learning, Daniel D. Lee (University of Pennsylvania, USA) its theoretical analysis, new algorithms for learning proba- For significant contributions to machine learning and robot- bilistic models, and applications of these to important prob- ics, including algorithms for perception, planning, and lems in biology, social network analysis, natural language motor control processing and beyond; and to the development of new architecture, system platform, and theory for distributed Bing Liu (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA) machine learning programs on large scale applications. For significant contributions to data mining and development of widely used sentiment analysis, opinion spam Zhi-Hua Zhou (Nanjing University, China) detection, and Web mining algorithms. For significant contributions to ensemble methods and learning from multi-labeled and partially-labeled data.

The 2016 AAAI Distinguished Service Award The 2016 AAAI Distinguished Service Award recognizes one individual for extraordinary service to the AI community. The AAAI Awards Committee is pleased to announce that this year's recipient is Maria Gini (University of Minnesota). Professor Gini is being recognized for her outstanding contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through sustained service leading AI societies, journals, and conferences; men- toring colleagues; and working to increase participation of women in AI and computing.

Maria Gini is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. She studies decision making for autonomous agents in a variety of applications and contexts, ranging from distributed methods for allocation of tasks to robots, to methods for robots to explore an unknown environment, team- work for search and rescue, and navigation in dense crowds. She is a Fellow of the Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. She is coeditor in chief ofRobot- ics and Autonomous Systems, and is on the editorial board of numerous journals, including Artificial Intelligence, and Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

SPRING 2016 111 AAAI News

AAAI/EAAI 2016 Outstanding Educator Award The Inagural AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator was established in 2016 to recognize a person (or group of people) who has (have) made major contributions to AI education that provide long-lasting benefits to the AI community. Examples might include innovating teaching methods, providing service to the AI education community, generating pedagogical resources, designing curricula, and educating students outside of higher education venues (or the general public) about AI. AAAI is pleased to announce the first corecipients of this award, Peter Norvig (Google) and Stuart Russell (University of California, Berkeley), who are being honored for their definitive text, Peter Norvig and Stuart Russell accept the AAAI / “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” that systemized EAAI Outstanding Educator Award. the field of artificial intelligence and inspired a new generation of scientists and engineers throughout the world, as well as for their individual contributions to education in artificial intelligence. This award is jointly sponsored by AAAI and the Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence.

Han Yu, Chunyan Miao, Cyril Leung, Daniel Wei Quan Ng, Kian Khang Ong, Bo Huang and Yaming Zhang) AAAI gratefully acknowledges the Bris- tol Robotics Laboratory for help with the manufacturing of the awards. Con- gratulations to all the winners! 2016 Fall Symposium Series AAAI-16 Student Abstract Awards November 17–19 Two awards were presented to partici- pants in the AAAI-16 Student Abstract Mark Your Calendars! The 2016 AAAI Fall Symposium Series will be held Program, including the Best Student 3- Thursday through Saturday, November 17–19, at the Westin Arlington Minute Presentation and the Best Stu- Gateway in Arlington, Virginia, adjacent to Washington, DC. Proposals are dent Poster. Fifteen finalists in the Best due April 8, and accepted symposia will be announced in late April. Sub- Student 3-Minute Presentation catego- missions will be due July 29, 2016. ry presented one-minute oral spotlight presentations during the second day of For more information, please see the 2016 Fall Symposium Series website the technical conference, followed that (www.aaai. org/Symposia/Fall/fss16.php). evening by their poster presentations. Votes for both awards were cast by senior program committee members and students. The winners were as follows:

Most Entertaining Video Maja Varga, Gábor Vásárhelyi, Jean- Best Student 3-Minute Presentation Finding Linda — A Search and Rescue Christophe Zufferey) Towards Structural Tractability in Mission by SWARMIX (Mahdi Asad- Hedonic Games (Dominik Peters) Best Application of AI pour, Gianni A. Di Caro, Simon Egli, Honorable Mention: Student 3-Minute Eduardo Feo-Flushing, Danka Csilla, Save the Wildlife, Save the Planet: Pro- Dario Floreano, Luca M. Gambardella, tection Assistant for Wildlife Security (Fei Presentation Yannick Gasser, Linda Gerencsér, Fang, Debarun Kar, Dana Thomas, Epitomic Image Super-Resolution Anna Gergely, Domenico Giustiniano, Nicole Sintov, Milind Tambe) (Yingzhen Yang, Zhangyang Wang, Gregoire Heitz, Karin A. Hummel, Bar- Zhaowen Wang, Shiyu Chang, Ding bara Kerekes, Ádám Miklósi, Attila People's Choice Liu, Honghui Shi, and Thomas S. David Molnar, Bernhard Plattner, AI for Liveable Cities (Zhengxiang Pan, Huang)

112 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News

AAAI President Tom Dietterich delivers his Presidential Address, Steps Toward Robust Artificial Intelligence, on Sunday, February 14 at AAAI-16.

Best Student Poster Efficient Collaborative Crowdsourcing AAAI President-Elect and (Zhengxiang Pan, Han Yu, Chunyan Miao, and Cyril Leung) Executive Council Elections Please watch your mailboxes for an announcement of the 2016 AAAI Elec- tion. The link to the electronic version of the annual AAAI Ballot will be Join Us in New Orleans mailed to all regular individual AAAI members in the spring. The member- for AAAI-17 ship will vote for a new President-Elect (two-year term, followed by two years as President, and two additional years as Past President), as well as four The Thirty-First AAAI Conference on new councilors, who will each serve three-year terms. The online voting Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17) and system is expected to close on June 10. Please note that the ballot will be the Twenty-Ninth Conference on available via the online system only. If you have not provided AAAI with an Innovative Applications of Artificial up-to-date email address, please do so immediately by writing to member- Intelligence (IAAI-17), will be held in ship16@ aaai.org. New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, during the mid-January to mid-February time- frame. Final dates will be available by March 31, 2016. The technical conference will continue its 3.5-day sched- jazz music, the French Quarter filled in the Big Easy unique. The 2017 Call uled, either preceded or followed by with lively clubs and restaurants, for Papers will be available soon at the workshop and tutorial programs. world-class museums, and signature www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai1 AAAI-17 will arrive in New Orleans just architecture. New Orleans’ multicul- 7.php. prior to Mardi Gras and festivities will tural and diverse communities will Please join us in 2017 in NOLA for a already be underway. Enjoy legendary make your choices and and experience memorable AAAI!

SPRING 2016 113 AAAI News

Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award The Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award award was established in 2003 to honor Dr. Robert S. Engelmore's extraordinary service to AAAI, AI Magazine, and the AI applications community, and his contributions to applied AI. The annual keynote lecture is presented at the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference. Topics encompass Engelmore's wide interests in AI, and each lecture is linked to a subsequent article published upon approval by AI Magazine. The lecturer and, therefore, the author for the magazine article, are chosen jointly by the IAAI Pro- gram Committee and the Editor of AI Magazine. AAAI congratulates the 2016 recipient of this award, Reid G. Smith, i2k Connect, who was honored for pioneering research contributions and high-impact applications in knowledge management and for extensive contributions to AAAI, including educating and inspiring the broader community about AI through AITopics. Smith presented his award lecture, “A Quar- ter Century of AI Applications: What We Knew Then versus What We Know Now,” at the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Phoenix. Reid G. Smith is cofounder and chief executive officer of i2k Connect, an AI technology company that transforms unstructured documents into structured data enriched with sub- ject matter expert knowledge. Formerly, he was vice president of research and knowledge management at Schlumberger, enterprise content management director at Marathon Oil, and senior vice president at Medstory, a vertical search company purchased by Microsoft. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and is a Fellow of AAAI. He has served as AAAI Councilor, AAAI-88 program cochair, IAAI-91 program chair and program committee member for IAAI from its inception in 1989. He is coeditor of AITopics.

Join Us in Austin for among researchers, but also engineers the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK and practitioners, to encourage dia- Government in the area of National HCOMP-16 logue across disciplines and communi- Security. Jennings is also a successful The Fourth AAAI Conference on ties of practice. entrepreneur and is chief scientific offi- Human Computation and Crowd- Submissions are due May 17, 2016. cer for Aerogility, a 20-person start-up sourcing will be held October 30 – For more information, please visit that develops advanced software solu- November 3, 2016 at the AT&T Execu- humancomputation.com, or write to tions for the aerospace and defense sec- tive Education and Conference Center [email protected]. tors. on the University of Texas at Austin Bill Clancey Named NAI Fellow campus. HCOMP-16 will be co-located AAAI Member News with EMNLP 2016, the 2016 Confer- William “Bill” Clancey, a senior ence on Empirical Methods in Natural research scientist with the Florida Language Processing. HCOMP is the Nick Jennings Receives New Institute for Human and Machine Cog- premier venue for disseminating the Year Honor nition (IHMC), was named a Fellow of latest research findings on crowdsourc- Nick Jennings, professor of computer the National Academy of Inventors ing and human computation. While science at the University of Southamp- (NAI). The Tampa-based Academy artificial intelligence (AI) and human- ton, has been made Companion of the named a total of 168 Fellows this week, computer interaction (HCI) represent Order of the Bath in the Queen’s New bringing the total number of Fellows to traditional mainstays of the confer- Year Honours List for his services to 582. This is the fourth year that Fel- ence, HCOMP believes strongly in computer science and national securi- lows have been named. Clancey is inviting, fostering, and promoting ty science. Jennings, who is head of most well-known for developing a broad, interdisciplinary research. This Electronics and Computer Science work practice modeling and simula- field is particularly unique in the diver- (ECS) at the University, has been rec- tion system called Brahms, a tool for sity of disciplines it draws upon, and ognized for his pioneering contribu- comprehensive design of work sys- contributes to, ranging from human- tions to the fields of artificial intelli- tems, relating people and automation. centered qualitative studies and HCI gence, autonomous systems and Using the Brahms modeling system, design, to computer science and artifi- agent-based computing. He is the UK’s scientists study the flow of informa- cial intelligence, economics and the only Regius Professor in Computer Sci- tion and communications in real- social sciences, all the way to law and ence, a prestigious title awarded to the world work settings, and the effect of policy. We promote the exchange of University by HM The Queen to mark automated systems. One important scientific advances in human compu- her Diamond Jubilee. Jennings just practical application is the coordina- tation and crowdsourcing not only completed a six-year term of office as tion among air traffic controllers,

114 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News

Nick Bostrom of Oxford University addresses AAAI-16 in his talk “What We Should Think about Regarding the Future of Machine Intelligence.”

As part of a series of events addressing ethical issues and AI, AAAI-16 held a debate on AI’s Impact on Labor Markets, with partici- pants (left to right) Erik Brynjolfsoon (MIT), Moshe Vardi (Rice University), Nick Bostrom (Oxford University), and Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI). The panel was moderated by Toby Walsh (Data61) (far left).

SPRING 2016 115 AAAI News

Marvin Minsky, 1927 – 2016

AAAI is deeply saddened to note the death of Marvin Minsky on 25 January 2016, at the age of 88. One of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence, Minsky was a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology, which he joined in 1958. With John McCarthy, Minsky cofounded the MIT Artificial Intel- ligence Laboratory. Minsky was also a founding member of the MIT Media Lab, founder of Logo Computer Sys- tems, Thinking Machines Corporation, as well as AAAI’s third President. Minsky’s research spanned an enormous range of fields, including mathematics, computer science, the theory of computation, neural networks, artificial intelligence, robotics, commonsense reasoning, natural language processing and psychology. An accomplished musician, Minsky had boundless energy and creativity. He was not only a scientific pioneer and leader, but also a mentor and teacher to many.

Minsky’s impact on many leaders in our community was documented in the Winter 2007 issue of AI Magazine article “In Honor of Marvin Minsky’s Contributions on his 80th Birthday” written by Danny Hillis, John McCarthy, Tom M. Mitchell, Erik T. Mueller, Doug Riecken, Aaron Sloman, and Patrick Henry Winston. His pro- lific writing career also included many articles within our pages as well.

Minsky’s passing is a tragic landmark for the many AI scientists he influenced personally, for the many more that he inspired intellectually, as well as for the history of the discipline. AI Magazine will celebrate his many contributions in a future issue.

116 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News pilots and automated systems during Tom Dietterich convened the meet- and has been working with Carol flights. The NAI Fellows will be induct- ing at 6:05am PDT, and welcomed the Hamilton on the annual AI Journal pro- ed on April 15, 2016, as part of the newly-elected councilors. The new posal for support of student activities, Fifth Annual Conference of the councilors gave brief statements about as well as other corporate sponsor- National Academy of Inventors at the their interests and goals while serving ships. Zilberstein noted that he is in United States Patent and Trademark on the Executive Council. The retiring the process of recruiting chairs for Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia. councilors were also given an opportu- 2017. The committee discussed an nity to offer their advice about future overview of venues circulated earlier, priorities for AAAI. All agreed that out- and decided that New Orleans was Ken Ford Named AAAS Fellow reach to other research communities, their top choice, with Albuquerque The American Association for the international outreach, and encourag- next in line. Hamilton will enter into Advancement of Science (AAAS) has ing diversity should be paramount. negotiations with New Orleans. Final- elected Ken Ford, director and chief They urged the Council to concentrate ly, Zilberstein noted that the Council executive officer of the Florida Insti- on the direction of the field and AAAI, should establish a written policy tute for Human and Machine Cogni- and not get bogged down in the regarding its decision to make confer- tion (IHMC), as a Fellow. Ford is one of mechanics. Dietterich thanked the ence attendance for young families 347 scientists who have been named retiring councilors for their contribu- more accessible. The Council discussed Fellows this year. The electing Council tions to the Council and to AAAI, and the importance of continuing the ini- elects people “whose efforts on behalf encouraged them to stay involved. tiatives started in 2015, such as out- of the advancement of science of its reach, ethics panels, and demos of new applications are scientifically or social- Standing Committee Reports competitions. Zilberstein will follow ly distinguished.” Ford was selected Awards/Fellows/Nominating: Manuela up with the 2016 program chairs to be “for founding and directing the IHMC, Veloso reviewed the current nomina- sure these issues are being addressed. for his scientific contributions to artifi- tion process for Fellows, Senior Mem- Conference Outreach: Henry Lieber- cial intelligence and human-centered bers, Distinguished Service, and Classic man noted that the conference out- computing, and for service to many Paper. She asked the Council to reach program continues to offer sister federal agencies.” IHMC, which Ford encourage their colleagues to nomi- conferences publicity opportunities founded in 1990, is known for its nate people for all of these honors. She through various AAAI outlets. Howev- groundbreaking research in the field of noted that it is fine to ask a Fellow to er, more conferences need to be artificial intelligence. Ford has served nominate you, and in the case of Sen- encouraged to take advantage of this. on the National Science Board, chaired ior Members, self-nomination with The committee recently added the the NASA Advisory Council and served accompanying references is the nor- 10th IEEE International Conference on on the U.S. Air Force Science Advisory mal process. She noted that there is a Semantic Computing to the list. Board and the Defense Science Board. new award this year, the Outstanding Ethics: Francesca Rossi reported that Ford received an official certificate and Educator Award, which will be cospon- the Ethics Committee has been a gold and blue rosette pin on Satur- sored by AAAI and EAAI. Sylvie formed, and noted the recent open let- day, February 13 at the AAAS Fellows Thiebaux volunteered to serve on the ter on Autonomous Weapons signed Forum during the 2016 Annual Meet- selection committee, representing the by many members of the AI communi- ing in Washington, D.C. Council. Veloso reported that the ty. The Committee has not yet formed AAAI congratulates all three of these Nominating Committee completed its a proposal for a code of ethics, but has AAAI Fellows for their honors! selections for the recent ballot earlier started gathering samples from other in the summer, and welcomed the new organizations. AAAI Executive councilors, thanking them for their Finance: Ted Senator reported that thoughtful ballot statements. the Association investment portfolio is Council Meeting Minutes Conference: Shlomo Zilberstein now over $9,000,000.00, and that pro- The AAAI Executive Council met via reported that Michael Wellman and grams have continued to operate on teleconference on September 25, 2016. Dale Schuurmans, AAAI-16 program budget for 2015. Due to the larger sur- Attending: Tom Dietterich, Sonia cochairs, are doing a great job with plus from AAAI-15, it is likely that a Chernova, Vincent Conitzer, Boi Falt- AAAI-16 conference. Another record smaller operating deficit will be real- ings, Ashok Goel, Carla Gomes, Eduard number of submissions was received ized for 2015. Senator noted that there Hovy, Julia Hirschberg, Charles Isbell, on September 15, which indicates that will be another meeting of the Council Rao Kambhampati, Sven Koenig, the timing of the conference is contin- in November to approve the 2016 David Leake, Henry Lieberman, Diane uing to work well for the community. budget. (Ed note: This meeting was Litman, Jen Neville, Francesca Rossi, While the conference is very presti- rescheduled to February 2016 due to Ted Senator, Steve Smith, Manuela gious, many do not realize that AAAI is extenuating circumstances.) Veloso, Kiri Wagstaff, Shlomo Zilber- more than the conference, so raising International: Tom Dietterich report- stein, Sonia Chernova, Carol Hamilton the visibility of the Association and ed on behalf of Toby Walsh that AAAI Not Attending: Sylvie Thiebaux, Toby what it does is important. Sandip Sen is recently sponsored a “Lunch with a Walsh, Brian Williams spearheading sponsor recruitment, AAAI Fellow” event at IJCAI, and this

SPRING 2016 117 AAAI News

AAAI President Tom Dietterich (far left) thanks members of the AAAI-16 Conference Committee for all their efforts in making the conference a great success, including AAAI-16 Program Cochairs, Michael Wellman (second from left) and Dale Schuurmans (fourth from left). program proved to be very successful. this program every year. The program process of revamping the committee He would like to see more of this type will be up for renewal in three years. At assignments in light of the recent of outreach in the future. Sven Koenig that time, the Council should decide if Council transition. noted that AAAI could have a stronger membership fees need to be adjusted. Publications: David Leake reviewed all presence via town hall meetings, a However, an annual review will help of the publishing activities of the Asso- booth, or panels and talks at IJCAI or avoid any long-term problems. He also ciation during the past nine months, other events. This is a strong possibili- reminded the Council that the other including AI Magazine, several proceed- ty in 2016 because of the North Amer- component of this program — devel- ings, and workshop and symposium ican location of IJCAI. This would raise oping strong local representatives in technical reports. He noted that Ashok the visibility of AAAI and encourage international locales — is equally Goel has agreed to join AI Magazine as the international community to join. important, and should be finalized in associate editor, and welcomed Goel to All agreed that AAAI presidents should 2016. AAAI is continuing to offer free the group. Goel thanked Leake and pursue a presence at IJCAI on a perma- memberships to attendees of cooperat- Tom Dietterich for this opportunity, nent basis. ing conferences who are new to AAAI. and said he looked forward to con- Policy/Government Relations: The Several conferences have taken advan- tributing to the magazine. newly-formed Policy / Goverment tage of this opportunity. Hovy noted Relations committee will be conduct- that the most important challenge fac- Funding Requests ing a survey, and will convene its first ing AAAI is the retention of members CRA-W: Tom Dietterich reported that meeting after that survey is complete. through the development of programs AAAI had received a request from CRA- Membership: Ed Hovy reported that that serve the needs of its members. W for $15,000.00 in support of their reduced membership fees for weak cur- Tom Dietterich thanked Hovy for his efforts. He proposed that AAAI con- rency countries have been instituted, service as chair of the Membership tribute $5,000.00, primarily in support and reminded the Council to review Committee, and noted that he is in the of outreach and diversity for women in

118 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News

The Arizona State University’s Robot Learning Class Demonstrated their Autonomous Robot Arm at AAAI-16. research. During the following discus- member. The Council also noted that formation of this committee as an ad sion, it was noted that CRA-W has had the AI Alert mailing list should be opt- hoc committee of the Executive Coun- difficulty of late securing funding from out rather than opt-in. An article in the cil. Francesca Rossi seconded the traditional sources, and would like to AI Magazine would help raise the visibil- motion, and it passed unanimously. In attract 100–200 more women at their ity of the site, which has far better cura- addition, the Council moved to conference, which supports women in tion then Wikipedia. appoint Wagstaff as chair of the com- their first three years of graduate study. mittee, which also passed with no The Council suggested that CRA-W be Focus Group Report opposing votes. encouraged to collocate their confer- Tom Dietterich reported that he ran a ence with AAAI, but also would like to focus group during AAAI to explore Media Committee see an increased effort to establish a new directions for AAAI. The group Tom Dietterich would like to create an AAAI subgroup of women. Julia helped develop a questionnaire reflect- ad hoc media committee, which would Hirschberg moved to support this ing their discussions, and this was sub- advise on and create social media request at the $5,000.00 level, and sequently circulated to the AAAI mem- opportunities for members, including Steve Smith seconded the motion. The bership. The top-ranked item by the a blog, and other features. Advice on motion passed. Charles Isbell will fol- membership was the pursuit of educa- appropriate members of the committee low up with CRA-W to offer compli- tion initiatives, including summer is needed. This committee would be a mentary one-year memberships to schools for college freshmen, develop- subcommittee of the Publications award recipients. ment of course materials, and continu- Committee, and might also oversee AI Topics: Tom Dietterich noted that ing education opportunities for AAAI the AI Topics website. Dietterich will Bruce Buchanan and Reid Smith would members. As a result, Dietterich is seek- work on finding an appropriate chair like to continue AI Topics, but fund it ing to establish a Committee on Edu- for the committee. Ted Senator moved via membership revenue, rather than an cation, and asking the members to to create the ad hoc committee, which NSF grant, as it has been for the past sev- study and implement one of the ideas was seconded by Steve Smith. The eral years. While this may be possible, it detailed in the survey. He is seeking motion passed. was decided that a clearer proposal volunteers from the Council. Kiri Tom Dietterich thanked everyone needs to be developed to establish what Wagstaff volunteered to help with this for their participation, and the meet- the exact dollar amount would be per committee, and moved to approve the ing was adjourned at 8:01 AM PDT.

SPRING 2016 119