AI Magazine Volume 26 Number 4 (2006)(2005) (© AAAI) 25th Anniversary Issue Artificial Intelligence: The Next Twenty-Five Years Edited by Matthew Stone and Haym Hirsh ■ Through this collection of programmatic state- that celebrates the exciting new work that AI ments from key figures in the field, we chart the researchers are currently engaged in. At the progress of AI and survey current and future direc- same time, we hope to help to articulate, to tions for AI research and the AI community. readers thinking of taking up AI research, the rewards that practitioners can expect to find in our mature discipline. And even if you’re a stranger to AI, we think you’ll enjoy this inside e know—with a title like that, you’re peek at the ways AI researchers talk about what expecting something awful. You’re they really do. on the lookout for fanciful prognos- W We asked our contributors to comment on tications about technology: Someday comput- goals that drive current research in AI; on ways ers will fit in a suitcase and have a whole our current questions grow out of our past re- megabyte of memory. And you’re wary of lurid sults; on interactions that tie us together as a Hollywood visions of “the day the robots field; and on principles that can help to repre- come”: A spiderlike machine pins you to the sent our profession to society at large. We have wall and targets a point four inches behind your eyes with long and disturbing spikes. Your excerpted here from the responses we received last memory before it uploads you is of it ask- and edited them together to bring out some of ing, with some alien but unmistakable existen- the most distinctive themes. tial agony, what does this all mean? We have grouped the discussion around five We are not here to offer a collection of fic- broad topics. We begin in the first section tion. Artificial intelligence isn’t a nebulous goal (“Progress in AI”) by observing how far AI has that we hope—or fear—humanity one day come. After decades of research, techniques de- achieves. AI is an established research practice, veloped within AI don’t just inform our under- with demonstrated successes and a clear trajec- standing of complex real-world behavior. AI tory for its immediate future. David Leake, the has advanced the boundaries of computer sci- editor-in-chief of AI Magazine, has invited us to ence and shaped users’ everyday experiences take you on a tour of AI practice as it has been with computer systems. We continue in the playing out across a range of subcommunities, second section (“The AI Journey: Getting around the whole world, among a diverse com- Here”) by surveying contributors’ experience munity of scientists. doing AI. This section offers a more intimate For those of us already involved in AI, we glimpse inside the progress that AI has made as hope this survey will open up a conversation our contributors explain how their approaches Copyright © 2005, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved. 0738-4602-2005 / $2.00 WINTER 2005 85 25th Anniversary Issue to central questions in the field have another’s interests and new research to been formed and transformed over the explore together. As this research brings years by their involvement in research results, it cements these intellectual con- and in the AI community. nections in new kinds of computer sys- The third section (“The AI Journey: Fu- tems and in a deeper understanding of ture Challenges”) looks forward to char- human experience. We’re pleased and acterize some of the new principles, tech- honored to present just a slice of a snap- niques, and opportunities that define the shot of this dynamic process. Our only ongoing agenda for AI. By and large, our prediction for the next 25 years is that it contributors expect to take up research will continue to bring us unexpected in- challenges that integrate and transcend sights and connections to one another. the traditional subfields of AI as part of Every member of AAAI ideally deserves new, inclusive communities organized to contribute to this article. But, obvious- around ambitious new projects. They en- ly, space limits do not make that possible, vision big teams solving big problems— and thus we solicited feedback from far designing new fundamental techniques too small a number of the many people for representation and learning that fit who are playing leadership roles in our Jim Hendler new computational models of percep- field. We don’t imagine that what we tion, human behavior and social interac- have is definitive; we have set up a web- tion, natural language, and intelligent ro- site, at www.ai.rutgers.edu/aaai25, to bots’ own open-ended activity. The continue the discussion. Your contribu- fourth section (“Shaping the Journey”) tion remains welcome. considers the community building that can make such investigations possible. Progress in AI We have a lot to do to facilitate the kind of research we think we need, but a lot of AI is thriving. Many decades’ efforts of experience to draw on—from creating re- many talented individuals have resulted sources for collaborative research, to es- in the techniques of AI occupying a cen- tablishing meetings and organizations, to tral place throughout the discipline of training undergraduates and graduate computing. The capacity for intelligent students and administering research in- behavior is now a central part of people’s stitutes. We close, in the fifth section understanding of and experience with (“Closing Thoughts”), with some re- computer technology. AI continues to minders of why we can expect takers for strengthen and ramify its connections to this substantial undertaking: the excite- neighboring disciplines. The multifaceted nature of AI today is Rodney Brooks ment, the satisfaction, and the impor- tance of creating intelligent artifacts. a sign of the range and diversity of its suc- Across the statements contributors cess. We begin with contributions observ- sent us, we see how thoroughly AI has ing the successes we often neglect to matured into a collaborative process of mention when we consider AI’s progress. genuine discovery. AI now seems quite Last night I saw a prescreening of the different from what would have been movie Stealth, the latest science fiction predicted twenty-five years ago: that fact flick in which an artificially intelligent only highlights the progress we have machine (in this case an unmanned made. AI continues to embrace new per- combat air vehicle) stars in a major role. The movie has a couple of scenes that spectives and approaches, and we contin- pay homage to the 1968 film 2001: A ue to find new interplay among the com- Space Odyssey, in which HAL, the ad- plementary principles required for vanced AI computer, is a key character. general intelligence. What amazed me in the new movie was Our progress itself thus helps tie us to- a realization of just how far AI has come. gether as a community. Whenever new When I saw 2001, the idea of the talking confluences of ideas provide fertile new computer that understood language was ground for theory and experiment, they so cool that I decided then and there reconnect AI researchers into an evolving that I wanted to be an AI scientist some- day. In Stealth, the AI carries on normal network of mutual support, friendship, conversation with humans, flies a high- and fun. Even 50 years after the Dart- powered airplane, and shows many hu- mouth conference, and 25 years after the man-level capabilities without it really founding of AAAI, AI researchers contin- raising an eyebrow—the plot revolves ue to find new points of overlap in one around its actions (and emotions), not 86 AI MAGAZINE 25th Anniversary Issue around how “cool” it is that a computer reasoning, in machine learning, and can do these things. more. On the practical side, AI methods From the point of view of the AI vi- now form a key component in a wide va- sion, we’ve already achieved many of the riety of real-world applications. things the field’s founders used for moti- —Daphne Koller, Stanford University vators: for example, a computer beat the world’s chess champ, commercial sys- Fifty years into AI’s U.S. history and 25 tems are exploiting continually improv- years into AAAI’s history, we’ve come a ing voice and speech capabilities, there long way. There are a wide variety of de- are robots running around the surface of ployed applications based on AI or incor- Mars, and the word processor I’m using porating AI ideas, especially applications to write this comment helps to correct involving machine learning, data min- my grammar mistakes. We’ve grown ing, vision, natural language processing, from a field with one conference to one planning, and robotics. A large fraction in which many subareas hold well-at- of the most exciting opportunities for re- tended conferences on a regular basis search lie on the interdisciplinary bound- and in which it is rare to see a university aries of AI with computer science (sys- that does not include AI in its undergrad- tems, graphics, theory, and so on), uate curriculum. We in the field are biology, linguistics, engineering, and sci- Patrick Winston sometimes too fast to recognize our own ence. Vastly increased computing power faults and too slow to realize just how has made it possible to deal with realisti- amazingly far we’ve come in such a short cally large though specialized tasks. time. —David Waltz, Columbia University —Jim Hendler, University of Maryland The AI success was once composed of a Artificial intelligence has enjoyed tre- list of offshoot technologies, from time mendous success over the last twenty five sharing to functional programming.