Reports AAAI-08 and IAAI-08 Conferences Provide Focal Point for AI Sara Reese Hedberg n This summer’s AAAI Conference on Artifi- cial Intelligence (AAAI-08) and its sister T Conference on Innovative Applications of AI his summer’s AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI- (IAAI-08) continued their long tradition of 08) and its sister Conference on Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI- being a focal point of AI. This year’s confer- 08) continued their long tradition of being a focal point of AI. “The ences were held in Chicago at the Hyatt Re- annual AAAI conference is a nexus for exchanging the latest ideas in gency McCormick Place, July 13–17, 2008. The multidimensional conference offerings the field,” according to Eric Horvitz, president of AAAI and a research included nine invited talks, 251 technical manager at Microsoft Research. This year’s conferences were held in papers, 22 innovative applications of AI pa- Chicago at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, July 13–17, 2008. pers, three competitions (poker, AI video, The multidimensional conference offerings included nine invited and general game playing), three special talks, 251 technical papers, 22 innovative applications of AI papers, tracks (AI and the web, integrated intelli- three competitions (poker, AI video, and general game playing), three gence, and physically grounded AI), 15 tu- special tracks (AI and the web, integrated intelligence, and physically torials, 15 workshops, and 11 intelligent grounded AI), 15 tutorials, 15 workshops, and 11 intelligent system system demonstrations, as well as a number of awards, a doctoral consortium, student demonstrations, as well as a number of awards, a doctoral consortium, poster session and programs, and a vendor student poster session and programs, and a vendor exhibit. This trans- exhibit. This translated into a plethora of lated into a plethora of choices for the 921 conference attendees. An choices for the 921 conference attendees. An additional 175 people exclusively attended the tutorials, workshops, additional 175 people exclusively attended or exhibit. the tutorials, workshops, or exhibit. Highly Distinguished Invited Speakers Perhaps one of the true litmus tests of any conference is the caliber of the invited speakers. The AAAI-08 and IAAI-08 conferences brought Copyright © 2009, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved. ISSN 0738-4602 SPRING 2009 87 Reports Eric Horvitz Delivers His AAAI Presidential Address at AAAI-08. together nine distinguished speakers of Evolutionary History of the Human cial computing networks (“Sense and including Eric Horvitz (AAAI president Genome.” Sensibility: Sentiment Analysis, Opin- and research manager at Microsoft Re- The distinguished Robert S. Engle- ion Mining, and the Computational search) who gave his AAAI presidential more Memorial Award Lecture was de- Treatment of Subjective Language”), address, “Artificial Intelligence in the livered by Kenneth Ford (Florida Insti- while Seth C. Goldstein (Carnegie Open World.”1 tute for Human and Machine Cog- Mel lon University) discussed revolu- Chris Urmson (Carnegie Mellon nition). In his lecture, “Toward Cogni- tionary work in self-reconfiguring pro- University), a leading member of the tive Prostheses,” Ford discussed hu- grammable matter composed of en- DARPA Urban Grand Challenge win- man-centered computing to amplify sembles of submillimeter robots in his ning team, described the race and win- human cognition and perception. talk, “Realizing Claytronics: A Chal- ning vehicle in his talk, “Boss, the Ur- In other invited talks, Stuart Russell lenge for AI.” ban Challenge, and the Promise of (University of California, Berkeley) ex- Autonomous Driving,” while Mark amined what has been achieved in AI Big Changes Come to Newman (University of Michigan) de- and what remains to be done to reach scribed some of the study of networks the goals imagined by the early AI pi- Mobile Robot Events across disciplines such as mathemat- oneers (“What Is to Be Done?”), Alex- The 2008 mobile robot events saw a ics, sociology, computer science, ei A. Efros (Carnegie Mellon Universi- significant departure from the past 16 physics, biology, and so on and pre- ty) discussed how to enable computers years of the Mobile Robot Competi- sented promising new research in ma- to reason about a scene from a photo- tion and Exhibition. Instead of the chine learning for network analysis in graph (“From Images to Scenes: Using popular competition, which has his talk, “Making Sense of Complex Lots of Data to Infer Geometric, Pho- pushed the envelope of mobile robot- Networks.” David Haussler (University tometric, and Semantic Scene Proper- ics since its inception, this year was of California, Santa Cruz) traced the ties from a Single Image”), and Lillian host to a Robot Workshop and Exhibi- growing understanding of the human Lee (Cornell University) covered work tion. genome in his talk, “100 Million Years in analyzing opinions expressed in so- The workshop afforded an opportu- 88 AI MAGAZINE Reports nity to reflect on what has been achieved in mobile robotics and to dis- cuss possible future directions to move the science forward. Distinguished re- searchers from 15 leading U.S. univer- sities (including Stanford, the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon), three companies (Microsoft Research, Boeing Phantom Works, and Hanson Robotics), as well as program directors from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) discussed current re- search as well as their visions for the future of robots. The focus was on the emerging realm of robots and creativ- ity, and mobility and manipulation. The robot exhibition was a fascinat- ing amalgamation of cutting-edge ex- perimental robots such as a humanoid robot that extemporaneously danced to music, the first improvisational per- cussionist robot, a cuddly stuffed-ani- mallike robot initially being used to study early childhood social develop- ment, an assistive robot that opens doors and elevators it has never seen AAAI-08 Technical Program Cochairs Dieter Fox and Carla Gomes. before, and a snakelike articulated ro- bot that climbed up willing attendees’ legs (protective jeans required.) miere venue for demonstrating cur- Game Playing Competition continues rent programs. to push the edges of this vein of re- Competitions The bar was raised significantly this search. Unlike specialized game play- Fuel Innovations year for two-player matches, along ers such as the much-touted Deep with the addition of a multiplayer Blue, the IBM program that beat world “AAAI has continued to promote chal- competition. “This year there was a chess champion Garry Kasparov in lenging competitions that energize re- great turnout and a high level of com- 1997, a general game player accepts searchers and fuel innovations,” Eric petition,” said Andrew Gilpin, the game descriptions at run time and can Horvitz says of this year’s competi- competition chair. “The 2008 compe- play the game without human inter- tions, “and these matches come to a tition had 19 entries from 12 research vention. While this line of research is head at the conference.” This year’s matches included competitions in groups hailing from six countries. Al- inherently interesting, it is already computer poker, general game play- most all of the entries played at a high showing practical applicability in ar- ing, and AI videos. “Such challenges level and included all of the top per- eas such as business process manage- can help to elucidate core principles of forming programs from previous years ment, e-commerce, and military oper- intelligence,” he concluded. (although they have each been im- ations. The AAAI computer poker competi- proved significantly). The entries this In 2008, the competition chal- tion, now in its third year, showcased year improved significantly over the lenged the general game players by state-of-the-art intelligent programs previous years’ entries. Interestingly, comparing their performance in a va- for playing poker. Recently, poker has the winning program of the six-player riety of previously unseen games. become an important challenge prob- competition was based on research Competition began in May 2008 with lem for AI because, unlike chess, play- performed several years ago, so it is the championship round held in ers do not know what cards the other clear there is still a huge amount of re- Chicago during the conference with players have, hence the information is search ground to be covered in multi- eight programs competing represent- “imperfect.” Thus traditional AI game- player poker.”2 The next competition ing six countries. “There was stronger playing techniques do not apply, and is planned for AAAI-09 in Atlanta, play than in previous years,” notes Er- novel approaches are needed. AAAI’s Georgia. ic Schkufza, the competition’s cochair. competition continues to be the pre- Now in its fourth year, the General “There were fun new games for the fi- SPRING 2009 89 Reports The Poster Session was Well Attended. nal rounds of competition designed to dents to consider entering the field of terpiece. (We’d love to encourage the highlight how general the players are; AI.” creation of similar ones for all areas of for instance, tic-tac-chess-checkers- While going about the serious busi- AI.)” four.”3 The fifth General Game Play- ness of the competition, this group This year’s entries ranged from a ing Competition is planned for the had some good old fashioned fun. video of bioinspired swarming flying 2009 IJCAI conference (cosponsored “Several of the videos had something robots to another documenting a sys- by AAAI) in Pasadena this coming fun in them,” says Aha. “Take, for ex- tem that helps art experts authenticate summer. ample, the best narrative video by alleged Van Gogh paintings.4 Plans are Back for its second year, the lively AI David Wilson (University of North underway for next summer’s competi- video competition entertained and ed- Carolina).