AAAI News AAAI News Winter News from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence AAAI-18 Registration Student Activities looking for internships or jobs to meet with representatives from over 30 com - As part of its outreach to students, Is Open! panies and academia in an informal AAAI-18 will continue several special "meet-and-greet" atmosphere. If you AAAI-18 registration information is programs specifically for students, are representing a company, research now available at aaai.org/aaai18, and including the Doctoral Consortium, organization or university and would online registration can be completed at the Student Abstract Program, Lunch like to participate in the job fair, please regonline.com/aaai18. The deadline with a Fellow, and the Volunteer Pro - send an email with your contact infor - for late registration rates is January 5, gram, in addition to the following: 2018. Complete tutorial and workshop mation to [email protected] no later than January 5. The organizers of information, as well as other special Student Reception the AAAI/ACM SIGAI Job Fair are John program information is available at AAAI will welcome all students to Dickerson (University of Maryland, these sites. AAAI-18 by hosting an evening stu - USA) and Nicholas Mattei (IBM, USA). dent reception on Friday, February 2. Make Your Hotel Reservation Although the reception is especially The Winograd Now! beneficial to new students at the con - Schema Challenge AAAI has reserved a block of rooms at ference, all are welcome! Please join us and make all the newcomers welcome! Nuance Communications, Inc. is spon - the Hilton New Orleans Riverside at soring a competition to encourage reduced conference rates. The cut-off Breakfast with Champions: A efforts to develop programs that can date for conference rate reservations is Women’s Mentoring Event solve the Winograd Schema Challenge, Wednesday, January 3, 2018 at 5:00pm an alternative to the Turing Test devel - AAAI will hold its fourth women's New Orleans time. Please see oped by Hector Levesque, winner of mentoring event for students and jun - aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI-18/hotel- the 2013 IJCAI Award for Research ior women professionals to meet with and-travel/ for complete information. Excellence. The test will be organized, senior women in artificial intelligence. administered, and evaluated by Com - Breakfast with Champions will be held AAAI-18 Invited monsenseReasoning.org which is ded - Monday morning, February 5. Speaker Program icated to furthering and promoting In addition to over 950 accepted tech - AAAI/ACM SIGAI Job Fair research in the field of automated com - monsense reasoning. Contestants nical papers, the AAAI-18 technical The 2018 AAAI/ACM Job Fair will be should email Charles Ortiz charles. program will include an outstanding held Monday, February 5 at 4:00 – 6:00 [email protected] stating their intent line-up of invited speakers. A prelimi - pm. The formal two-hour event will be to enter the contest no later than Jan - nary list of invited presentations preceded by an opportunity for several uary 20, 2018. For complete informa - includes Cynthia Dwork (Harvard / hours of informal mingling. The Job tio, please see aaai.org/Conferences/ Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Fair is open to all AAAI-18 technical AAAI-18/aaai18winograd/. Study); Zoubin Ghahramani (Universi - registrants. All other participants (em - ty of Cambridge / Uber); Joseph Hal - ployers and job seekers) must register pern (Cornell University), speaking on by selecting the appropriate category AAAI Executive Council Actual Causality: A Survey; Charles at the AAAI registration site (see Meeting Minutes Isbell (Georgia Institute of Technolo - aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI-18/regis - gy); and Percy Liang (Stanford Univer - tration). The AAAI Executive Council Meeting sity), speaking on How Should We The 2018 AAAI/ACM Job Fair is a took place in San Francisco, California, Evaluate Machine Learning for AI?. place for students and professionals USA on February 5, 2017. WINTER 2017 107 AAAI News dled requests from participants who could not attend due to immigration Second Call for Nominations for issues. Luckily, the number was not 2018 Executive Council Election large, but a full refund, where indicat - The 2018 Nominating Committee is seeking nominations from the AAAI ed and/or publication in the proceed - membership for the positions of AAAI President-Elect and Executive ings if an accepted author were both Councilor. In 2018, AAAI members will elect one individual to serve a accommodated. In addition, authors two-year term as president-elect, followed by two years as president, and were given the option of presenting finally, two years as immediate past president. In addition, members will their work via video or by delegating to elect four new councilors to serve three-year terms on the AAAI Execu - a colleague. Shlomo Zilberstein sug - tive Council. All elected officers and councilors are expected to attend all gested that there may be ways for oth - council meetings each year (usually 1-2 in person and 1-2 via telecon), er conferences, such as IJCAI, to work and actively participate in AAAI activities. Nominees must be current with AAAI to accommodate author members of AAAI. The Nominating Committee encourages all regular needs should the issue persist or grow AAAI members in good standing to place an individual's name before in the future. Kambhampati also noted them for consideration. (Student and institutional members are not eli - that the first meeting of the trustees for gible to submit candidates' names.) The Nominating Committee, in turn, the Partnership in AI was held on the will nominate two candidates for president-elect and eight candidates previous Friday. AAAI is a member of for councilor in early spring. In addition to members' recommendations, this group, as they recently opened up the committee will actively recruit individuals in order to provide a bal - membership to nonprofits and soci - anced slate of candidates. AAAI regular members will vote in late spring, eties in the field. There were 6 compa - and the new members of the Executive Council will be installed in the nies and 6 nonprofits represented, and summer of 2018. Kambhampati reported that the goals To submit a candidate's name for consideration, please send the fol - of the group are well aligned with lowing information to Carol Hamilton, Executive Director, AAAI, 2275 AAAI efforts. East Bayshore Road, Suite 160, Palo Alto, CA 94303; by fax to 650/321- 4457; or by email to [email protected]: Fellows/Awards • Name Committee Report • Affiliation Tom Dietterich reported that the pool • City, State or Province, Country of nominees for Fellow in 2017 con - tained only one woman and in the end • Email address no female honorees. The Fellows Selec - • URL tion Committee is committed to • Year of membership in AAAI broadening the scope of the nomina - • Approximate number of AAAI publications tions to include more deserving senior • At least two sentences describing the candidate and why he or she would members of the community and more be a good candidate diversity in 2018. He also reported that Please include any additional information or recommendations that the Awards Committee used semantic would be helpful to the Nominating Committee. Nominators should scholar to get impact of papers for the contact candidates prior to submitting their names to verify that they selection of the Classic Paper Award. are willing to serve, should they be elected. The deadline for nomina - Other awards given in 2017 were the tions is January 15, 2018. Distinguished Service Award (James Hendler), the Feigenbaum Prize (Yoav Shoham), and the AAAI/EAAI Out - standing Educator Award (Sebastian Thrun). Dietterich also reported that he has Attending: Rao Kambhampati, Yolan - bers of the Executive Council. The been working with ACM SIGAI on the da Gil, Tom Dietterich, Ted Senator, minutes of the November 2016 meet - establishment of a joint AI doctoral David Smith, Boi Faltings (partial), Blai ing were approved, pending one mod - dissertation award. The working com - Bonet, Sonia Chernova, Vince ification. mittee is not advocating a cash prize, Conitzer, Ashok Goel, Charles Isbell, Kambhampati presented some brief but would like to offer the winner the David Leake, Diane Litman (via skype), remarks on a variety of subjects. He opportunity to speak at AAAI and to Mausam (via skype), Jennifer Neville, announced that the current registra - cover registration and travel costs to do Francesca Rossi, Steve Smith, Kiri tion count was 1,792, and this was so. A draft proposal was circulated and Wagstaff, Qiang Yang, Shlomo Zilber - expected to increase during the next discussed by the Executive Council. stein, Carol Hamilton two days. This is the highest registra - One suggestion was to get a sponsor Not Attending: Michela Milano tion since the early 1990s. There was a for a monetary award, or to split a cash Kambhampati welcomed the mem - brief discussion about how AAAI han - prize between the two organizations 108 AI MAGAZINE AAAI News (approximately $500). The Council that the double-blind review helps mit - Finally, the Council discussed the also discussed the creation of a named igate the problem of multiple submis - ongoing issue of finding a good algo - award with an endowment to support sions, so should be continued. The rithm for assigning papers, especially future awards. In addition, they rec - overall consensus was that no formal in light of the dramatically increasing ommended the award be listed by policy will be instituted, but program number of submissions and the grow - department and not just by university. chairs may wish to examine things ing program committee. Zilberstein Dietterich noted that the approval by more closely at the time that the CFP is noted that Shaul Markovitch had cre - ACM will take a long time, and that written.