This is a partial set of slides used during the Institute. They are generously provided by some of the lecturers/speakers and hosted in this server as a means to disseminate the contents of the Institute.

Here is an excellent ILP reference, somewhat older but publicly available. The most recent issue of SIGKDD Explorations is a special issue devoted to multi-relational data mining.

The course consists of lectures for the first two-thirds of the semester. Homework problems and programming assignments illustrate the lecture material. The programs are not long; the intent is to gain some exposure to several kinds of programming systems. The latter part of the semester covers readings in the research literature; students are expected to present one or two papers to the class. Many of the world's best researchers in automatic programming are in Austin: Jim Browne, Don Batory, Elaine Kant, Ira Baxter, Ted Biggerstaff; they will be invited to present guest lectures to describe their work.

Sam was a brilliant scientist and engineer whose work deeply influenced the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, applied mathematics, neural computation, and observational science. He was also a strong advocate for the use of machine learning and computational statistics for scientific data analysis and discovery. Sam T. Roweis was born on April 27, 1972. He graduated from secondary school as valedictorian of the University of Toronto Schools in 1990, and obtained a bachelor's degree with honours from the University of Toronto Engineering Science Program four years later. His first exposure to AI and neural computation occured when--as an exceptional undergraduate--he took the graduate-level Neural Network course taught by Geoffrey Hinton.

Recently there has been renewed interest in game theory in several research disciplines, with its uses ranging from the modeling of evolution to the design of distributed protocols. In the AI community, game theory is emerging as the dominant formalism for studying strategic and cooperative interaction in multi-agent systems. Classical work provides rich mathematical foundations and equilibrium concepts, but relatively little in the way of computational and representational insights that would allow game theory to scale up to large, complex systems. The rapidly emerging field of computational game theory is addressing such algorithmic issues, and this tutorial will provide a survey of developments so far. As the NIPS community is well-poised to make significant contributions to this area, special emphasis will be placed on connections to more familiar topics.

ManpowerGroup, one of the world's largest jobs companies, released a report detailing how the technological revolution is going to change the employment market forever. The company released the report, entitled "The Skills Revolution," on conjunction with the World Economic Forum's meeting of the most powerful political and business leaders across the globe in Davos, Switzerland. It surveyed more than 18,000 employers across 43 countries and six industry sectors. While technological developments will cause greater automation, a decrease in headcount or slow growth in hiring in some areas, it will actually create a lot of jobs too, according to Manpower. But the key to this is to make sure the world's workforce "upskills" to be qualified enough to take on new positions.

Amazon has published an online guide explaining how to access its virtual assistant Alexa via a Raspberry Pi. The technique presents a lower-cost alternative to buying one of its Echo devices - which are not yet available outside of the US - and an incentive to gain computer skills. The walkthrough includes access to the necessary app data and certificates in order to link the budget computer up to the tech giant's servers. The Raspberry Pi pocket-sized computer was designed by a British charity to encourage children and others to learn how to write computer programs. More than eight million units have been sold or given away.

The National Information Infrastructure (NII) will have profound effects on the lives of every citizen. It promises to deliver to people in their homes and offices a vast array of information in many forms, changing the ways in which business is conducted, offering new educational opportunities, bringing geographically dispersed library resources and entertainment materials to everyone's doorstep. It will connect people to people, and help them with their jobs and tasks. For the NII to be useful, however, people will need easy and efficient access to its resources. Today's computers are complex and difficult to use, even for experts. The NII will be orders of magnitude more complex than current systems; it could easily become a labyrinth of databases and services that is inconvenient for experts and inaccessible to many Americans. The field of artificial intelligence (AI) can play a pivotal role in meeting major challenges of the NII. AI uses the theoretical and experimental tools of ...