Scientists Look at Promise, Peril of Technology. "Scientists meeting in Los Angeles say technology offers the hope of a better world, but presents hazards if mishandled.... [T]he University of Southern California and the journal'Science' convened a panel of scientific innovators to look at the promise and the perils of technology.--There'You've got to ask, do we now have the scientific literacy in the public to be able to have informed dialogues about what these issues are really going to mean to civilization, to mankind itself,' he said. 'If we don't have the right kind of scientific literacy, all scientific debate becomes ideological.' The panelists say promoting scientific literacy is a challenge but a necessary goal, as new technologies change our society.... Raymond Kurzweil is a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence....

Column n The Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence column discusses and shares innovative educational approaches that teach or leverage AI and its many subfields at all levels of education (K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels). By restructuring the course into a format that was roughly half lecture and half small-group problem solving, I was able to significantly increase student engagement, their understanding and retention of difficult concepts, and my own enjoyment in teaching the class. The ACTIVE Center's design was based on research on the power of collaborative learning to promote student success and retention, particularly for women, underrepresented minorities, and transfer students, who benefit greatly from building stronger connections with their peers through shared active learning experiences (Zhao, Carini, and Kuh 2006; Rypisi, Malcolm, and Kim 2009; Kahveci, Southerland, and Gilmer 2006). The ACTIVE Center, a 40-student classroom, includes movable furniture (20 trapezoidal tables and 40 lightweight rolling chairs) that is typically grouped into 10 hexagonal table clusters but that can also be arranged into lecture-style rows, a boardroom or seminar-style rectangular layout, or individual pair-activity tables. The room also has an Epson Brightlink "smart projector" at the front of the room, four flat-panel displays (which can be driven centrally by the instructor's laptop or individually through HDMI ports), and 10 rolling 4 x 6 foot whiteboards for use during group problem-solving activities, as well as smaller, portable tabletop whiteboards.

AAAI-17 Has Moved in Time and Place! We are delighted to announce that AAAI-17 will be held February 4-9 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square! AAAI-17 program cochairs Shaul Markovitch and Satinder Singh will continue the traditions of past years with a strong technical program, including three special tracks, as well as rich outreach programs for students, women, and sister conferences. Special technical tracks will include cognitive systems, computational sustainability, and integrated systems. For complete details on the technical program, and the call for papers, please see www.aaai.org/aaai17.php. San Francisco is full of delights for every visitor.

This honor was announced at the recent AAAI-16 Conference in Phoenix. Senior Member status is designed to recognize AAAI members who have achieved significant accomplishments within the field of artificial intelligence. To be eligible for nomination for Senior Member, candidates must be consecutive members of AAAI for at least five years and have been active in the professional arena for at least ten years. Tom Dietterich, AAAI President, Manuela Veloso, AAAI Past President and Awards Committee Chair, and Rao Kambhampati, AAAI President-Elect, presented the AAAI Awards in February at AAAI-16 in Phoenix. The 2016 AAAI Classic Paper Award was given to the authors of the two papers deemed most influential from the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, held in 1998 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

The Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16) and the Twenty-Eighth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-16) will be held February 12-17 at the Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Phoenix is the gateway to the Grand Canyon, and its history is a testament to the spirit of puebloans, ranchers, miners, and visionaries. Nearby Tempe is the site of Arizona State University, home of a leading AI research community. For local information, please visit the Phoenix Visitors site at www.visitphoenix.com. AAAI-16 Registration is now available at aaai.org/aaai16, and online registration can be completed at regonline.

The Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16) and the Twenty-Eighth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-16) will be held February 12-17 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Phoenix is America's sixth largest city, yet still has real cowboys, rugged mountains, and the kind of cactus most people see only in cartoons. Phoenix is the gateway to the Grand Canyon, and its history is a testament to the spirit of puebloans, ranchers, miners, and visionaries. Projected against this rich backdrop is a panorama of urban sophistication, with a host of museums, including the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park and the Heard Museum, sports stadiums, restaurants, and shopping. Nearby Tempe is the site of Arizona State University, home of a leading AI research community.

AAAI-15 and IAAI-15 Move to the Winter! The Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-15) and the Twenty-Seventh Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-15) will be held January 25-29 at the Hyatt Regency Austin in Austin, Texas, USA. Austin, the Live Music Capital of the World, and the state capital of Texas, is home to one of the largest and oldest communities of artificial intelligence researchers in the world, with more than a dozen AIrelated labs at the University of Texas at Austin. AAAI is working closely with the local AI community to create opportunities for attendees to experience AI in Texas! Attendees can also enjoy nearly 200 music venues that feature everything from rock and blues to country and jazz every night of the week.

Check Out the New AAAI Member Site! AAAI is pleased to announce the launch of the new AAAI member site. By now you should have received email and login information for the new AAAI member site. Using this site, you can renew your membership in AAAI and update your contact information directly. In addition, you will be directly connected with other members of the largest worldwide AI community via the AAAI online directory and other social media features. Direct links are available for new AI Magazine features, such as the online and app versions.

Please Join us for the 25th AAAI Conference in San Francisco! The Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-11) will be held August 7-8, 2011, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in San Francisco, California. The Twenty-Third Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-11) will be collocated with AAAI-11, and will be held August 9-11 (see www.aaai.org/ The AAAI program cochairs for 2011, Wolfram Burgard (University of Strathclyde, UK) and Dan Roth (Northwestern University) will continue the innovations introduced during the past several years of the conference, including a new special track on Computational Sustainability and AI and the second Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence. An overview of the special tracks is included in this issue of the AAAI News. For the full technical Call for Participation, as well as all program deadlines and guidelines, please visit the AAAI-11 website at www.aaai.org/

We hope you are planning to join us for the IJCAI and IAAI conferences in Pasadena, California, July 11-17, 2009. The IJCAI-09 technical program will kick off with an opening ceremony and reception on Monday, July 13. The reception will be held at the Caltech Athenaeum, where guests will be entertained by a homegrown Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) jazz musical group. Both events have an outstanding program of invited presentations. Hal R. Varian (University of California, Berkeley and Google) will deliver his keynote address titled "Computer Mediated Transactions" on Tuesday morning, July 14.