Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence AAAI-99 is the Sixteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The purpose of this conference is to promote research in AI and scientific interchange among AI researchers and practitioners. New syntheses that bring together work in sub-disciplines of AI toward the creation of complete systems (e.g. Scaling studies of AI systems, theory to support large scale systems, experimental work in bringing AI out of the laboratory, (e.g. The review criteria will be updated to include emphasis on these themes.

July 11, 1993 Washington, DC Participants: Pat Hayes, Danny Bobrow, Randy Davis, Barbara Grosz, Norm Nielsen, Joe Bates, Paul Cohen, Tom Dean, Johan de Kleer, Bob Engelmore, Ed Feigenbaum, Richard Fikes, Ken Ford, Mark Fox, Peter Friedland, Barbara Hayes-Roth, Jim Hendler, Elaine Kant, Phil Klahr, Benjamin Kuipers, Ramesh Patil, Candy Sidner, Bill Swartout, Katia Sycara, Beverly Woolf, Carol Hamilton Pat Hayes called the meeting to order with the introduction of the newly elected officer and councilors of AAAI. Randy Davis has been elected to a two-year term as President-Elect. Tom Dean, Bob Engelmore, Peter Friedland, and Ramesh Patil have all been elected to three-year terms as AAAI councilors. Hayes gave a special thanks to retiring councilors Tom Dietterich, Richard Fikes, Mark Fox, and Barbara Hayes-Roth for their generous donations of time and energy over the past three years. Hayes also presented Danny Bobrow with a special plaque, noting his many years of service to AAAI.

Pat Hayes introduced Norm Nielsen of SRI International, who will serve as AAAI's new Secretary/Treasurer. Nielsen, who has been a member of the finance committee for four years, replaces Bruce Buchanan, who served as Secretary/Treasurer for the last seven years. On behalf of all the members of AAAI, Pat Hayes thanked Bruce for his conscientious service. An informal dinner was held in February to acknowledge Bruce's contribution, since he could not be present for the Executive Council meeting. Finance Committee: Norm Nielsen presented the Finance Report, noting that the most drastic change from 1992 is in Exhibits revenue, which has plummeted as a result of the industry redirection to other areas.

James Peters, coauthor of "A Knowledge-Based Model of Audit Risk," is an assistant professor in the Department of Accounting, College of Business Administration, University of Oregon. Hans Berliner, author of the Hitech Computer Chess report, is a senior scientist in the Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213. R. Peter Bonasso, author of "An Assessment of What AI Can Do for Battle Management--A Report of the First AAAI Workshop on AI Applications to Battle Management" is the department head of the Artificial Intelligence Technical Center in The MITRE Corporation, Washington 01 Operations division, 7525 Colshire Drive, Mclean, VA 22102. His research interests include commonsense reasoning and qualitative processes with a view toward applications to military systems. Vasant Dhar, coauthor of "A Knowledge-Based Model of Audit Risk," is an associate professor in the Department of Information Systems, New York University.

At AAAI-91, AAAI conducted an experiment, running short (5 to 15 minute) videotapes of research projects and lectures, in the conference registration area. Conference attendees were pleased with the experiment, so AAAI would like to expand the number of tapes it has available for showing at AAAI-92 in San Jose, California (12-17 July). The conference is an excellent opportunity for your lab's research efforts to be shown to a large portion of the AI community. AAAI is looking for short tapes that can be run in parallel on several screens. Please do not send tapes of a particular project or lecture but, rather, tapes that present broad descriptions of different programs, projects, and systems that are used within your lab.

At this summer's conference in Boston, Jon Doyle, chair of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)'s SIGART, approached Danny Bobrow and myself about creating a joint membership directory. Viewing this joint directory as a great idea, we approached Peter Patel-Schneider, Secretary of Canadian Studies in Computational Linguistics and Intelligence (CSCLI), about including CSCLI members. Peter tentatively agreed, contingent on his board's agreeing to the joint effort. It is hoped that we can also include the budding Mexican AI society's members in the directory. The purpose of the directory is not only to provide a listing of the names of all these societies' members but also to serve as a general information resource about North American AI research centers, AI companies, and universities and colleges with AI studies.

A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ARTICLE I. NAME The name of this corporation shall be the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). PURPOSE This corporation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation and is not organized for the private gain of any person. It is organized under the California Nonprofit Corporation Law for scientific and educational purposes in the field of artificial intelligence. Notwithstanding any other provision of these articles, the corporation shall not carry on any other activities not permitted to be carried on: (i) by a corporation exempt from Federal Income Tax under Section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) by a corporation, contributions to which are deductible under Section 170 (c)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code. DEDICATION AND DISSOLUTION The property of this corporation is irrevocably dedicated to educational and scientific purposes, and no part of the net income or assets of this organization shall ever inure to the benefit of any councilor, officer, or member thereof or to the benefit of any private persons.

July Conference Highlights Again this year, AAAI is staging the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference concurrently with the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, with 19 deployed applications selected for presentation from entries from around the world. The issues-oriented AIon-Line interactive panel sessions add another dimension to the conference, promising give-and-take discussions about AI in operation. AAAI-92 offers a series of technical sessions, panels, and forums that present the newest research in artificial intelligence alongside the most innovative applications of AI. The National Conference is the year's largest meeting ground for those interested in AI, from scientific, academic, and business communities. This year's program is particularly diverse, with concentration on research results that bridge the gaps between the different AI technologies and the new directions that will provide future opportunities.

With the increase in AAAI Executive Council activities in the past year, we've decided to establish a news column to appear in every issue of the This column will serve several purposes, including membership and conference attendence statistics, reports on AAAIsponsored workshops, financial data, Council Committee activities, and other ongoing projects pursued by the society. We welcome your feedback, particularly requests for information that would be valuable to you. Please send suggestions for future news columns by electronic mail to aaai-news@sumex-aim.stanford.edu. Suggestions, comments, and questions on all aspects of the society are welcome. We can't promise that every item will appear in the magazine, but we'll do our best to respond personally.