This is the first presidential address of AAAI, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In the grand scheme of history of artificial intelligence (AI), this is surely a minor event. The field this scientific society represents has been thriving for quite some time. No doubt the society itself will make solid contributions to the health of our field. But it is too much to expect a presidential address to have a major impact. So what is the role of the presidential address and what is the significance of the first one? I believe its role is to set a tone, to provide an emphasis. I think the role of the first address is to take a stand about what that tone and emphasis should be-set expectations for future addresses and to communicate to my fellow presidents. Only two foci are really possible for a presidential address: the state of the society or the state of the science. I believe the latter to be correct focus. AAAI itself, its nature and its relationship to the larger society that surrounds it, are surely important. However, our main business is to help AI become a science -- albeit a science with a strong engineering flavor. Thus, though a president's address cannot be narrow or highly technical, it can certainly address a substantive issue. That is what I propose to do.

Bolt Beranek and Newman June 1981 was the closing date for the receipt of votes) The people listed below have been elected by the membership of the AAAI to the offices as indicated. AAAI Annual Meeting The election was special in several ways, in order to complete the initialization of officers and periods of tenure. The annual meeting of the AAAI will be held during the Both a president (for 1981-82) and a president-elect (who will IJCAI-RI meeting in Vancouver. The meeting will be held on serve as president for 1982-83) were elected. The IJCAI business president-elect would be on the ballot, however, no presidentelect meeting will also be held during the same period.

By-Laws of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

The Robotics Project (the "Hand-Eye Project") evolved within the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory under the guidance of John McCarthy, Les Earnest, Jerry Feldman, and Tom Binford. Major efforts have been undertaken to isolate and solve fundamental problems in computer vision, manipulation, and autonomous vehicles. Stereo vision and texture have been examined. Several generations of robot programming languages have resulted in AL, an intermediate-level language for commanding manipulation.

This overview takes a general look at search in problem solving, indicating some connections with topics considered in other Handbook chapters. The these general ideas are found in programs for natural second section considers algorithms that use these language understanding, information retrieval, automatic representations. In methods, which use information about the nature and this chapter of the Handbook we examine search as a tool structure of the problem domain to limit the search. Most of the Finally, the chapter reviews several well-known early examples considered are problems that are relatively easy programs based on search, together with some related to formalize. The first of these is a may be, however, that the description of a task-domain database, which describes both the current task-domain situation is too large for multiple versions to be stored situation and the goal.

AI research at CMU is closely integrated with other activities in the Computer Science Department, and to a major degree with ongoing research in the Psychology Department. Although there are over 50 faculty, staff and graduate students involved in various aspects of AI research, there is no administratively (or physically) separate AI laboratory. To underscore the interdisciplinary nature of our AI research, a significant fraction of the projects listed below are joint ventures between computer science and psychology.

Section 1. Principal Office The principal office of the corporation in the State of California shall be located in the City Section 2. Special Meetings Special meetings of the members of Menlo Park, County of San Mateo Section 1. Classes of Members: The corporation shall have two Section 4 Notice of Special Meeting Notice stating the place, classes of members Regular and Student Student members day, and haul of any special meeting of members shall be have all of the rights and privileges of regular members except delivered either personally, or by mail, telephone, telegram, or that student members shall not be allowed to vote. Section 5 Quorum The persons present at the Annual Meeting Section 3. Membership A person becomes a mcmbel (regular shall constitute a quorum at this meeting, including all adjourned or student) upon acceptance of an application for membership by or continued meetings At any other meeting of the members, the Executive Council and payment of dues Section 6 Proxies, No person, whether a member or not, may vote the proxy of any regular member. Section 5 Termination of Membership The Executive Council, by affirmative vote of two-thirds of all of the members of the Section 7 All voting at meetings shall be by show of hand Council, may suspend or expel a member after an appropriate unless a secret ballot is requested by any member. All voting, hearing Failure to maintain current dues payments shall be whether written or oral, shall bc completed and tabulated prior to automatic grounds for termination of membership. Section 6. Resignation Any member may resign by filing a written resignation with the Secretary-Treasurer, EXECUTIVE COUNCIL Section 7 Reinstatement Upon written request by a former Section I General Power s The affairs of the corporation, member filed with the Secretary-Treasmer, the Executive including the setting of all dues and qualification of members, Council, by majority vote, may reinstate a former member shall be managed by its Executive Council Councilors of the Executive Council must be members of the corporation Section 8. Transfer of Membership Membership in this corporation is not transferable or assignable Section 2 Number, Qualification and Tenure After the initial 38 Al MAGAZINE Winter 1980-81 period of organization of the corporation, the Executive Council Council, or any vacancy by reason of an increase in the number shall consist of the Officers, as identified in Article V, twelve of members of the Executive Council, shall be filled by the individuals elected by the membership for three year terms, and Executive Council.

The Robotics Project (the "Hand-Eye Project") evolved within the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory under the guidance of John McCarthy, Les Earnest, Jerry Feldman, and Tom Binford. Major efforts have been undertaken to isolate and solve fundamental problems in computer vision, manipulation, and autonomous vehicles. Generalized cones were introduced for modeling the geometry of 3-dimensional objects, and programs were constructed which learned structural descriptions of objects from laser-ranging data ("structured light"). Stereo vision and texture have been examined. Several generations of robot programming languages have resulted in AL, an intermediate-level language for commanding manipulation. A computer-controlled roving vehicle ("the cart") detected obstacles (using 9-eyed stereo) and planned paths to avoid them.

"Practice, and the performance improvement that it engenders, has long been a major topic in psychology. In this paper, both experimental and theoretical approaches are employed in an investigation of the mechanisms underlying this improvement On the experimental side, it is argued that a single law, the power law of practice, adequately describes all of the practice data. On the theoretical side, a model of practice rooted in modern cognitive psychology, the chunking theory of learning, is formulated. The paper consists of (1) the presentation of a set of empirical practice curves; (2) mathematical investigations into the nature of power law functions; (3) evaluations of the ability of three different classes of functions to adequately model the empirical curves; (4) a discussion of the existing models of practice; (5) a presentation of the chunking theory of learning." In J. R. Anderson (Ed.). Cognitive Skills and their Acquisition (pp. 1-55). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

This chapter from the Mycin book is a brief overview of van Melle's Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford, Computer Science), and is a shortened and edited version of a paper appearing in Pergamon-lnfotech state of the art report on machine intelligence, pp. 249-263. Maidenhead, Berkshire, U.K.: Infotech Ltd., 1981. Mycin Book (1984)