Technology
The AAAI Video Archive
Buchanan, Bruce G. (University of Pittsburgh) | Smith, Reid G. (Marathon Oil Corporation) | Glick, Jon (AAAI)
The AAAI video archive is a central source of information about videotapes and films with information about AI that are stored digitally on other sites or physically in institutional archives. For each video, the archive includes a brief description of the contents and personae, one or more representative short clips for classroom or individual use, and the location of the archival copy (for example, at a university library).
Custom DU: A Web-Based Business User-Driven Automated Underwriting System
Krovvidy, Srinivas (Fannie Mae)
Custom DU is an automated underwriting system that enables mortgage lenders to build their own business rules that facilitate assessing borrower eligibility for different mortgage products. Developed by Fannie Mae, Custom DU has been used since 2004 by several lenders to automate the underwriting of numerous mortgage products. Custom DU uses rule specification language techniques and a web-based, user-friendly interface for implementing business rules that represent business policy. By means of the user interface, lenders can also customize their underwriting findings reports, test the rules that they have defined, and publish changes to business rules on a real-time basis, all without any software modifications. The user interface enforces structure and consistency, enabling business users to focus on their underwriting guidelines when converting their business policy to rules. Once lenders have created their rules, loans are routed to the appropriate rule sets, and customized, but consistent, results are always returned to the lender. Using Custom DU, lenders can create different rule sets for their products and assign them to different channels of the business, allowing for centralized control of underwriting policies and procedures—even if lenders have decentralized operations.
A Web-Based Agent Challenges Human Experts on Crosswords
Ernandes, Marco (Università di Siena) | Angelini, Giovanni (QuestIT) | Gori, Marco (Università di Siena)
Crosswords are very popular and represent a useful domain of investigation for modern artificial intelligence. In contrast to solving other celebrated games (such as chess), cracking crosswords requires a paradigm shift towards the ability to handle tasks for which humans require extensive semantic knowledge. This article introduces WebCrow, an automatic crossword solver in which the needed knowledge is mined from the web: clues are solved primarily by accessing the web through search engines and applying natural language processing techniques. In competitions at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in 2006 and other conferences this web-based approach enabled WebCrow to outperform its human challengers. Just as chess was once called “the Drosophila of artificial intelligence,” we believe that crossword systems can be useful Drosophila of web-based agents.
An AI Framework for the Automatic Assessment of e-Government Forms
Chun, Andy Hon Wai (City University of Hong Kong)
This article describes the architecture and AI technology behind an XML-based AI framework designed to streamline e-government form processing. The framework performs several crucial assessment and decision support functions, including workflow case assignment, automatic assessment, follow-up action generation, precedent case retrieval, and learning of current practices. To implement these services, several AI techniques were used, including rule-based processing, schema-based reasoning, AI clustering, case-based reasoning, data mining, and machine learning. The primary objective of using AI for e-government form processing is of course to provide faster and higher quality service as well as ensure that all forms are processed fairly and accurately. With AI, all relevant laws and regulations as well as current practices are guaranteed to be considered and followed. An AI framework has been used to implement an AI module for one of the busiest immigration agencies in the world.
Sudoku Puzzles
Two Sudoku Puzzles. In the AI History Sudoku, each row, each column, and each 3x3 box must contain every number from 1 to 9. In the Letter Sudoku, each row, each column, and each 3x3 box must contain each of the 9 different letters. If completed properly, a nine letter word will be revealed. Clue: CSP Pioneer.
Calendar of Events
(ICEIS 2008). (ESAS 2008). Fax: 32-26502715 Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Email: ants@iridia.ulb.ac.be Computing, University of Zagreb URL: iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2008/ Submission requirements may vary for each workshop, but most Multidisciplinary Workshop on Advances in Preference Handling conform to the schedule below.
AAAI News
Hamilton, Carol M. (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence)
AAAI-10 will be held in Atlanta, Georgia! Please mark your calendars, and visit www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/ For more information on Human and Machine Cognition Chicago, please visit www.choose AAAI recently launched a series of (IHMC), is the sixth recipient of the chicago.com. The AAAI 2008 Teaching Forum aims 2006 and 2007 will continue in 2008, industry representative.
Report on the 2007 Workshop on Modeling and Reasoning in Context
Kofod-Petersen, Anders (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) | Cassens, Jörg (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) | Leake, David B. (Indiana University) | Schulz, Stefan (e-Spirit AG)
The fourth Modeling and Reasoning in Context (MRC) workshop was held on August 20–21, 2007, in conjunction with the Sixth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, at Roskilde University, Denmark. This year’s workshop included a special track on the role of contextualization in human tasks (CHUT). The overall goal of the workshop was to further the understanding, development, and application of AI methods for context-sensitive information technology.
AAAI Fall Symposium Reports
Ball, Jerry (Air Force Research Laboratory) | Arney, Chris (Army Research Office) | Collins, Samuel G. (Towson University) | Marcus, Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania) | Nirenburg, Sergei (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) | Chella, Antonio (University of Palermo) | Goebel, Kai (NASA Ames Research Center) | Li, Jason H. (Intelligent Automation, Inc.) | Lyell, Margaret (Intelligent Automation, Inc.) | Magerko, Brian (Michigan State University) | Manzotti, Riccardo (IULM University) | Morrison, Clayton T. (University of Southern California) | Oates, Tim (University of Maryland Baltimore County) | Riedl, Mark (University of Southern California) | Trajkovski, Goran P. (South University) | Truszkowski, Walt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) | Uckun, Serdar (NASA Ames Research Center)
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence presented the 2007 Fall Symposium Series on Friday through Sunday, November 9–11, at the Westin Arlington Gateway, Arlington, Virginia. The titles of the seven symposia were (1) AI and Consciousness: Theoretical Foundations and Current Approaches, (2) Artificial Intelligence for Prognostics, (3) Cognitive Approaches to Natural Language Processing, (4) Computational Approaches to Representation Change during Learning and Development, (5) Emergent Agents and Socialities: Social and Organizational Aspects of Intelligence, (6) Intelligent Narrative Technologies, and (7) Regarding the “Intelligence” in Distributed Intelligent Systems.
Report on the Eighteenth International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX-07)
Biswas, Gautam (Vanderbilt University) | Koutsoukos, Xenofon (Vanderbilt University)
The eighteenth annual International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis was held in Nashville, Tennessee, May 29–31, 2007. Papers presented at the workshop covered a variety of theories, principles, and computational techniques for diagnosis, monitoring, testing, reconfiguration, fault-adaptive control, and repair of complex systems. This year’s workshop emphasized inter-actions and exchange of ideas and experiences between researchers and practitioners whose backgrounds included AI, control theory, systems engineering, software engineering, and related areas.