Randy Goebel and Francisco J. Cantu-Ortiz

The Fourth International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (ISAI) was held in Cancun, Mexico, 13-15 November 1991. What, another international AI conference, you say? The first symposium was held in 1988. This fourth consecutive annual conference drew the participation of visitors from several international AI communities, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Japan, England, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, China, Belgium, Australia, and Singapore--an impressive breadth of participants for a conference that has existed for only four years. ISAI was born in the summer of 1987 when Francisco Cantu-Ortiz, the director of the Centro de Inteligencia Artificial at Instituto Tecnologico y Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), with support from senior ITESM administrators, decided that hosting an international AI conference would help build an awareness of the technological importance of AI and help create an opportunity for Mexican researchers and industrial developers to learn more about AI from the international community.