We developed a common algorithmic solution addressing the problem of resource-constrained outreach encountered by social change organizations with different missions and operations: Breaking Ground -- an organization that helps individuals experiencing homelessness in New York transition to permanent housing and Leket -- the national food bank of Israel that rescues food from farms and elsewhere to feed the hungry. Specifically, we developed an estimation and optimization approach for partially-observed episodic restless bandits under $k$-step transitions. The results show that our Thompson sampling with Markov chain recovery (via Stein variational gradient descent) algorithm significantly outperforms baselines for the problems of both organizations. We carried out this work in a prospective manner with the express goal of devising a flexible-enough but also useful-enough solution that can help overcome a lack of sustainable impact in data science for social good.

Case-based reasoning (CBR) as a methodology for problem-solving can use any appropriate computational technique. This position paper argues that CBR researchers have somewhat overlooked recent developments in deep learning and large language models (LLMs). The underlying technical developments that have enabled the recent breakthroughs in AI have strong synergies with CBR and could be used to provide a persistent memory for LLMs to make progress towards Artificial General Intelligence.

This literature review covers AI techniques used for real-time strategy video games, focusing specifically on StarCraft. It finds that the main areas of current academic research are in tactical and strategic decision-making, plan recognition, and learning, and it outlines the research contributions in each of these areas. The paper then contrasts the use of game AI in academia and industry, finding the academic research heavily focused on creating game-winning agents, while the indus- try aims to maximise player enjoyment. It finds the industry adoption of academic research is low because it is either in- applicable or too time-consuming and risky to implement in a new game, which highlights an area for potential investi- gation: bridging the gap between academia and industry.

This literature review covers AI techniques used for real-time strategy video games, focusing specifically on StarCraft. It finds that the main areas of current academic research are in tactical and strategic decision-making, plan recognition, and learning, and it outlines the research contributions in each of these areas. The paper then contrasts the use of game AI in academia and industry, finding the academic research heavily focused on creating game-winning agents, while the indus- try aims to maximise player enjoyment. It finds the industry adoption of academic research is low because it is either in- applicable or too time-consuming and risky to implement in a new game, which highlights an area for potential investi- gation: bridging the gap between academia and industry. Fi- nally, the areas of spatial reasoning, multi-scale AI, and co- operation are found to require future work, and standardised evaluation methods are proposed to produce comparable re- sults between studies.

Following successful special tracks on case-based reasoning at FLAIRS over the past seven years, we invited papers for the Eighth Special Track on CBR at the 22nd International FLAIRS Conference. Case-based reasoning is an AI problem solving and analysis methodology that retrieves and adapts previous experiences to fit new contexts. This forum is intended to gather AI researchers and practitioners with an interest in CBR to present and discuss developments in CBR theory and application. Submission topics included foundations of CBR; methods for CBR (such as representation, indexing, retrieval, adaptation); evaluation methods for CBR systems and integrations; practical applications of CBR; textual CBR; CBR and creativity; CBR and design; distributed CBR; case based maintenance; spatiotemporal CBR; CBR in the health sciences; CBR integrations; case based planning; and CBR and games. The invited speaker for the special track for 2009 is Ashok Goel from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.