Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2013 Abstract This issue of the AI Magazine features expanded versions of articles that discuss innovative applications from the 2013 AAAI Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-13). This issue of the AI Magazine features expanded versions of articles that discuss innovative applications from the 2013 AAAI Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-13).

These articles were selected for their description of AI technologies that are either in practical use or close to it. Five of the articles describe deployed application case studies. These articles present fielded AI applications that distinguish themselves for their innovative use of AI technology. One article describes an emerging application. It presents an area where AI technology can have a practical impact. Another article describes a challenge problem; it presents to the AI community at large a problem where AI could make a significant difference.

We present CLASS QL , a multi-agent model for playing real-time strategy games, where learning and control of our own team’s units is decentralized; each agent uses its own reinforcement learning process to learn and control units of the same class. Coordination between these agents occurs as a result of a common reward function shared by all agents and synergistic relations in a carefully crafted state and action model for each class. We present results of CLASS QL against the built-in AI in a variety of maps using the Wargus real-time strategy game.

We study the problem of generating a set of Finite State Machines (FSMs) modeling the behavior of multiple, distinct NPCs. We observe that nondeterministic planning techniques can be used to generate FSMs by following conventions typically used when manually creating FSMs modeling NPC behavior. We implement our ideas in DivNDP, the first algorithm for automated diverse FSM generation.

Starcraft, a commercial Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game that has enjoyed world-wide popularity (including televised professional matches), is a challenging domain for automated computer agents. Evidence of this difficulty comes not only from characteristics of the game (massive state space, stochastic actions, partial visibility, etc.) but also from three years of competitive entries in tournaments (i.e. AIIDE Annual Starcraft Competition) in which the best automated entry performs poorly against a human expert. We are interested in taking a new research direction: using semantic knowledge, such as description logic, to represent the game state with abstract concepts in order to perform high level actions.

Serious games are popular computer games that frequently simulate real-world events or processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem. Although they are often entertaining, their main purpose is to train or educate users. Not surprisingly, users exhibit different game play behaviors because of their diverse background and game experience. To improve the educational effectiveness of these games, it is important to understand and learn from the interaction between the users and the game engine. This paper presents a study attempting to apply machine learning techniques to the game log to discover: a) strategies that are common to players interacting with serious games and b) variances in the demographics of the player base for these strategies. This is an empirical study with end-user data while playing Missing, a serious game developed to help mitigate biases that people may exhibit when analyzing plausible hypothesis for observed events. We found a set of common strategies and interesting variances in player demographics associated with these strategies.

Deployed Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2012

Deployed Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2012 Abstract This issue of AI Magazine features expanded versions of articles that discuss deployed applications from the 2012 AAAI Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-12). This issue of AI Magazine features expanded versions of articles that discuss deployed applications from the 2012 AAAI Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-12).

Our selections for this issue describe deployed applications. They explain the context, requirements, and constraints of the application, how the technology was adapted to satisfy those factors, and the impact that this innovation brought to the operation in terms of cost and performance. The articles also supply useful insights into use cases that we hope can also be translated to other work that the AI community is engaged in. In the first of these deployed application articles, eBird: A Human/Computer Learning Network to Improve Biodiversity Conservation and Research by Steve Kelling, Carl Lagoze, Weng-Keen Wong, Jun Yu, Theodoros Damoulas, Jeff Gerbracht, Daniel Fink, and Carla Gomes, the authors describe an intriguing application that successfully combines the best in human and artificial computing capabilities with an active feedback loop between people and machines. The next two papers articles describe high-value industrial applications where diagnostic capabilities avoid considerable cost and accidents on a daily basis.

This issue of AI Magazine contains the Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture paper and expanded versions of articles that discuss emerging applications from IAAI-12.