In the last few years, we have witnessed a major growth in the use of empirical methods in AI. In part, this growth has arisen from the availability of fast networked computers that allow certain problems of a practical size to be tackled for the first time. There is also a growing realization that results obtained empirically are no less valuable than theoretical results. I identify some of the emerging trends in this area by describing a recent workshop that brought together researchers using empirical methods as far apart as robotics and knowledge-based systems.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence held its 1997 Fall Symposia Series on 7 to 9 November in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article contains summaries of the six symposia that were conducted: (1) Communicative Action in Humans and Machines, (2) Context in Knowledge Representation and Natural Language, (3) Intelligent Tutoring System Authoring Tools, (4) Model-Directed Autonomous Systems, (5) Reasoning with Diagrammatic Representations II, and (6) Socially Intelligent Agents.

In computational cognitive modeling, we hypothesize internal mental processes of human cognitive activities and express such activities by computer programs. Such computational models often consist of many components and aspects. Claims are often made that certain aspects play a key role in modeling, but such claims are sometimes not well justified or explored. We then discuss, in principle, systematic ways of identifying the source of power in models.

The 1997 AAAI Workshop on AI Approaches to Fraud Detection and Risk Management brought together over 50 researchers and practitioners to discuss problems of fraud detection, computer intrusion detection, and risk scoring. This article presents highlights, including discussions of problematic issues that are common to these application domains, and proposed solutions that apply a variety of AI techniques.

Much of our intelligence derives from our ability to manipulate our environment through collaborative endeavors. Most extant computer programs and interfaces do little to take advantage of such manifestly human talents and interests, leaving broad avenues of human-computer communication unexplored. In this article, we look at a number of autonomous agent systems that embody their intelligence at least partially through the projection of a believable, engaging, synthetic persona. Among other topics, we touch briefly on samples of research that explore synthetic personality, representations of emotion, societies of fanciful and playful characters, intelligent and engaging automated tutors, and users projected as avatars into virtual worlds.

Agent-based systems technology has generated lots of excitement in recent years because of its promise as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing software systems. Currently, the great majority of agent-based systems consist of a single agent. Central to the design and effective operation of such multiagent systems (MASs) are a core set of issues and research questions that have been studied over the years by the distributed AI community. In this article, I present some of the critical notions in MASs and the research work that has addressed them.

The Eleventh International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning was held in Cortona, Italy, on 3 to 6 June 1997. Participants included scientists from both qualitative reasoning and quantitative mathematical modeling communities. This article summarizes the significant issues and discussion raised during the workshop.

Research on constraints and agents is emerging at the intersection of the communities studying constraint computation and software agents. Constraint- based reasoning systems can be enhanced by using agents with multiple problem-solving approaches or diverse problem representations. The constraint computation paradigm can be used to model agent consultation, cooperation, and competition. An interesting theme in agent interaction, which is studied here in constraint-based terms, is confronting ignorance: the agent's own ignorance or its ignorance of other agents.

We applied mobile computing to community support and explored mobile computing with a large number of terminals. This article reports on the Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS'96) Mobile Assistant Project that was conducted at an actual international conference for multiagent systems using 100 personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular telephones. We supported three types of service: (1) communication services such as e-mail and net news; (2) information services such as conference, personal, and tourist information; and (3) community support services such as forum and meeting arrangements. Participants showed a deep interest in mobile computing for community support.