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.

A computer program that uses AI planning techniques is now the world champion computer program in the game of Contract Bridge. As reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post, this program -- a new version of Great Game Products' BRIDGE BARON program -- won the Baron Barclay World Bridge Computer Challenge, an international competition hosted in July 1997 by the American Contract Bridge League. It is well known that the game tree search techniques used in computer programs for games such as Chess and Checkers work differently from how humans think about such games. In contrast, our new version of the BRIDGE BARON emulates the way in which a human might plan declarer play in Bridge by using an adaptation of hierarchical task network planning. This article gives an overview of the planning techniques that we have incorporated into the BRIDGE BARON and discusses what the program's victory signifies for research on AI planning and game playing.

Invited participants must 445 Burgess Drive, Menlo Park, CA register by September 9, and the final Registration materials for the Fifteenth 94025; by fax to 650-321-4457; or by registration deadline is September 23.

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.

This confusion is intensified by the "overhyping" of the term agent.

Lull's writings advanced the idea vert to Christianity because of a cognitive that non-mathematical reasoning can in artificial intelligence have defect. Some of appreciate the vast array of the combinations process, and that reasoning the most fundamental, surely, are that of God's or Christ's virtues. But does not proceed by syllogism, but by thinking is a computational process, Lull believed that infidels could be combinatorics. The decomposition can be made mechanical, and that the Further, he thought that a representation and recombination of attributes can be mathematics of computation involves of those combinations could represented by the decomposition and combinatorics. All of these ideas have be effectively presented by means of recombination of symbols, and that, as their origin, so far as we know, in the appropriate machines, and that was Lull's devices illustrate, is a process that work of an eccentric 13th century the key to his new method.

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.

What I like to see is more international volumes with a balanced set of multicultural views from the United States, Europe, and Asia. This goes back to Roy D'Andrade's However, a number of To my mind, some of the chapters to answer the question, "What is cognitive issues are repeated across chapters, and indulge in lots of talk without any science?" The book does answer it is not clear that the authors of each clear detail or data. I found that the question, in so far as it can in such chapter had a chance to read the other Daniel Schacter's chapter on memory a young field, by providing a range of chapters while they wrote theirs. The was too full of references to other chapters tackling cognitive science different parts of the book could have work and had little of his own discussion; from different points of view.

Humans are social creatures. 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. Although it is still considered controversial, there are many who believe the harnessing of social communication to be rich in possibilities for modern software. 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.

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. After the conference, we analyzed a large amount of log data and obtained the following results: It appears that people continuously used PDAs in their hotel rooms after dinner; e-mail services were used independently of the conference structure, but the load on information services reflected the schedule of the conference. Postquestionnaire data showed that our trial was considered interesting, although people were not fully satisfied with the PDAs and services provided. Participants showed a deep interest in mobile computing for community support.