Boston City Councilors voted unanimously to ban the use of facial-recognition technology by police -- technology the Boston Police Department currently doesn't use anyway due to its unreliability. All 13 councilors voted in favor of the order authored by Councilors Ricardo Arroyo and Michelle Wu to ban the city from using technology that matches people's faces. Mayor Marty Walsh's office said the mayor would review the legislation, not committing to whether he'd sign it or not. "It puts Bostonians at risk for misidentification," Arroyo said. A recent MIT study found that the technology was wrong more often when trying to identify darker-skinned people.

Submissions for HCOMP-19 Are Due in June! The Seventh AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP 2019) will be held October 28-30 at Skamania Lodge in Washington State near the Columbia Gorge River, just 45 minutes from Portland, Oregon. This year is the 10-year anniversary of the very first HCOMP workshop in Paris, and to celebrate, there will be special events, talks, and panels throughout the conference. HCOMP is the premier venue for disseminating the latest research findings on crowdsourcing and human computation. While artificial intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction (HCI) represent traditional mainstays of the conference, HCOMP believes strongly in inviting, fostering, and promoting broad, interdisciplinary research.

AAAI Has a New Area Code! The AAAI office area code number has changed from 415 to 650, effective immediately. After 1 February 1998, use of the new 650 code will be mandatory, so please update your records now. President Randall Davis turned over the gavel to President-Elect David Waltz on Thursday, 31 July, at the Annual Business Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. Four new councilors also began their three-year terms on the Executive Council, including Jan Aikins, Bonnie Dorr, Eric Horvitz, and Stuart Russell.

A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ARTICLE I. NAME The name of this corporation shall be the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). PURPOSE This corporation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation and is not organized for the private gain of any person. It is organized under the California Nonprofit Corporation Law for scientific and educational purposes in the field of artificial intelligence. Notwithstanding any other provision of these articles, the corporation shall not carry on any other activities not permitted to be carried on: (i) by a corporation exempt from Federal Income Tax under Section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) by a corporation, contributions to which are deductible under Section 170 (c)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code. DEDICATION AND DISSOLUTION The property of this corporation is irrevocably dedicated to educational and scientific purposes, and no part of the net income or assets of this organization shall ever inure to the benefit of any councilor, officer, or member thereof or to the benefit of any private persons.

The American Association for Artificial Intelligence concluded its national conferences in San Jose on July 16 with a surge of optimism and confidence in the current position and forward movement of AI. This holds true in both scientific and business areas, according to AAAI President Patrick Hayes. "This year's conferences clearly demonstrated the expanding boundaries of AI," Hayes said. "This was the first AI art exhibition and the first time this many mobile robots have ever been together. The invited talks made some exciting new connections.

The annual election for AAAI offices has taken place (15 June 1981 was the closing date for the receipt of votes) The people listed below have been elected by the membership of the AAAI to the offices as indicated. The election was special in several ways, in order to complete the initialization of officers and periods of tenure. Both a president (for 1981-82) and a president-elect (who will serve as president for 1982-83) were elected. Normally only a president-elect would be on the ballot, however, no presidentelect was elected at the last election. Twelve (12) councilors were elected, constituting a full complement of elected councilors.

The 2016 winners were as follows: Tom Dietterich, AAAI President, for AAAI 2017 Awards, please Manuela Veloso, AAAI Past President contact Carol Hamilton at hamilton@aaai.org.

Dr. Ford is being recognized Outstanding Program

This prize is awarded biennially to recognize and encourage outstanding artificial intelligence research advances that are made by using experimental (Max Planck Institute for Biological Nectar, as well as poster presentations methods of computer science. Cybernetics), Karrie Karahalios (University by a select number of exceptional Thrun and Whittaker, whose teams of Illinois), Michael Kearns technical papers, short papers, student won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge (University of Pennsylvania), and Kurt abstracts, and doctoral consortium abstracts. A special Joint will feature talks on five award-winning in particular for high-impact IAAI-11/AAAI-11 Invited Talk by deployed AI applications and 14 contributions to the field of artificial David Ferrucci (IBM T. J. Watson Research emerging applications. The week is intelligence through innovation and Center) on "Building Watson: filled with a host of other programs, achievement in autonomous vehicle An Overview of DeepQA for the ...

ICWSM-09 will feature two keynote to education and teaching.