Nils Nilsson and Sven Wahlstrom pictured with Shakey, the first humanoid. This is Nils Nilsson calling!!" Or so the booming voice on the other end of the line claimed, as I skeptically held the phone in my hand on a Sunday afternoon mid-way through my final semester as an undergraduate in Toronto. I had been in my dorm room preparing for a mid-term in my Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course, in fact reading through the textbook which Nils himself had authored. I was certain the call was a prank perpetrated by a classmate who knew I was anxiously awaiting word on whether I would be accepted to the PhD program at Stanford. But it turned out to be legitimate: Nils had recently taken on the role as Chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford and decided that he wanted to call all of the applicants that had been offered admission.

Nils J. Nilsson, a computer scientist who helped develop the first general-purpose robot and was a co-inventor of algorithms that made it possible for the machine to move about efficiently and perform simple tasks, died on Sunday at his home in Medford, Ore. His death was confirmed by his wife, Grace Abbott. Dr. Nilsson was a member of a small group of computer scientists and electrical engineers at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International) who pioneered technologies that have proliferated in modern life, whether in navigation software used in more than a billion smartphones or in such speech-control systems as Siri. The researchers had been recruited by Charles Rosen, a physicist at the institute, who had raised Pentagon funding in 1966 to design a robot that would be used as a platform for doing research in artificial intelligence. Although the project was intended to create a general-purpose mobile "automaton" and be a test bed for A.I. programs, Mr. Rosen had secured the funding by selling the idea to the Pentagon that the machine would be a mobile sentry for a military base.

hakey the Robot, conceived fifty years ago, was a seminal contribution to AI. Shakey perceived its world, planned how to achieve a goal, and acted to carry out that plan. This was revolutionary. At the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, attendees gathered to celebrate Shakey, and to gain insights into how the AI revolution moves ahead. The celebration included a panel, chaired by Benjamin Kuipers and featuring AI pioneers Ed Feigenbaum, Peter Hart, and Nils Nilsson. This article includes written versions of the contributions of those panelists.

From left, graduate students Ashutosh Saxena and Morgan Quigley and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng were part of a large effort to develop a robot to see an unfamiliar object and ascertain the best spot to grasp it. Stanford scientists plan to make a robot capable of performing everyday tasks, such as unloading the dishwasher. By programming the robot with "intelligent" software that enables it to pick up objects it has never seen before, the scientists are one step closer to creating a real life Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons cartoon show. "Within a decade we hope to develop the technology that will make it useful to put a robot in every home and office," said Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science who is leading the wireless Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) project. "Imagine you are having a dinner party at home and having your robot come in and tidy up your living room, finding the cups that your guests left behind your couch, picking up and putting away your trash and loading the dishwasher," Ng said.

"Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten." These words, articulated by Neil Armstrong at a speech to a joint session of Congress in 1969, fit squarely into most every decade since the turn of the century, and it seems to safe to posit that the rate of change in technology has accelerated to an exponential degree in the last two decades, especially in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Artificial intelligence is making an extreme entrance into almost every facet of society in predicted and unforeseen ways, causing both excitement and trepidation. This reaction alone is predictable, but can we really predict the associated risks involved?

"Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten." These words, articulated by Neil Armstrong at a speech to a joint session of Congress in 1969, fit squarely into most every decade since the turn of the century, and it seems to safe to posit that the rate of change in technology has accelerated to an exponential degree in the last two decades, especially in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Artificial intelligence is making an extreme entrance into almost every facet of society in predicted and unforeseen ways, causing both excitement and trepidation. This reaction alone is predictable, but can we really predict the associated risks involved?

Subjects include AI's impact on employment, the AAAI conference, a response to McCarthy's Presidential Message, AI going public, and computerless expert systems.

To Date Gross margin, by activity: Rosenschein will complete McCarthy's term on the Council for