These days, it's hard to go anywhere without encountering artificial intelligence (AI). Predictive text offers to finish our web searches and our text messages. AI learning-based software can produce everything from research papers to poetry, solving complex math equations to writing computer code. AI can be used to write algorithms, collect data on which areas experience the most gun violence and dictate which neighborhoods receive access to vital resources. This year, five students who make up the 2022-24 Lender Center for Social Justice Fellowship Project will set out to investigate how AI weapons systems transform war and surveillance, and they will also analyze how AI accentuates our social and political vulnerabilities to violence.

At least since the 1950s, the idea that it would be possible to soon create a machine that was capable of matching the full scope and level of achievement of human intelligence has been greeted with equal amounts of hype and hysteria. We've now succeeded in creating machines that can solve specific fairly narrow problems -- "smart" machines that can diagnose disease, drive cars, understand speech, and beat us at chess -- but general intelligence remains elusive. Let's get this out of the way: Improvements in machine intelligence will not lead to runaway machine-led revolutions. They may change the kind of jobs that people do, but they will not spell the end of human existence. There will be no robo-apocalypse. The emphasis of intelligence testing and computational approaches to intelligence has been on well-structured and formal problems. That is, problems that have a clear goal and a set number of possible solutions. But we humans are creative, irrational, and inconsistent.

At least since the 1950s, the idea that it would be possible to soon create a machine that was capable of matching the full scope and level of achievement of human intelligence has been greeted with equal amounts of hype and hysteria. We've now succeeded in creating machines that can solve specific fairly narrow problems -- "smart" machines that can diagnose disease, drive cars, understand speech, and beat us at chess -- but general intelligence remains elusive. Let's get this out of the way: Improvements in machine intelligence will not lead to runaway machine-led revolutions. They may change the kind of jobs that people do, but they will not spell the end of human existence. There will be no robo-apocalypse. The emphasis of intelligence testing and computational approaches to intelligence has been on well-structured and formal problems. That is, problems that have a clear goal and a set number of possible solutions. But we humans are creative, irrational, and inconsistent.

A new report offers a five-point framework government agencies can use to maximize the benefits of artificial intelligence while minimizing the risks. "Risk Management in the AI Era," released by the IBM Center for the Business of Government April 16, proposes a risk management framework that can help agencies use AI to best suit their needs. "Public managers must carefully consider both potential positive and negative outcomes, opportunities, and challenges associated with the use of these tools," the report states, as well as the relative likelihood of positive or negative outcomes. The framework is based on five criteria. The first is efficiency, which the report defines as the ratio of output generated to input required.

IEA/AIE-2011 continues the tradition of emphasizing Industrial, Engineering and Other applications of Applied Intelligent Systems' technology in solving real-life problems. Paper submission is required by November 12, 2010. Submission instructions and additional details may be obtained from the website or from the Program Chair, Dr. Kishan G. Mehrotra. This page includes forthcoming AAAI sponsored conferences, conferences presented by AAAI Affiliates, and conferences held in cooperation with AAAI. AI Magazine also maintains a calendar listing that includes nonaffiliated conferences at www.aaai.org/Magazine/calendar.php.

SYRACUSE, N.Y.--It was a nightmare scenario: As thousands of Syracuse University basketball fans poured into town on February 1, 2014 for a big match against arch rival Duke, a water main break flooded Armory Square, surrounding the city's iconic 24-second shot clock monument. Days before the game, there were 11 other water main breaks around the city. Mayor Stephanie Miner was desperate for help to get a handle on the problem; on average, water lines in the city were breaking 332 times a year, nearly once every day. But she couldn't get the state to help foot the bill for the onerous costs of updating the city's underground infrastructure. She even tried to shame state officials with a "Hunger Games"-style ad campaign that showed her wading in thigh-high water wielding a wrench.