Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
The Fifth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-86) was held August 11–15, 1986, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This year we split the conference into science and engineering tracks, embodying the recognition that Al is moving out of the laboratory and into the world. The science track stressed the computational principles underlying cognition and perception in man and machine. The papers in this track made significant and original contributions to knowledge in the field of Al. The engineering track highlighted the pragmatic issues that arise in applying these computational principles. Engineering track papers made significant and original contributions to reducing AI knowledge to practice. These papers emphasized the synthesis of Al approaches into systems, the demonstration of the practicality of theoretical work, or the performance of Al ideas in practice. These were two tracks of the same conference (rather than two separate conferences) precisely because the division between science and engineering in Al is not distinct. AI has always recognized that implementation accompanies theory.
We also split the science and engineering tracks temporally. Science papers were presented on Monday and Tuesday; engineering on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday was reserved for material of common interest: keynote speech, presidential panel, award-winning papers, and panels and invited talks focusing outward on the interaction of Al and the world at large. We also scheduled, throughout the week, less technical invited talks and panels that survey the state of the art in particular subfields. We intended these talks to be accessible to attendees who are not specialists in those subfields.
This year, 817 papers were submitted to the conference, approximately twice as many as were submitted to the 1984 conference. We accepted 187 papers. Each was reviewed by at least two members of the program committee. We looked for well-written papers that made original contributions of significant impact. We explicitly rejected papers that were simply implementations of current technology.
Tom Kehler, Stan Rosenschein, Robert Filman, and Peter F. Patel-Schneider
The 1986 Publisher’s Prize
The AAAI Publisher’s Prize, established in 1982, recognizes papers that, in addition to reporting important, substantial research and engineering developments, present the work in an exemplary way. This year, 187 papers on important work were selected by the Program Committee during the normal conference review process. Soon after the Program Committee meeting, several members of the committee, excluding the Program and Associate Chairs, were asked to read the entire set of nominated papers from both the Engineering and Science Programs. Several Committee members selected a subset of papers that they felt to be written in an outstanding fashion in both programs. The votes were tallied by several independent parties, and one winner per program very clearly stood out among the rest of the accepted papers.
This year, the Program Committee was pleased to award the Publisher’s Prize for outstanding papers to the following authors:
- Steve Hanks and Drew McDermott, Yale University, for “Default Reasoning, Nonmonotonic Logics and the Frame Problem” under the Science Program.
- Mark Shirley, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, for “Generating Tests by Exploiting Designed Behavior” under the Engineering Program.
The cash portion of the Publisher’s Prize for 1986 was donated by Elsevier-North Holland Publishers.
Publisher’s Prize Nominees
- Michael Kass, Schiumberger Palo Alto Research “Linear Image Features in Stereoposis”
- Don Perlis, University of Maryland “Self-Reference, Knowledge, Belief, and Modality”
- Curtis Langlotz, Edward Shortliffe, and Lawrence Fagan, Stanford University “Using Decision Theory to Justify Heuristics”
- Steven Lytinen, Yale University “Dynamically Combining Syntax and Semantics in Natural Language Processing”
- Edward Stabler, Quintus Computer Systems “Restricting Logic Grammars”
- Barbara Y. White and John R. Frederiksen, BBN Labs “Qualitative Model Evolutions as a Foundation for Intelligent Learning Environments”
AAAI-86 Organizers and Program Committee
Conference Chair
Jay M. Tenenbaum, Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation
Program Cochairs
Tom Kehier (Engineering Cochair) IntelliCorp and Stan Rosenschein (Science Cochair), SRI International)
Program Cochairs
Robert Filman (Engineering Associate Cochair) IntelliCorp and Peter Patel-Schneider (Science Associate Cochair) Schlumberger Palo Alto Research
Tutorial Chair
Mark Stefik, Xerox Palo Alto Research
Local Arrangements
Bonnie Webber, University of Pennsylvania, and Veronica Marmora, University of Pennsylvania
Volunteer Coordinator
Linda Quarrie, Carnegie Group, Inc.
Program Committee Members
Engineering Subcommittee Members
Jan Aikins, Aion Corp
William Clancey, Knowledge Systems Laboratory Stanford University
Lee Erman, Teknowledge Corporation
Mark Fox, Carnegie Mellon University
Chris Goad, Silma Corporation
Martin Griss, Hewlett-Packard Corporation
Peter Hart, Syntelligence Corporation
Se June Hong, IBM Yorktown Heights
Joseph Katz, Mitre Corporation
John McDermott, Carnegie-Mellon University
Takeo Kanade, Carnegie-Mellon University
David McDonald, University of Massachusetts
Norman Neilsen, SRI International
Martha Palmer, Systems Development Corporation
Stephen Polit, Digital Equipment Corporation
Howard Schrobe, Synzbolics, Inc.
Albert Stevens, BBN Laboratories
William Swartout, USC-ISI
Russel Taylor, IBM Yorktown Heights
John Ulrich
William Woods, Applied Expert Systems
Science Subcommittee Members
James Allen, University of Rochester
Ken Bowen, SUNY Syracuse
Ronald Brachman, AT&T Bell Laboratories
Dan Carnese, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research
Gerald DeJong, University of Illinois
Johan deKleer, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University
Jon Doyle, Carnegie-Mellon University
Kenneth Forbus, University of Illinois
Michael Genesereth, Stanford University
Patrick Hayes, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research
Julia Hirschberg, AT&T Bell Laboratories
David Israel, SRI International
Kurt Konolidge, SRI International
Richard Korf, UCLA
Wendy Lehnert, University of Massachusetts
Hector Levesque, University of Toronto
John Lowrance, SRI International
Tomas Lozano-Perez, MIT
Mitch Marcus, AT&T Bell Laboratories
Matt Mason, Carnegie-Mellon University
R.S. Michaiski, University of Illinois, Urbana
Tom Mitchell, Rutgers University
Judea Pearl, UCLA
Fernando Pereira, SRI International
Paul Rosenbloom, Stanford University
Len Schubert, University of Alberta
Elliot Soloway, Yale University
N. S. Sridharan, BBN Laboratory
Guy Steele, Thinking Machines
Mark Stickel, SRI International
John Tsotos, University of Toronto
Paul Utgoff, University of Massachusetts
Yorik Wilks, New Mexico State University
Andy Witkin, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research
Additional Reviewers
Martin Abadi ◊ Steve Adams ◊ Sanjay Addanki ◊ Don Allen ◊ Russ Altman ◊ Scott Anderson ◊ Chidanand Apte ◊ Bruce Ballard ◊ Afzal Ballim ◊ Andrew Barto ◊ Arthur Baskin ◊ John Bear ◊ Kamal Bijiani ◊ Howard Blair ◊ Susan Brennan ◊ John Bresina ◊ Randall C. Brost ◊ Harold Brown ◊ F. Warren Burton ◊ Sylvia Candelaria de Raim ◊ Bob Cassel ◊ Eugene Charniak ◊ D. Chapman ◊ Kaihu Chen ◊ Greg Clemenson ◊ Paul Cohen ◊ Jerry Cole ◊ Greg Collins ◊ Michael Compton ◊ Nancy Cooke ◊ Mike Coombs ◊ Janet Copley ◊ Debbie Dahi ◊ Norm Dalkey ◊ James E. Davidson ◊ Todd Davies ◊ Rina Dechter ◊ Marsha Derr ◊ John Dowding ◊ Gregory Dudek ◊ Dann Fass ◊ Michael Fehling ◊ J-L. Flechon ◊ David Fleet ◊ Dan Flickinger ◊ Peter Friedland ◊ Stephanie Forrest ◊ William Frawley ◊ Francesco Garbagnati ◊ Anne v.d. Gardner ◊ Thomas Garvey ◊ Michael Georgeff ◊ Ron Gershan Victoria Pigamn Gilbert ◊ Matthew Ginsberg ◊ Jerry Goldberg ◊ Mark Goldstein ◊ B. Goodman ◊ John Goodson ◊ James H. Griesmer ◊ W. Eric L. Grimson ◊ Barbara Grosz ◊ Peter Haddaway ◊ Roger Hartley ◊ A. Haas ◊ David Harrison ◊ Davis E. Heckerman ◊ Ellen Hildreth ◊ Don Hindle ◊ Keith Hughs ◊ Jerry Hobbs ◊ Ralph Hollis ◊ Tiorona Hong ◊ Steve Hoyle ◊ Lucia Iwanska ◊ Mark Jones ◊ Leslie Kaelbling ◊ Maurice Karsaugh ◊ Lauri Kartunen ◊ Michael Kass ◊ John Kastner ◊ Bruce Katz ◊ Henry Kautz ◊ Smadar Kedar-Cabelli ◊ Van Kelly ◊ Richard Keller ◊ James Kempf ◊ D. Kibler ◊ Carole Klein ◊ Karen Kukich ◊ Heedan Ko ◊ Carl Koudie ◊ Janet Kolodner ◊ John Kunz ◊ M. Jenkin ◊ W. Lewis Johnson ◊ Jay Lark ◊ Victor Lesser ◊ Stan Letovsky ◊ Irv Lichtenwald ◊ Marcia Linebarger ◊ Diane Litman ◊ David Littman ◊ Richard Lyon ◊ Jim MacDonald ◊ Sridhar Mahadevan ◊ Eric Mays ◊ Claudia Mazzetti ◊ Kathy McCoy ◊ Don McKay ◊ Michael McNabb ◊ Debbie Matusyek ◊ Ray Mooney ◊ Brian Morgensen ◊ Paul Morris ◊ Jack Mostow ◊ Igor Mozetic ◊ Todd Newman ◊ Keith Nishihara ◊ Robert Nado ◊ Paul Morris ◊ Derek Partridge ◊ Ray Perrault ◊ Michael Peshkin ◊ Jeannine Pinto ◊ Gordon Pollock ◊ K.C. Quayle ◊ Burrochot Rao ◊ Shankar Rajamoney ◊ Larry Rendell ◊ Steven Rosenberg ◊ Jane Robinson ◊ Igor Roiten ◊ Steven Rowley ◊ Enrique Ruspini ◊ Daniel Sabbah ◊ R. Scha ◊ C. F. Schmidt ◊ Johnathan Scott ◊ Marshall I. Schor ◊ Tom Scoville ◊ Rebecca Schiffman ◊ Jim Schmolze ◊ R. Schudy ◊ Jordan Skorstaa ◊ Jude Shavlik ◊ Chilin Shih ◊ E.E. Sibert ◊ Michael Sims ◊ Brian C. Smith ◊ James Snyder ◊ Jim Spohrer ◊ Richard Sproat ◊ Robert Stepp ◊ Thomas Strat ◊ Devika Subramanian ◊ Prasad Tadepalli ◊ Allan Terry ◊ Demetri Terzopoulos ◊ Roger Tsai ◊ Chris Tong ◊ Cord Uhrik ◊ Marie Vaughan ◊ Marc Vilain ◊ Yu Wang ◊ Jay Webber ◊ Philip Werner ◊ Lesley Wesley ◊ David Wilkins ◊ Brian C. Williams ◊ Mike Williams ◊ Beverly Woolf ◊ R. Worrest ◊