Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
The Fourteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-02) was collocated with AAAI-02 and held July 28 – August 1, 2002, at the Shaw Conference Center and Westin Edmonton Hotel in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
The Fourteenth Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-02) continued the IAAI tradition of case studies of deployed applications with measurable benefits from the use of AI technology. In addition, IAAI-02 also included papers and invited talks that addressed emerging areas of AI technology or applications. IAAI-02 was organized as an independent program within the National Conference, with schedules coordinated to allow attendees to move freely between IAAI and National Conference sessions. IAAI-02 and the National Conference also jointly sponsored invited talks that fit the theme of both programs.
AI applications developers benefited from learning about the latest AI techniques that will enable the next generation of applications. Basic AI research benefited by exposure to the challenges of real-world domains and difficulties and successes in applying AI techniques to real business problems. IAAI-02 addressed the full range of AI techniques, including knowledge-based systems, planning and scheduling, perception and monitoring, knowledge formation, knowledge management, learning, intelligent design, natural language processing, and diagnostic reasoning. Deployed applications were case studies that provide a valuable guide to designing, building, managing, and deploying systems incorporating AI technologies. The 2002 papers addressed applications in a wide variety of domains, including large-scale scheduling, monitoring for terrorism response, text and language processing for customer support, engineering configuration, education, call-center scheduling, and quote generation. These applications provided clear evidence of the impact and value that AI technology has in today’s world. Papers on emerging applications and technologies described efforts whose goal was the engineering of AI applications. They informed AI researchers about the utility of specific AI techniques for applications domains and also informed applications developers about tools and techniques that will enable the next generation of new and more powerful applications. For 2002 we were very pleased to have two invited talks. Robin Murphy’s talk, “Robots for Urban Rescue,” described the use of robots to facilitate rescue during both manmade and natural disasters and includes footage from efforts at the World Trade Center. In a talk jointly sponsored with AAAI, Ray Kurzweil spoke on “Human-Level ‘Strong’ AI: The Prospects and Implications,” in which he reflected on the accelerating pace of change in high technology areas. New for IAAI in 2002 was a series of events focusing on AI Businesses. We began with the panel “AI Businesses: A 20-Year Review,” chaired by Neil Jacobstein, President and CEO of Teknowledge. This panel focused on the lessons learned from 20 years of AI businesses. Next, Craig Knoblock, Chief Scientist of Fetch Technologies, chaired the panel “Recent Startups.” This panel focused on how to overcome the hurdles in starting an AI business. Finally, Steve Chien and Minda Wilson chaired the Entrepreneur’s Forum, an informal event designed to enable Technologists, Legal Professionals, and Financiers to network during the AI Festival.
Steve Chien and John Riedl
IAAI-02 Officials and Program Committee
Chair
Steve Chien, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Cochair
John Riedl, University of Minnesota
Program Committee
Bruce Buchanan, University of Pittsburgh
Steve Chien, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Robert Engelmore, KSL
Randy Hill, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Neil Jacobstein, Teknowledge Corporation
Craig Knoblock, Information Sciences Institute
David Kortenkamp, NASA Johnson Space Center
Ora Lassila, Nokia Corporation
Daniel Marcu, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California
David Opitz, University of Montana
John Riedl, University of Minnesota
Ted Senator, DARPA/ISO
Reid Smith, Knowledge Management
Ramasamy Uthurusamy, GM Corporation
Peter Wurman, North Carolina State University