Menlo Park, California — American Association for Artificial Intelligence announces six winners of the prestigious 2006 Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI-06) award and honors 15 emerging applications; plus invited speaker Sebastian Thrun from Stanford University discusses “Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge,” Neil Jacobstein of Teknowledge surveys 18 years and 362 winning IAAI papers, and Bruce Buchanan will give this year’s Robert S. Englemore Memorial Lecture, “What Do We Know about Knowledge?”.
The American Association for Artificial Intelligence will recognize six applications with the prestigious Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-06) award July 18, 2006 during the opening events at this year’s National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 16-20 at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center, Boston, Massachusetts.
Substantial bottom line impact of this year’s winning applications
The six award-winning applications this year are solid examples of the scale of savings and efficiencies that AI continues to offer business, science, and government. An intelligent hardware design verification system that IBM has been using for 10 years, for example, has saved the company more than $100 million in direct development costs and time-to-market. It has been used to design a variety of IBM products as well as Microsoft’s Xbox TM core processors and systems and various processors of Apple computers.
A customer help desk application for General Electric appliances has not only increased the probability that problems can be solved over the phone by 20% but has saved the company an estimated $44.5 million between 2000 and 2005 due to reduced visits of field service technicians to customers’ homes. CombineNet (Pittsburgh, PA) has hosted $16 billion of sourcing using intelligent technology and created $1.8 billion of hard-dollar savings in lowered procurement costs.
This year’s six award-winning applications join 354 previous winners and recognized emerging applications through the past 18 years that together form a compelling case for the breadth and depth of deployed AI applications throughout modern industry, science, and government. In an IAAI-06 invited talk, Neil Jacobstein of Teknowledge Corporation will survey this body of applications on Wednesday, July 19, from 10:20-11:20 a.m. Jacobstein’s talk is entitled “Electrifying Knowledge Work: 362 Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence 1989 — 2006.” What is of particular note is that these applications are but the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, as many corporations do not go public with such high-impact applications, treating them instead as their ‘secret sauce.’
In addition to the six deployed applications that will receive awards at this year’s conference, 15 Emerging Applications of AI — applications that are under development and demonstrate significant advances — will also be presented. (Please see the Summary of IAAI-06 Winning Papers and Emerging Applications.)
Talks on each of the 6 winning deployed applications as well as the 15 emerging applications, are scheduled over the three days of the conference from Tuesday, July 18, 2006, through Thursday, July 20, 2006.
Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge
Sebastian Thrun, who led the Stanford robotics racing team that won last fall’s DARPA Grand Challenge, will be giving an invited talk on Tuesday, July 18, from 1:50 – 2:50 p.m. Many believe the DARPA Grand Challenge was the most significant event in the field of robotics in more than a decade. A mobile ground robot all on its own — no human intervention during the race — traversed 132 miles of grueling desert terrain in less than ten hours.
In 2004, the best robot only made 7.3 miles. A year later, Stanford won this grand challenge and the $2 million prize. Thrun’s talk, “Winning the DARPA Grand Challenge,” will provide insights into the software architecture of Stanford’s winning robot “Stanley.” The robot relied heavily on advanced sensor technology and advanced AI to make sense out of massive amounts of sensor data acquired by the vehicle. Thrun’s talk will introduce the fascinating world of autonomous robotics, share many of the race insights, and discuss some of the implications for the future of our society.
Thrun’s ties are deep with AAAI. As a young roboticist, Thrun first competed in the AAAI Mobile Robot Competition in 1992. He competed again in the 1994 Mobile Robot Competition, this time on the first European team (University of Bonn), winning 2nd place for the “clean up the office” event. Two years later, with his own team from CMU, he shared 1st place for the “clean up the tennis court” event. He is currently an AAAI Councilor and was elected an AAAI Fellow this year.
50th Anniversary of AI
The IAAI-06 conference is co-located with the National Conference on AI (AAAI-06), the leading technical AI conference. This year is a hallmark year, celebrating the accomplishments of the first 50 years of artificial intelligence. A panel of AAAI fellows will mark this event.
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