The AAAI Feigenbaum Prize is awarded biennially to recognize and encourage outstanding Artificial Intelligence research advances that are made by using experimental methods of computer science. The “laboratories” for the experimental work are real-world domains, and the power of the research results is demonstrated in those domains. The Feigenbaum Prize may be given for a sustained record of high-impact seminal contributions to experimental AI research, or it may be given to reward singular remarkable innovation and achievement in experimental AI research.
This year, the AAAI Awards Committee is pleased to announce that the 2023 recipient of the award and $10,000 prize is Milind Tambe, for high-impact contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through innovation and achievement in socially beneficial applications of AI in security, healthcare, and conservation.
Tambe’s work is driven by the question of how AI techniques and theory can help allocate scarce resources most effectively to increase social good. This research has often provided the first very uses of key multiagent systems models and algorithms in the real world.
Security: AI for Public Safety, using Security Games — Tambe founded the area of “security games” and provided the first large-scale applications of computational game theory for public safety and security, particularly for counter-terrorism. This fundamental research using game theory focuses on how to optimize limited security resources. The LAX airport police, the Federal Air Marshals Service, and the US Coast Guard have testified in United States Congress on three separate occasions, that security games-based software has helped improve public safety & security.
Healthcare: Allocation of Resources for Prenatal Care — Tambe has partnered with ARMMAN, an India-based NGO that provides low-cost, scalable prenatal information and services, to improve health care for 26 Million impoverished women in India. Using machine learning techniques to categorize care recipients into risk populations, Tambe’s system preemptively identifies individuals with a particular need for enhanced contact and educational attention so that healthcare workers adjust their limited resources appropriately. Results show improved prenatal health for those individuals most in need, and for the care group overall.
Healthcare: Algorithmic Social Intervention — Tambe has been at the forefront of using algorithmic techniques for “positive social intervention”. An example of this has been the use of AI algorithms on social networks to disseminate information about HIV prevention among homeless youth in Los Angeles. This project significantly increased spreading of HIV risk information and reduced HIV risk behaviors in this population.
Conservation: AI for Conservation — Tambe applied the idea of intelligent allocation of scarce resources to wildlife conservation, with real-world deployment and evaluation (in Cambodia, Uganda, and elsewhere) of anti-poaching artificial intelligence software. Park rangers explore targeted regions for illegal snares, dramatically increasing the average number of these snares uncovered, by using Tambe’s evaluation system. By using features of the target domain, the PAWS system can direct rangers to patrol areas not previously visited, based on an assessment of their likely poaching danger. Results in real-world deployment have been extremely impressive.
The award will be presented at the conference for the Annual Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in February and is accompanied by a prize of $10,000 provided by the Feigenbaum Nii Foundation and administered by AAAI.
About Dr. Feigenbaum and the Feigenbaum Prize
Edward Feigenbaum is a Kumagai Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Stanford University. Feigenbaum earned his Ph.D at Carnegie Mellon University from 1956–1959, and went on to become a pioneer in AI research as experimental computer science, and in the applications of AI research. The first Feigenbaum Prize was awarded in 2011 in conjunction with the Twenty-Fifth Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-11), held August 7–11, in San Francisco, California.
Many sponsors support the AAAI-23 Conference, including Diamond Sponsor Sony, Platinum Sponsors Amazon Science and IBM, and Gold Sponsors Bloomberg Engineering and Colossal-AI.
For a complete view of the conference program, agenda, and full list of sponsors, please refer to https://aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI-23.
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About the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines.