The online interactive magazine of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

Report on the First and Second ICAPS Workshops on Hierarchical Planning

By Pascal Bercher, Daniel Holler, Gregor Behnke, Susanne Biundo, Vikas Shivashankar, Ron Alford

Hierarchical planning has attracted renewed interest in the last couple of years. As a consequence, the time was right to establish a workshop devoted entirely to hierarchical planning – an insight shared by many supporters. In this paper we report on the first ICAPS workshop on Hierarchical Planning held in Delft, The Netherlands, in 2018 as well as on the second workshop held in Berkeley, CA, USA, in 2019.

AAAI 2019 Fall Symposium Report on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI): Service Robots in Human Environments

by Justin W. Hart, Richard G. Freedman, Nick DePalma, Luca Iocchi, Matteo Leonetti, Emmanuel Senft, Elin A. Topp, Ross Mead

The AAAI symposium on “Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI): Service Robots in Human Environments” was held at the Westin Arlington Gateway, Arlington, Virginia from November 7- 9, 2019. This is the sixth AI-HRI Fall Symposium, bringing together researchers whose work spans areas contributing to the development of human-interactive autonomous robots. In the past few years, technologies related to or deployed on service robots has become a popular research topic in this area. This year’s theme invited researchers to look at problems and frame discussion through this lens.

AAAI 2019 Fall Symposium Report on Cognitive Systems for Anticipatory Thinking (COGSAT)

by Adam Amos-Binks

Anticipatory thinking (AT) — the deliberate and divergent consideration for relevant possible futures– is a key cognitive process in a variety of key societal contexts. The Cognitive Systems for Anticipatory Thinking brought together a multi-disciplinary group who’s methods can help augment human capacity for AT. Several key contexts emerged including autonomous vehicles, geo-political issues, and intelligence analysis. Key next steps include defining benchmark AT problems and competencies as well as how to evaluate them.

AAAI 2019 Fall Symposium Report on AI for Social Good

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Hemant Purohit, Oshani Seneviratne

This symposium was centered around the broad vision of how AI could be used for social good through supporting solutions toward the United Nations’ sustainable development goals that touch every aspect of human, social, and economic development. The symposium identified the critical need for responsible AI solutions for these goals, which demand holistic think- ing on optimizing the trade-off between automation benefits and their potential side-effects.

AAAI 2019 Fall Symposium Report on Teaching AI in K-12

by David Touretzky, Chrisina Gardner-McCune

There has recently been an explosion of activity in K-12 AI education. As the AI4K12 Initiative (ai4k12.org) works to develop national guidelines for teaching AI in US schools, similar efforts have begun in Canada, the U.K., China, and elsewhere. New curricula are being piloted, new tools developed, and new AI electives launched in middle schools and high schools. There have been national and international workshops, and ongoing discussions online about teaching AI in K-12. This symposium brought together the growing community of AI educators, researchers, curriculum designers, and tool developers to discuss the current state of AI education in K-12.

AAAI 2019 Fall Symposium Report on Work and AI

By Kevin Crowston

The Work and AI AAAI symposium was held in Arlington Virginia from 7–9 November 2019. The goal of this symposium was to discuss and plan how AI researchers will contribute to research on human work with artificial intelligence.