Summary of Main Features

Two-day Conference: Tuesday December 14th-Wednesday December 15th 2004

The conference will run two parallel streams. The Applications Stream will present refereed papers describing practical applications of AI, highlighting critical areas of success (and failure) and presenting lessons of value to other developers. The Technical Stream will present refereed papers on important recent technical developments. Both streams will also include an invited keynote lecture by a leading expert.

The papers in both streams will be rigorously refereed. Accepted papers from the two streams will be published by Springer-Verlag as separate volumes, entitled Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XXI and Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XII. The best papers from each stream of the conference will be reprinted as a special issue of the international journal Knowledge Based Systems.

A cash prize plus a trophy will be awarded to the author of the best refereed paper in each of the two streams, as determined by the Programme Committees. There will also be a cash prize for the best poster, as selected by conference delegates.

The conference will also feature presentations by suppliers and an exhibition of leading AI tool and software providers.


Tutorial/Workshop Day: Monday December 13th 2004

This preliminary day will be devoted to a range of tutorials and workshops providing practical knowledge of recent developments in AI.

There are expected to be four tutorials to provide greater depth in selected topics. Other events are also under consideration.


UK CBR Workshop: Monday December 13th 2004

SGAI is hosting this year's UK CBR workshop which will be held at Queens' College, Cambridge, UK on Monday December 13th. A special rate will be available for those attending the main conference on the following two days. SGAI are also subsidising a reduced rate for non-presenting students.


BCS Prize for Progress Towards Machine Intelligence (competition)

To be held Tuesday December 14th 2004, Cambridge UK, in association with AI-2004.

The competition is open to all. A maximum of 8 entries will be presented. To control numbers, these will be selected by the organisers on the basis of information provided by the entrants. The prize will be awarded on the basis of a 10-15 minute live demonstration (not a paper or a technical description). The demonstration can be of either software (e.g. a question-answering system or a speech recognition system) or hardware (e.g. a mobile robot). The prize will be awarded to the demonstration that in the opinion of the judges best demonstrates 'progress towards an intelligent machine'.

There is no entry fee (and conference registration is not required) but competitors will be asked to meet their own costs.

This competition will put on show real systems working in real time. It is hoped that the competition and the competitors, over several years, will provide a new interest and visible improvements in the development of machine intelligence.


Poster Session

A poster session is being organised to enable PhD and MSc students to present work in progress.


Registration

There are discounts on the registration fees for early registration and for members of SGAI or any other AI society which is a member of ECCAI. There is also a special reduced rate for students.