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2008 AAAI Symposium on Automated Scientfic Discovery: Place & Date: unknown

CFP: 2008 AAAI Symposium on Automated Scientific Discovery

There is a long and fascinating history of humankind's endeavor to explain 
and, with the advent of AI, ultimately mechanize the overarching processes 
that lead to scientific discoveries. Over the past 60 years, AI 
researchers have produced systems which have generated novel and 
interesting conjectures (some which have spawned new scientific research 
areas), and invented increasingly efficient techniques to prove or refute 
them.

Nevertheless, the sobering fact remains that such advances fall short of 
approaching the creativity and innovation of even amateur scientists.  We 
believe that AI is ripe for revolutionary progress in automated and 
semi-automated scientific discovery, in no small part because the field 
now has on hand systems that mark advances in various *parts* of 
discovery---parts that, when interconnected, may make for exciting new 
systems.  We also believe that dialogue between researchers behind these 
systems will lead to a new generation of powerful AI discovery systems.

This symposium will survey the newest and most exciting developments in 
systems that cover some aspects of the entire process of scientific 
discovery (including, e.g, representation, exploration, conjecture 
generation, validation, and publishing/reporting).  Of particular interest 
is how the current technologies can fit together to form an environment 
that augments human reasoner's vision and reach, and what goals should be 
set in order to move closer to the complete mechanization of general 
scientific discovery---or at least closer to machines operating as 
intelligent assistants in the search for new discoveries.


Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Given progress on multiple fronts relevant to scientific discovery,
can *comprehensive* or *multi-faceted* discovery systems be developed?

* What role does/should knowledge, knowledge-based systems, and the
semantic web, play in the development of AI discovery systems?

* Systems for human-machine collaborative discovery, and educational
aids in discover and problem solving.

* Can architectures for carefully describing, in computational terms,
the overall process of scientific discovery be devised?

* What role can the cognitive science of discovery (creativity,
invention, etc.) play in AI's quest for discovery systems?


Submissions

We invite submissions for papers that introduce new research
developments, directions, frameworks, results, etc. in these and
related areas.  Potential participants may submit full papers (up to 8
pages in length) or short papers (1-2 pages in length) by May 20, 2008
sent electronically to shilla@cs.rpi.edu or selmer@rpi.edu. We are not
actively seeking opinion papers, but will consider all submissions.


Important Dates

Paper submission: May 20, 2008
Notification of acceptance: June 6, 2008
Camera ready papers: September 12, 2008


Organizing Committee

Andrew Shilliday (co-chair), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Selmer
Bringsjord (co-chair), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Alan Bundy,
University of Edinburgh; Simon Colton, Imperial College London; Doug
Lenat, Cycorp.


For additional information, pleas consult the supplementary symposium
web site at http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/conferences/AAAI/FallSymposium2008/