A long break, much to talk about After a very long hiatus, the AI Newsletter is back to bring you thought provoking AI discussion. Back when the AI Newsletter first began, AI was in its infancy. Today AI is all around us powering many of the systems we use on

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour According to its home page, the Society was founded in 1964, and is the largest Artificial Intelligence Society in the UK. Activities include giving travel grants, organising conferences, public lectures and other events, and publishing the Interdisciplinary Journal

Introduction Editing this newsletter is a spare-time occupation, and interesting papers pile up faster than I can read them. This would probably happen even were I not spending time on anything else. Isaac Asimov explained in his essay The Sound of Panting that the panting wasn't him chasing pretty research

Coding With Dinosaurs Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is. This quote is by Larry Wall. I took it from Swaine's World, the website of Michael Swaine, columnist and editor for Dr. Dobbs. It reminds me of a poem which I've known

Introduction It's been said that Shakespeare gave Twelfth Night the alternative title of What You Will because, exhausted by writing the play, he was completely unable to think of anything more informative. Choose whatever title you will, he says: I've given up. AI Newsletter isn't Shakespeare; but I have the

Introduction First, apologies for the late appearance of this issue. I had problems with my laptop's Internet connection, which meant that I ended up having to remotely edit a backup copy of the Newsletter held on my Web server machine. Anyway, over the past month, I've been looking into holes.

Introduction It's a light issue this month, because of competing demands from a forthcoming software demo. So here's a selection of AI miscellanea: an assortment of news items (it really is a pity about Aibo), research papers, advice for researchers, and a very nifty applet; a poem, some songs, and

Fiftienth Anniversary Issue Introduction We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other

Introduction Just before writing this month's issue, I happened to tune into a BBC Radio 4 programme about a man who trains birds to act. He subverts the imprinting instinct that makes them treat the first moving object seen after hatching as a parent, and even gets them to fly

Introduction I have been feeling cynical this week. In its 22nd October issue, New Scientist reported two pieces of news. One was that phone companies are trying to make phone calls sound dreadful. You may say they don't have to try. However, these aren't normal calls; they're voice-over-internet. The companies

Introduction Welcome to the October 2005 issue. My main topic this month is an introduction to evolutionary art - genetic algorithms and other evolutionary programming techniques for generating text, visual art, and music. I'll continue next month - if you can recommend any particularly splendid examples, please contact me. New

Introduction Welcome to our September issue. The main feature this month continues August's AI-in-Python theme with a look at Python for robotics and the Pyro robot-control software. We also have a selection of quotes, and some computer-generated humour. As ever, comments and suggestions are welcome. An Arc Through AI Space

Introduction A few months ago, I discovered the Python code repository for the textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Peter Norvig and Stuart Russell. There's some good stuff there, and this inspired me to find out what else Python had to offer AI. A lot, is the answer, and

Introduction This month, I've written another AI Alphabet. I hope - one of the entries will explain this - that after reading it, you will be thinking globally and breadth-first, not locally and depth-first. Logic Programming in C++ with LC++ Adi Shavit wrote to tell me about the LC++ library,

Introduction In our March issue, I explored some of the neural-net applets around the Web. One, intriguing because of the slowly growing network of lime green dots which writhes around inside as if struggling to escape, was the DemoGNG applet for competitive learning, written by Hartmut Loos and Bernd Fritzke

Introduction In July 2002, I went to the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group conference in Cardiff. After arriving early and discovering the shops hidden away in Cardiff's Victorian shopping arcades, I decided to buy a few items in order to make a point at the conference. Marker pens, fluorescent card,

Introduction One of the joys of living in the 21st Century is that I keep coming across entire areas of research whose existence I never suspected. This month, I write about one of these, Level-of-Detail AI, a technique used to simulate large numbers of background characters in virtual worlds and