[UAI] CFP: First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-08) [Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this message.]

First Call for Papers
The First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-08)
March 1-3, 2008, at Memphis, Tennessee, USA
http://www.agi-08.org
Paper submission deadline: September 30, 2007
---------------------------

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was initially directly aimed
at the construction of "thinking machines" - that is, computer systems
with human-like general intelligence. But this task proved very
difficult, and so as steps in this direction, AI researchers focused
on producing AI systems displaying intelligence regarding specific
tasks in relatively narrow domains. In recent years, however, the
situation has been changing. More and more researchers have recognized
the necessity - and feasibility - of returning to the original goals
of the field. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition from the
current focus on highly specialized "narrow AI" problem solving
systems, back to confronting the more difficult issues of "human level
intelligence" and more broadly "artificial general intelligence
(AGI)."

Encouraged by the recent success of several smaller-scale AGI-Related
Meetings (www.agi-08.org/related.php) we have taken the initiative to
facilitate the very first international conference on AGI. The AGI-08
conference will give AGI researchers the opportunity for presenting
research results and exchanging ideas on topics of common interest.
During the conference, we will also discuss the possibility of
creating a new organization to promote and coordinate AGI research.

The conference is explicitly open to all the various techniques used
in seeking to realize general intelligence - for instance, symbolic,
connectionist, evolutionary, robotic, mathematical, or integrative
approaches (... or new approaches that the conference organizers have
never heard of!). We are particularly interested in papers describing
concrete, reasonably well-fleshed-out AGI projects - meaning, research
projects that:

- are based on a coherent theory about "intelligence" as a whole
- involve a concrete engineering plan oriented toward implementing the
relevant conception of general intelligence in a computer system
- have already produced some concrete results, either practical or
theoretical

However, we are also open to high-quality submissions that address key
aspects of AGI from a purely theoretical perspective, or that discuss
AGI projects at an earlier stage of development. There is a list of
Suggested Topics (www.agi-08.org/suggested.php) at the conference
website, though other topics are also welcomed, so long as there is a
recognizable relation to AGI, as defined above.

AGI-08 will be an inter-disciplinary meeting. Besides computer
scientists and engineers, we also welcome researchers from cognitive
science, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and other
allied fields.

Conference Format
---------------------------
A tentative schedule (www.agi-08.org/schedule.php) is available at the
conference website.

Briefly speaking, the conference will consist of several technical
sessions, a poster session, and a few special sessions as well. Each
technical session will be organized around a topic, and have time for
talks, panel discussion, and general discussion.

Paper Submission
---------------------------
AGI-08 will accept two types of submissions: full-length papers (12
pages) and short position statements (5 pages). All submissions should
be prepared using the IOS templates (www.iospress.nl/authco/
instruction_crc.html), either in LaTeX or in MS Word.

All the papers will be submitted electronically. The details of the
submission procedure will be announced before the due date at the
conference website.

AGI-08 Proceedings will be published by IOS Press, a major AI
publisher. All accepted papers will also be available on-line for open
access.

Whether an accepted paper (of either length) will be presented as a
talk or as a poster will be determined by the Program Committee, in
part based on paper quality as assessed by the anonymous reviewers,
and in part according to the extent the paper addresses a topic of
core interest to the AGI community.

The acceptance of a paper is based on the assumption that one of the
authors will attend the conference to present the paper.

Important Due Dates
---------------------------
- September 30, 2007: Paper submission
- November 30, 2007: Acceptance notification
- December 20, 2007: Camera-ready copy submission

Organizing Committee
---------------------------
  Stan Franklin (Chair), franklin -at- memphis.edu
  Sidney D'Mello, sdmello -at- memphis.edu
  Ben Goertzel, ben -at- novamente.net
  Bruce Klein, bruce -at- novamente.net
  Lee McCauley, mccauley -at- memphis.edu
  Pei Wang, pei.wang -at- temple.edu

Program Committee
---------------------------
  Ben Goertzel (Co-Chair), Novamente LLC
  Pei Wang (Co-Chair), Temple University
  Sam S. Adams, IBM Research
  James Anderson, Brown University
  Mike Anderson, Franklin & Marshall College
  Mark H. Bickhard, Lehigh University
  Yaneer Bar-Yam, New England Complex Systems Institute
  Eric Baum, Baum Research Enterprises
  Henry Brighton, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
  Nick Cassimatis, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  Hernan Castro, Intel Corporation
  Andrew Coward, Australian National University
  Hugo de Garis, Wuhan University
  Debbie Duong, Science Applications International Corporation
  Wlodzislaw Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University
  Richard Duro, Universidade da CoruÃ±a
  Stan Franklin, University of Memphis
  David Friedlander, Behavior Recognition Systems
  Phil Goetz, National Library of Medicine
  Josh Storrs Hall, Institute for Molecular Manufacturing
  Marcus Hutter, Australian National University
  Cliff Joslyn, Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Nikola Kasabov, Auckland University of Technology
  Randal Koene, Boston University
  Christian Lebiere, Carnegie Mellon University
  Soo-Young Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology
  Douglas Lenat, Cycorp
  Moshe Looks, Science Applications International Corporation
  Bruce MacLennan, University of Tennessee
  Don Perlis, University of Maryland
  Matthias Scheutz, University of Notre Dame
  Juergen Schmidhuber, Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial
Intelligence
  Lokendra Shastri, International Computer Science Institute
  Aaron Sloman, University of Birmingham
  David G. Stork, Ricoh Innovations
  John Gerald Taylor, King's College London
  Karin Verspoor, Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Paul Vogt, Tilburg University
  Mark Waser, Books International
  Mary-Anne William, University of Technology, Sydney

More information
---------------------------
http://www.agi-08.org


