(AA)AI more than the sum of its parts.(AAAI Presidential Address)(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)(Conference news) From: AI Magazine | Date: December 22, 2006| Author: Brachman, Ronald J. | COPYRIGHT 2006 American Association for Artificial Intelligence. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

* Recent thinking has it that AI, 25 years ago a unified field with a shared vision of creating intelligent machines, has devolved into a loosely connected set of distinct specialty areas with little communication or mutual interest between them. To the extent that this is true, it certainly appears to lessen the value of a centralized AI organization like AAAI and of traditional grand-scale AI conferences. But, I argue, the consequences are actually far worse: because of the very ...