[FOM] CFP: 2008 AAAI Symposium on Automated Scientific Discovery

[Andrew Shilliday]

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 at cs.rpi.edu or selmer at 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/