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From: horvitz@june.cs.washington.edu (Eric Horvitz)
Subject: CFP: AAAI Fall Symposium on Flexible Computation
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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 01:35:36 GMT
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     =========================================================

             C A L L   F O R   P A R T I C I P A T I O N

     =========================================================


               FLEXIBLE COMPUTATION IN INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS:

                    RESULTS, ISSUES, AND OPPORTUNITIES
 

                           AAAI Fall Symposium

                           November 9-11, 1996

                      Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA


               =======================================

                    Submissions Due April 15, 1996

      See the symposium home page at http://flexcomp.microsoft.com/ 

 
                        Call for Participation 


Flexible computation refers to procedures that allow a graceful tradeoff
to be made between the quality of results and allocations of costly
resources, such as time, memory, or information.  Systems employing
flexible computation gain the ability to adapt the quality of their
response to dynamic changes in requirements for precision, and to
uncertainty or variation in the cost of computational commodities.  Recent
examples of flexible computation techniques include memory-bounded search,
anytime algorithms, approximate query processing, and a variety of
imprecise computation techniques. Flexible computation has been applied to
combinatorial optimization, planning, probabilistic inference, decision
making, and theorem proving.  Our goal is to bring together researchers
from several different fields who have been tackling problems with
flexible computation, and to explore results, critical problems, and
opportunities via invited talks, presentation papers, and panel
discussions. 


  Topics of interest include:


     * fundamental properties of flexible computation

     * analysis of value tradeoffs in computational systems

     * scheduling and monitoring of flexible computation

     * partitioning resources between object-level and meta-level

     * representation and learning of performance profiles

     * flexible system specification and evaluation 

     * programming methods supporting construction of flexible procedures

     * benefits and overhead associated with use of flexible computation

     * applications of flexible computation

The symposium will feature both analytical and experimental work.  We are
especially interested in experiences with applications in time-critical
environments, or other resource-limited situations. 

We invite the participation of investigators from diverse fields working
on problems and applications of flexible-computation, including
researchers addressing problems in: 

     * Learning

     * Planning

     * Robotics

     * Uncertain reasoning

     * Optimization

     * Operating systems

     * Information retrieval

     * Signal processing

     * Numerical analysis


SUBMISSION AND REVIEW OF MATERIALS

Prospective participants should submit a brief paper (5 pages or less) or
an extended abstract describing their research or interests. Papers should
be submitted electronically via ftp to flexcomp.microsoft.com/flexcomp96.
Participants will have an opportunity to contribute to the final working
notes. 


IMPORTANT DATES

Submissions must be received by: April 15, 1996

Notification of acceptance on or before: May 17, 1996

Camera-ready copy for working notes due: Aug 23, 1996


                               * * *

For additional information or inquiries, feel free to contact one of the
Symposium co-chairs.

SYMPOSIUM CO-CHAIRS

Eric Horvitz
Decision Theory Group
Microsoft Research, 9S
Redmond, WA, USA

horvitz@microsoft.com
http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/dtg/horvitz/

Tel: (206) 936 2127 
Fax: (206) 936 0502 

      - - -

Shlomo Zilberstein
Computer Science Department
University of Massachusetts
LGRC, Box 34610
Amherst, MA 01003-4610

shlomo@cs.umass.edu
http://anytime.cs.umass.edu/~shlomo/

Tel: (413) 545-4189
Fax: (413) 545-1249


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Louis Hoebel, Rome Laboratory

Eric Horvitz (co-chair), Microsoft Research

Jane Liu, University of Illinois

Mike Pittarelli, SUNY Institute of Technology

Shlomo Zilberstein (co-chair), University of Massachusetts

                             * * * 

Fall and Spring Symposia are sponsored by the American Association for
Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). More information about the Fall Symposium
on Flexible Computation can be found at: 

                    http://flexcomp.microsoft.com/ 
