IJCAI-ECAI-18 Call for Papers: Special Track on the Evolution of the Contours of AI

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Artificial Intelligence has gone through many dramatic and subtle changes during its history. As IJCAI is almost 50 year old, it is a good opportunity to consider what we were, how we evolved, what we have become, and what we are likely to be in the future. This track of IJCAI-ECAI-18 focuses on insights, both qualitative and quantitative, that researchers and practitioners have had on the evolution and the state of the field, in an attempt to bring it into perspective and to help us consider its future.We seek papers that can provide insights and perspective on the changes have we witnessed, and their cause. What topics, formerly considered outside AI, are now within the field, and what topics, formerly considered solidly within AI, are now wholly or partially outside? Have these shifts been to the benefit of the subfield and to AI as a whole, or not? Is there, in fact, a rationale to these shifts of emphasis, inclusion, and exclusion, or are they mainly sociological phenomena?

What has been gained and what has been lost in these shifts, and what should we expect AI to look like in the future? How has the research methodology changed, and has this been beneficial to the field?

This Special Track seeks to foster discussion and debate around these issues. We seek papers on the following topics (the list is non-exhaustive, and both technically-oriented and philosophically-oriented contributions are welcome):

• Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the evolution of AI subfields;
• Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the interaction between AI subfields;
• What is AI according to laypeople, governing bodies, industry, other scientific disciplines, and the AI academic community?
• The sociology and history of AI: Who writes about what, when, and where? Are there any gender, age, and geographic biases across subfields of AI?
• Analysis of the rise of techniques and approaches, and the decline of techniques and approaches;
• In the cases of machine learning, NLP, and robotics: what is the dividing line between what is still considered AI, and what is not?
• Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the interactions between AI and other disciplines within computer science (programming theory, databases, operations research, computational logic, etc.) and beyond (mathematics, statistics, economics, philosophy, psychology and cognition, sociology, etc.).

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission: March 18, 2018
Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 24, 2018
Camera-ready deadline: May 7, 2018

SUBMISSION DETAILS

• Submission Site: https://ijcai-eoc.confmaster.net/
• Formatting Guidelines, LaTeX Styles and Word Template: http://www.ijcai.org/authors_kit

Submitted papers must be formatted according to IJCAI guidelines and submitted electronically through the IJCAI-ECAI-18 special track paper submission site. Full instructions including formatting guidelines and electronic templates are available on the IJCAI-ECAI-18 website. Submissions must be in electronic form using the IJCAI-ECAI-18 paper submission software linked above. Submissions must be self-contained; IJCAI-ECAI-18 will not accept or review any supplementary materials. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to agree to this requirement at the time of submission. All papers are due electronically on March 18, 2018 (11:59 UTC- 12). Submissions received after the deadline or that do not meet the length or formatting requirements will not be considered for review (see the paper length and format section below). No email or fax submissions will be accepted. Notification of receipt of an electronically submitted paper will be emailed to the designated contact author soon after receipt. The designated author will be notified by email about acceptance or rejection by April 24.

POLICY ON MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS

IJCAI-ECAI-18 will not accept any paper that, at the time of submission, is under review for, has already been published in, or has already been accepted for publication in, a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings. As a rule of thumb, authors should regard any publication with an ISBN or ISSN as a formal publication. Authors are also required not to submit their papers to venues with formal publication during IJCAI-ECAI-18 review period. These restrictions are not intended to apply to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience and without published proceedings. Authors will be required to confirm that their submissions conform to these requirements at the time of submission. A multiple submission is grounds for immediate rejection of the submitted paper.

CONFIDENTIALITY POLICY

All submissions will be treated in strict confidence until the publication date.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY

All people involved in the IJCAI-ECAI-18 review process adhere to the IJCAI conflict of interest policy. Details can be found at http://ijcai.org/.

PAPER LENGTH AND FORMAT

Like submissions to the main track, submissions to the special track on the Evolution of the Contours of AI should be anonymous.

Submitted technical papers must be no longer than seven pages in total: six pages for the main text of the paper (including all figures but excluding references), and one additional page for references. Note that the references page can only include references. For accepted papers, up to two additional pages may be purchased at an additional cost per page, but note that at the time of submissions, papers should adhere to the guidelines above: 6 pages for main text plus one page for references. Papers must be formatted according to posted IJCAI-ECAI-18 guidelines, which will be available on the conference website (the style will be essentially that of previous IJCAI conferences). Electronic templates for the LaTeX typesetting package, as well as a Word template, that conform to IJCAI-ECAI-18 guidelines will be made available at the conference website. Final camera ready versions will be formatted according to the publisher’s instructions. Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Files in Postscript (ps) or any other format will not be accepted. Over-length papers will be rejected without review. Submissions must be self-contained; IJCAI-ECAI-18 will not accept or review any supplementary material.

SUBMISSION RESTRICTIONS

The main track of IJCAI-ECAI-18 is enforcing a submission limit of no more of 10 submissions per individual author. However, papers submitted to the special track do not count for this number of submissions. The list of authors provided at submission time is final. Authors may not be added to, or removed from, papers following submission. (However, author ordering may still be changed.) Also, by submitting a paper to IJCAI-ECAI-18, authors must acknowledge that they will do their best to contribute in some way to the review process, if asked to.

Enquiries

Please send all enquiries about the Special Track on the Evolution of the Contours of AI to the IJCAI-ECAI-18 Special Track Chair, Ronen Brafman, at the email address SpecialTrack@ijcai-18.org

PC members

Ronen Brafman (Chair)    BGU Israel
Adnan Darwiche                UCLA USA
Richard Korf                       UCLA USA
Alan Mackworth                   UBC Canada
Pedro Meseguer                  IIAI Spain
David Parkes                       Harvard USA
Henri Prade                         CNRS France
Reid Simmons                     CMU USA
Moshe Tennenholtz           Technion Israel
Michael Wellman               U. of Michigan USA