AI TOPICS seeks to provide information that can be understood by those who are beginning to learn about artificial intelligence. Because much of this audience has little or no technical background, the information must be general in nature and will often come from non-scientific publications. We have used our best efforts to strike a balance between scientific exactitude and a presentation that is not daunting. Furthermore, AI TOPICS is a resource to be utilized as a starting point, or springboard, rather than as a collection of black-letter dogma. In fact, given that the field of artificial intelligence is diverse, dynamic and evolving, we want you to understand that we simply cannot stay current with all of the developments and resources, nor are we able to represent all viewpoints. Please read our notices and disclaimers for additional information pertaining to such matters as what you can and cannot expect from AI TOPICS. And finally, we suggest that you take a moment to check out our collection of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about this site which appear below.

A QUICK GUIDE TO USING THE SITE

If you have a topic in mind, see if it matches one of the topics in the first pull-down menu that appears at the top of every page. If it's not there, try our A-Z Index or the Site Map, both of which can be found in the second and third pull-down menus of the three that appear at the top of every page. After you've visitied a topic or subtopic, be sure to see the related collection of news articles in the General Index to AI in the news by Topic for that's where you'll find the latest developments.

If you have a specific question in mind, you might want to check out the FAQ page or our Reference Shelf of dictionaries, glossaries and other reference materials, many of which you can access online.

If you're working on a report for school, check out our special page: Doing a School Report about AI.

If you want a general introduction, we suggest beginning with the AI Overview or our annotated collection of AI in the news articles. Additional pages which may be especially helpful during the course of your first visit are: Welcome to AI Topics [our home page], Resources, Notices & Disclaimers, and Announcements. You might also want to take advantage of the Search Engine provided for this site. [The search engine, as well as the site map and A - Z index, can be accessed via the 2nd and 3rd pull-down menus which appear at the top of every page.]

If you want to read about some of the very latest AI developments, check out the General Index to AI in the news by Topic and then be sure to follow the links from the news articles to related AI Topics pages.

If you need to reformat a page, please see our Format page where you will find links to tools that may be able to convert our pages to "text only", Braille, and enlarged type. We also offer links from the Format page to sites that may be able to translate our pages into another language.

And if you are in doubt about the proper use of CYBERSOURCES, please see our materials about responsible scholarship.

FAQs About the AI Topics Site:

1) Why do you refer to AI Topics as a SPRINGBOARD ?
AI Topics is a springboard in the sense that it can launch you on your way to more resources. It is our hope that by providing some basic information and current news, we can equip you to further explore AI in more depth on your own. By using keywords, project names, articles & authors, and other terms found in these pages you can frame a fruitful search request utilizing any of the popular search engines, as well as various online databases and your library's online catalog.

2) Would you please explain what you mean by the statement that "[you] simply cannot stay current with all of the developments and resources, nor are [you] able to represent all viewpoints." [This statement appears near the top of this page.]
There are several reasons for saying this. The first is that we want to make sure that we don't give you a false sense of security. There are so many great ideas, projects, products, and web sites out there, with more and more of them becoming available online on a daily basis, that we want you to realize that what we offer is but a small sampling. Then on a practical level, we don't have the resources that would enable us to comprehensively cater to our audience's varied levels of competency. With one webmaster to maintain more than 100 web pages, there is simply no way that every page and every topic can be kept 100% current. From the pedagogical perspective, we don't want to give the impression that our resource base is functionally complete lest someone infer that the presence or absence of a particular resource is of significance. [This is also covered on our page of Notices along with other related information.] So if we didn't mention a particular book about the history of AI or failed to point to a certain vision group's site, nothing should be inferred. Similarly, citing just one book about a subject should not be understood as suggesting that everything you need to know can be found within its covers just as offering links to 3 research groups is merely illustrative of the sort of other sites you can find on your own. And this really is but another instance of our SPRINGBOARD approach for if we can equip you with a fundamental understanding of the topic and an idea of what you can expect to find online, then you can conduct an efficient & effective search at your level of competency covering the universe of resources and perspectives as it then exists.

3) When I revisited a certain topic, the resource that I had utilized on my prior visit no longer appeared on the page. Why did you remove it?
Several possibilities exist. We periodically check links to make sure they are still valid and any resource found to have a dead link is then moved to our page of DEAD LINKS. Another reason could be that we wanted to freshen up the page with some new resources. Since we must balance our focused presentation with the vast number of wonderful resources available, we periodically rotate and/or replace resources. We also reevaluate all of our content and it could be that the resource in question was no longer being maintained, or that it fell below our standards. However, in mid-2001 we opened a PAGE ARCHIVE so that we can now warehouse these resources rather than have them simply disappear without a trace.

4) Why aren't you adding resources that are available only in print to the site as much as you used to?
We have shifted our emphasis to resources that are available online because we believe that our audience wants their information NOW. In addition, online resources are available to everyone who can access this web site, whereas the availability of printed resources often depends upon the holdings in one's local library.

• Encyclopedias gather dust as research moves online. By May Wong. Associated Press / available from CNN.com (March 11, 2004). "In the age of the Internet, encyclopedias are gathering dust, and most families with young children don't even consider buying the space-hogging printed sets anymore. ... [Michael Gray, a seventh grader] prefers doing research online, where information from a vast array of sources comes quickly, and for the most part, for free. ... 'I find information really fast,' Gray says, smiling proudly. 'Within five to 10 minutes, I find a good [Web] site to work from.' ... There's also an ongoing debate about the reliability of data found on the Internet; kids need to be taught how to evaluate it."
  • See our collection of materials about evaluating Internet information (Resources for Students: Responsible Scholarship).
  • Visit our Reference Shelf.

5) Why do you bother to open pages when you have only one or two resources to offer?
Because we're always at work here at AI Topics freshening up the site, we are always under construction! By opening the doors to less developed pages we might still be able to get a student started with his/her research, and the sparsely populated page serves as a visual invitation to people to submit suggestions for content. If you have any suggestions, comments, or resources you'd like to bring to our attention, please don't hesitate to tell us.

6a) Why do I encounter so many dead links when I try to access articles from AI in the news and the News Archive?
Morphing links and disappearing articles are to be expected. Articles are often rotated from the provider's current collection to their archive which results in a new URL being assigned. Also, the realities of the marketplace are such that articles that were initially free may become subject to a retrieval fee after a period of time. (For more about charges, see 6b.) We keep the article excerpt and its citation on our site because it is still informative in and of itself, and it lets you know where you may be able to find the article either in print, in a database you (or your school, institution, company, etc.) subscribe to, or possibly online and for free, but from a different provider and maybe under a different headline.
As for dead links on other pages in AI Topics, please know that we try our best to revive them once they are discovered. However, a link's life force is beyond our control and sometimes we must pronounce a link "dead" and move it to our page of Dead Links.

• For some interesting insights, see: Rotten Links Hamper Learning. By Katie Dean and Kendra Mayfield. Wired News (April 24, 2002).

6b) Why is there a fee to get a news article? I thought that you only referenced articles that could be accessed for free.
The articles are available for free when we post them, though some sites do require that you complete a no-fee registration. Even so, many of these articles are offered without charge only for a limited period and then a fee is imposed once they are archived.

• See generally:
  • Extra! Extra! Read All About You. By Joanna Glasner. Wired News (March 1, 2004). "To get access to articles, readers are increasingly required to provide such data as age, ZIP code, gender and, in many cases, information about income and personal interests."
  • Complaints over online newspaper registration. Associated Press / available from CNN June 14, 2004). "Imagine if a trip to the corner newsstand required handing over your name, address, age, and income to the cashier before you could pick up the daily newspaper. That's close to the experience of many online readers, who must complete registration forms with various kinds of personal data before seeing their virtual newspaper."

7) Why is the page about "abc" a subtopic of AI TOPIC "X" rather than AI TOPIC "Z"?
Because so many of the subtopics could properly be characterized as being subtopics of more than one AI TOPIC, our placement may well vary from what you would have expected. However, it is our hope that by providing features such as Related Pages, a Site Map, and the A-Z Index, our users will be able to assemble a complete picture of their topic of interest.

8) If I'm doing a school project, is it permissible for me to simply cut & paste material that I have found online?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Some of the issues involved when addressing the proper use of cybersources include copyright, plagiarism, proper acknowledgement of one's sources, the nature of the project, and ethics. A collection of excellent introductory materials about responsible scholarship can be found on our Student Resources page.

9) When I submitted an inquiry seeking "an answer," why did you respond by simply suggesting that I consult several resources?
This typically arises in two situations. The first deals with inquiries that typically begin with "I have a homework assignment that is due tomorrow and I need to know the answer to this question ...". Needless to say, we will not do a student's work for him/her (see this related article), but we will point the student in the right direction by suggesting some pertinent resources from the site. The second situation usually involves very broad questions (What are all of the applications of AI in medicine?) or questions asking for an opinion (What's AI's greatest accomplishment?). Consistent with our springboard approach (see for example FAQ 2) and the fact that AAAI represents a diverse and robust membership in this dynamic and evolving field (see our Notice), our response will be to suggest some relevant pages within AI Topics.

10) Why didn't you use any of the papers and/ or resources I suggested for inclusion in your web site?
There could be many reasons, with the most common being: (a) the material is too technical/sophisticated for the audience served by this site; (b) there is already a resource in AI Topics that relates to that subject; and (c) if we used all of the very good resourcesthat are submitted, we'd simply overwhelm our users. Please remember that our "springboard approach" seeks to help our users get their bearings so that they can then conduct their own search in a larger universe of resources ... and at that stage they may find their way to your paper.

11) Since your web site is about computers and cutting edge technologies, why don't you use the latest high-tech graphics and other fancy features on your web pages?
We keep the site simple for several reasons. While there certainly is the temptation to have some fun with various bells & whistles throughout the site, practicality must prevail! Our focus is the informative resources and if we were to put on an entertaining show for you, it would only get in the way of (and certainly delay) your access to the material. Moreover, since our audience is global, we realize that not everyone who arrives here has the hardware and/or software needed to adequately view the latest features. And then of course, there are Occam's wise words...

12) What's the point of simply listing academic labs in the Related Web Site section of so many pages in AI Topics?
The academic lab web sites that we point to typically offer lively project overviews and valuable collections of online publications. Since we usually point to the lab's home page, you can use their menu to find what best meets your needs at their site.

13) Are there any articles about the AI Topics?
Yes, and you can find these in our our collection of articles about this web site.

14) Your site has lots of pages and so much information! How can I keep from getting overwhelmed?
"The lesson is that complexity increases when we restrict our attention to one particular element in an ensemble, thereby losing the symmetry and simplicity that were inherent in the totality of all the elements taken together."
- from Parallel Universes. By Max Tegmark. Scientific American, May 2003 (at page 51 in the print version).

15) How else can I search your site?
In addition to our search engine you can use the advanced search feature of other search engines such as Google and Yahoo to restrict a search to AI Topics by typing www.aaai.org/aitopics in the site/domain box.