A Review of Machine Learning at AAAI-87

Some of us can remember the first AAAI conference in 1980 a cozy gathering of 400 AI researchers tucked away in one corner of a university campus. There were only two parallel sessions of papers, and they filled one relatively thin proceedings volume. There were no tutorial sessions and no exhibition hall. For better or worse, the field of artificial intelligence has grown considerably in the subsequent seven years. The recent Sixth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI-87, involved over 6,700 people and required the full accommodations of the Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington (site of a former world's fair) for its four parallel technical sessions and exhibition show; and it still needed the University of Washington campus for its four parallel tutorial sessions.