AAAI-98 Spring Symposium Series
on
Satisficing Models
March 23-25, 1998
Stanford University, California

To effectively accomplish their goals, agents need to model their environment and other agents with which they interact. Building detailed, accurate, and up-to-date models however is a time-consuming activity and can detract from the actual problem solving activities of the agents. We define "satisficing models" as approximate models that enable agents to reliably perform at an acceptable level of effectiveness.

Agents have to make informed and reasoned decisions about allocating their limited computing, sensing, and other resources toward problem solving versus model building activities. On a related question, even if an agent has a detailed model of the environment and other agents, due to time and computational constraints, it may prefer to use only abstractions of the model.

To be able to make these decisions effectively, agents must be able to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of their current models, predict the computational implications of building more accurate models, and analyze which components of their world models will yield the maximum incremental payoff upon enhancement. Research questions relevant to the symposium include the following:

Submission information

The symposium will consist of individual presentations, invited talks, break-out group discussions, panels, and video sessions. Participants interested in presenting their work should send an extended abstract (12 point font, 5 pages or less) describing work in progress or completed work. Other interested participants should send a one-page description of their research interests with a short list of relevant publications. We would like to encourage submissions for short position papers, video presentations and for working systems that can be used for hands-on demonstration during the symposium. We also welcome suggestions for panel and break-out group discussions. We will accept only e-mail submissions of postscript files. Submissions should be sent to sandip@kolkata.mcs.utulsa.edu.

Submissions for the symposia are due by October 24, 1997. Notification of acceptance/rejection will be e-mailed by November 14, 1997. Material to be included in the working notes of the symposium must be received by January 17, 1998.

Organizing Committee


Sandip Sen's homepage