Foundations and grand challenges of artificial intelligence

with the potential for highest payoff. As the size of investment in AI rises above the noise level, we can no longer expect people to fund us on blind faith. We are entering an era of accountability. Rather than being con-cerned, I think we should view this as a challenge and lay out our vision for the future. My first reaction to Simpson’s request was, “Hey, we have nothing to worry about. ” Our track record is terrific. We have created almost a bil-lion dollar-a-year enterprise around the globe. Previously unsolvable prob-lems are being solved. People who have never used a computer before are solving problems with one. Vision and robotics are beginning to transform manufacturing. Planning and schedul-ing systems are in routine use in industry. Speech and language inter-faces are becoming preferred modes of communication. OK, maybe there are a lot of applications, but what about scientific progress? AAAI is a society devoted to sup-porting the progress in science, tech-nology and applications of AI. I thought I would use this occasion to share with you some of my thoughts on the recent advances in AI, the insights and theoretical foundations that have emerged out of the past thir-ty years of stable, sustained, systemat-ic explorations in our field, and the grand challenges motivating the ast November, I got a call from