The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour |
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AI, The Olympics and The Force
It occurred to me a while ago that the presence of the Olympics in Britain in 2012 may provide some interesting opportunities to the AI community in the UK, and there may be ways in which the Olympics could be "leveraged" to help a number of ends. These include raising public understanding of AI, attracting more school-leavers and existing tertiary students into AI, inspiring funders and companies to provide more support for AI ... and even, who knows, inspiring new research in AI.
I'd like to get the Society at large thinking about this. The SSAISB Committee has decided that the best way forward is to seek to establish a Task Force charged with further exploration of possibilities, formation of proposals, lobbying the Olympian gods, etc. The Committee itself is not in a position to take on such a concerted, major task, and in any case we want to try to engage on the Force the people who are most energetic, motivated and relevantly knowledgeable. The Committee would of course play a supportive role.
So, we are looking for volunteers for this Task Force.
To stimulate thinking, here are some possible ways in which AI could be related to the Olympics. There are no doubt others.
- AI research helping sports science (e.g., via intelligent emulators and body sensors) in the run-up to the Olympics, and of course beyond.
- AI involved in the conduct of human sport itself (e.g., intelligent video monitoring of games).
- AI in virtual-reality sport for people.
- AI competitions to be held in association with the Olympics: from robotic football through intelligent trading-agents competition to intelligent computer gaming.
- AI research helping with the development of infrastructure for the Olympics: this could involve navigation systems, intelligent transport systems, intelligent buildings, security, automatic summarisation of news, real time translation, legal and financial reasoning, etc. etc.
There are special opportunities for getting children involved, and also for getting physically disabled and learning-disabled people engaged.
So ... over to you. Contact any member of the Committee if even only dimly interested in being on the Task Force. Or, if you don't want to be that Forceful we'd be very interested in any ideas or comments you might have. With sufficient imagination and energy the Olympics could be a great opportunity to enrich the study and teaching of AI in this country.
