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The AIxploratorium
On-Line Interactive AI Encyclopedia
Try it!!
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What?
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Other details (implementation challenges, slides, ...)?
 What?
The "AIxploratorium" website is designed to be the authoritative
resource for Artificial Intelligence, containing informative, up-to-date
surveys across the breadth of AI, together with easy-to-use interactive demos to
illustrate the basic ideas.
While these demos are targetted to novices,
the website in general contains material relevant to all levels ---
from high school students, to Artificial Intelligencia
(empiricists and theoreticians, practitioners and educators)
---
of course, interconnected every-which-way via hyperlinks, etc.
And of course with well-marked pathways, to help people find material
whose topic, and level, is appropriate.
Vision
Our vision is a resource that is fun, informative, useful, and up-to-date:
- fun:
Most articles will include multimedia material,
including animation, video clips, games, exercises, ..., to illustrate the ideas.
Many will also include interactive demos,
which lead the user through the complexities of the task and/or algorithm,
by presenting small pieces that successively build on the previous information.
Most of these include the "My turn" facility,
which allow the user to try out his/her own ideas,
to see whether s/he can produce solutions that are more effective than
the received approach.
- informative:
These interactive articles (?interArticles?) will
be written by the experts in the areas, then rigorously reviewed and edited,
and augmented with appropriate multimedia components, as well as relevant cross-links.
- useful:
In addition to reading/playing with the interArticles,
the user will be able to download various algorithms and datasets,
as well as possible exercises.
S/he can also follow cross-links to other material, both within the
AIxploratorium and elsewhere.
Moreover, this will all be available for FREE!
- up-to-date:
After the articles are written, the AIxploratorium staff will work to maintain
the information --- by scanning the literature for new results,
and then deciding whether
- to include the relevant new material as an addendum
(to both text and perhaps applet),
- to re-write the relevant portion of the article/applet, or
- to add a new interArticles (updating the pointers as appropriate).
In addition to this "bottom-up" process, the editorial staff will periodically
scan the material in a top-down fashion,
seeking out-of-date material to excise, or at least de-emphasize.
Finally, we will implement mechanisms that allow readers to respond to the
authors -- offering new insights, suggesting possible corrections,
etc. ... which may then lead to updates.
Try it!!
(Given additional funding, we plan to significantly extend these applets, and
also to add many many more.)
If you have problem in using the two applets, please click on this Q&A
page for reference.
Conclusion
AAAI has enthusiastically agreed to fund
a small prototype. (Nov'99)
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We are willing (indeed, eager) to hear any suggestions you may have to
further these ideas, to augment the suggestions presented here.
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We are actively seek other sponsors, perhaps to help support
one or more "chapter(s)".
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An interactive AI "cyber-handbook" would be a tremendous benefit
to the community as a whole. If done correctly, this resource will soon
become
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THE authoritative site for AI research
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a tremendous aide for teaching AI material
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a public forum to triumph breakthroughs and success stories in AI
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This new type of resource will help AI become a leader in this interactive
on-line technology.
(For example, this system could include adaptive aspects, to learn to
provide information, and media, appropriate to each individual user. Or
it could dynamically alter its web-pages, based on the page usage. Etc
etc etc.)
For more information, contact
Dep't of Computing Science
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2H1 Canada
FAX: (780) 492-1071
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