(By Robert-Jan Drenth)
The Annual CognaAC Artifical Intelligence Symposium (ACAIS) took place on the 6th of June at the center of Nijmegen. This year the theme was Life, with a focus on questions such as: ‘How does AI influence our lives?’ and ‘How does our life (and nature) influence AI?’ There were 5 invited talks by: Prof. Dr. Guszti Eiben (Evolutionary Computing: What Next? – Evolutionary computing), Prof. Dr. Bram van Ginneken (Computers Versus Humans in Radiology – Computer-Aided Diagnosis), Drs.Mirjam Schuijf (Towards a better you? – human enhancement), Prof. Dr. Anton Nijholt (A Joystick in Your Head – Brain-computer interfacing), and Dr. Tanir Ozcelebi (The Learning Zone in Smart Spaces – smart spaces).
This year we gave also gave attendees the possibility to attend a workshop on Artificial Life besides the talks. We introduced the Artificial Life simulator Breve to a total of 54 people with whom we build a simple decentralised food-gathering system for agents, allowing many of them to gain their first hands-on experiences with this field.
The academic part of the day was concluded with a discussion led by Dr. Pim Haselager, together with a panel consisting of three students and two of the speakers: Mirjam Schuijf and Tanir Ozcelebi. Beforehand the audience could submit their statements or questions about topics they were interested in. The statements were the starting points of some very interesting discussions, with the audience actively participating.
Finally, we enjoyed some drinks and a delicious buffet, during which everyone could share their experiences.
Last but not least, this year we had a special guest: Herman Roozen, the developer of the original logo of CognAC, the study association behind the symposium. He drew some cartoons of the talks during the day, which all turned out very nice. These can be found on our webpage, as well as pictures and information about this and our past symposia: svcognac.nl/acais.
