mack (02/22/83)
The national society for artificial intelligence is
known as the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of
Intelligence/ Societe Canadienne des Etudes d'Intelligence
par Ordinateur. In order to improve communication among its
members, I propose to create a newsgroup for that purpose.
It would serve as an electronic newsletter, bulletin board
and soapbox. For example, the Science Council of Canada
recently held a Workshop on AI and emphasis was placed on
(among other things) the need for communication over net-
works such as this. One immediate purpose is to gather
information over the network for a common position paper to
be authored by the executive. Another purpose is to estab-
lish a database of researchers and projects in the discip-
line. Most articles for our newsletter which is joint with
the CMCCS and CIPPRS are already machine readable when they
are submitted to Wayne Davis.
Since can.cscsi is not too informative (and newsgroup
titles should be) I suggest that can.ai be created for gen-
eral discussion of ai issues and a subgroup can.ai.cscsi
specifically for the society's affairs be established. That
way you can unsubscribe to can.ai and avoid both of them.
The current executive of the society have asked me to do
this but in accordance with the etiquette of Usenet I'd like
to get feedback from newsreaders on how they feel about the
idea. Please mail your comments and votes (both yea and nay)
to me or if you feel you want a wider audience submit a fol-
lowup article.
Alan Mackworth
...!ubc-vision!mack