PRICAI 2000, topics in artificial intelligence

PRICAI 2000, held in Melbourne, Australia, is the sixth Pacific Rim Interna­ tional Conference on Artificial Intelligence and is the successor to the five earlier PRICAIs held in Nagoya (Japan), Seoul (Korea), Beijing (China), Cairns (Aus­ tralia) and Singapore in the years 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998 respectively. PRICAI is the leading conference in the Pacific Rim region for the presenta­ tion of research in Artificial Intelligence, including its applications to problems of social and economic importance. The objectives of PRICAI are: To provide a forum for the introduction and discussion of new research results, concepts and technologies; To provide practising engineers with exposure to and an evaluation of evolving research, tools and practices; To provide the research community with exposure to the problems of practical applications of AI; and To encourage the exchange of AI technologies and experience within the Pacific Rim countries. PRICAI 2000 is a memorial event in the sense that it is the last one in the 20"" century. It reflects what researchers in this region believe to be promising for their future AI research activities. In fact, some salient features can be seen in the papers accepted. We have 12 papers on agents, while PRICAI 96 and 98 had no more than two or three. This suggests to us one of the directions in which AI research is going in the next century. It is true that agent research provides us with a wide range of research subjects from basic ones to applications.