EDITORIAL

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) was founded in 1964 as the British Computer Society (BCS) Study Group on Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour. In its first decade the Society existed as a Study Group of the BCS, but in 1974 became the independent learned society henceforth known as the AISB. Since its inception, the Society has had an aim to foster the engagement of interdisciplinary subjects in the field of AI. Over the years the range of topics has grown substantially.

The aims of the Society as manifested in its constitution are (1) to promote the study of artificial intelligence, simulation of behaviour and the design of intelligent systems; (2) to facilitate co-operation and communication among those interested in the study of artificial intelligence, simulation of behaviour and the design of intelligent systems; (3) to hold, or to participate in the holding of, conferences and meetings for the communication of knowledge concerning, and to publicise and disseminate by other means knowledge and views concerning artificial intelligence, simulation of behaviour and the design of intelligent systems. To address the latter, the AISB has been holding an annual convention consisting of a varying number of symposia placed in the areas of interest to the society and attracting a large number of participants from industry and academia. The remit of promoting AI in general is met by sponsorship of events and a student travel award scheme.

From the very beginning, the Society has published a “Newsletter”, intermittently called “Bulletin”, and now established as the “AISB Quarterly” or AISBQ, for short. Having been instrumental in launching the journal Artificial Intelligence in 1970, and having published its own journal for a short period (2001–2005), the Society has lately been contemplating models of associating with a journal closely related in scope to the aims of the AISB. In Connection Science we believe to have found just the right medium.

The AISB-50 convention held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in April 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the AISB. It showcased a thriving interdisciplinary culture within the Society evidenced by keynote lectures by some of the most prominent researchers in the respective areas. The keynotes to the convention by Susan Stepney (When does a slime mould compute?), Lucy Suchman (Human(oid) Robot Reconfigurations), Terrence Deacon (In what sense could a machine be alive?), and Humberto Maturana (Living Systems and Robots) gave the delegates a fascinating overview of historic facts and latest developments. In addition to these keynotes, public lectures underlined the public understanding initiative of the AISB: John Barnden (Creative Metaphor, Mind Out! Or Rather, Mind In), Simon Colton (The Painting Fool: Weak and Strong Computational Creativity Research in Action), Hannah Smithson from The Colour Group (GB) (New perspectives on colour from a 13th century account of light, material and rainbows). More than 20 symposia covered a range of topics including computational creativity, computational intelligence, consciousness, embodied cognition, computational art, games, human-robot interaction, machine ethics, machine learning, and philosophy.

It was at this 50th-anniversary edition of the AISB convention that the opportunity arose to tighten the bonds between the society and Connection Science. With the new editor-in-chief, Tony Prescott, and some changes to the scope of Connection Science in effect from the beginning of 2014, there was now a significant overlap of interests between the journal and the AISB. The idea for a partnership was born that soon led to the current association of AISB with Connection Science.

2014 has been an eventful year for the Society. AISB joined forces with Bletchley Park Museum and Dr Hugh Loebner in becoming the organiser of the annual Loebner Prize contest that has been running since 1991. This Turing Test competition is based on Alan Turing's original description of the test (Turing, 1950) and is still in its first phase where communication is restricted to teletype-like conversations between the AI entries, confederates, and judges. Even 23 years into the contest, no AI entry has managed to fool at least half the judges into believing that it is human. We are looking forward to the day when the first stage is won and the contest enters the final stage including audio/visual components. The AISB will continue to organise the contest on an annual basis as per an agreement with Hugh Loebner.

As a further ongoing activity, the AISB started a series of members' workshops in 2012. To date there have been five such workshops as follows.

• Sensorimotor Theory Workshop (September 2012),

• Distributed Thinking Symposium V (January 2013),

• The Emergence Of Consciousness (May 2013),

• Modelling Organisational Behaviour and Social Agency (January 2014),

• Figurative language: its patterns and meanings in domain-specific discourse (August 2014).

We envisage the publication of special issues of Connection Science relating to particular areas stimulated by the AISB workshops and best-paper issues stemming from the annual conventions. Connection Science being an established, world-leading, inter-disciplinary journal dedicated to exploring the convergence of the analytic and synthetic sciences of mind including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, computational modelling, artificial intelligence, analog and parallel computing, and robotics could be no better match for a long-term association with the AISB. I would like to express my gratitude to Taylor and Francis for considering the interests of the AISB, its members, and the current readership of Connection Science and for turning this into a partnership with huge potential and a multitude of mutual benefits that will undoubtedly have the effect of further increasing the impact of both the Society and the journal.