AI-eXplained (AI-X) [President’s Message

Abstract

I have an exciting new development to report to you that has been a joint collaboration between CIS and IEEE staff teams across multiple OUs. Together, we are introducing to the IEEE a new type of article that is being labeled “immersive”. Our original foray into immersive articles will appear in this publication and have an educational orientation. We call the category AI-eXplained (AI-X). Essentially, educators who are building interactive educational software to teach aspects of computational and artificial intelligence can now find a peer reviewed venue for those efforts. This is so cool. A two page extended abstract will appear in both the printed and online versions of the magazine, but the magic happens inside Xplore. The “real” paper is viewed like a supplement and contains all of the immersive components to bring this material to life, allowing the reader to directly interact with the content. It’s much better to experience a concept than to read an explanation. Note the (purposeful) similarity of our name, AIX, to the popular research topic XAI (eXplainable AI). Even though both concern explaining, the difference is that the former is an educational enterprise while the latter is a research topic. The very first such manuscript is in this issue of CIM. The paper is titled “Choosing Representation, Mutation, and Crossover in Evolutionary Algorithms” by Alexander Dockhorn and Simon Lucas (who first posed the challenge to me for CIS to produce interactive articles). Please look at the abstract, but really have some fun trying to solve the 8-Queens problem and explore how one can do it through evolutionary computation in the immersive content. This paper went through a rigorous review process designed for such contributions and will have the same publication credentials as any other published manuscript in CIM