Chairing the ACAAL Linmi Tao

"Dear All, Welcome to Workshop ACAAL! I meet all of you in the cyberspace, talk with you via internet, now it is the time to see you and to hug you in real space! I have received so many mails and the registrations, believe me I have done my best to reply your mails, and please forgive me if I answer your questions in delay."

I wrote this post 11/25/06 7:06 PM before I left for Helsinki. What has happened since? The EU presidency has changed. People have returned to their homes. I tried to occupy myself with some of the new developments, but it's very difficult for SME's to participate while there is no funding front-end. The European innovation is for universities, institutions and big companies. The working models are very bureaucratic.

The details about the social dinner on 22 Nov 2006 and the meeting on 23 Nov 2006 will be announced by Mr. Helge Keitel on the workshop. Please feel free to contact me (+86 139 1032 8217) or Helge (+358 50 309 2021) if you cannot attend the workshop.

Best wishes, Linmi Tao

Ohh! Now I get it, the information about the social dinner for 22 Nov 2006. This was Submitted by Linmi on Sun, 2006-11-19 15:53. Things changed during the seminar and therefore we had two different dinners: one 22 and a second one 23 November 2006.

Nowadays, the researches on ambient intelligent are addressed to understand user’s physical and mental states, and to assist them proactively in performing activities, reaching goals and mastering everyday life. This characterizes a new mode of natural interaction between people and their environment: Ambient intelligence enables the environment to become aware of the human that interacts with, in terms of his goals, needs and even moods, then to proactively help the human to reach his goals.

Scientific findings indicate that emotion is an essential element of our intelligence, and plays an significant role in decision making, perception, learning, and more --- that is, it influences the very mechanisms of rational thinking. Therefore, the ambient intelligence systems should also have the ability to recognize, to understand, even to possess and express emotions. “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.” (M. Minsky)

I learned to know lots of interesting people. Would love to have more time to concentrate on some of the ideas that emerged during IST 2006 in Helsinki 1½ years ago.