Return-Path: From: cgdemarc@ai.mit.edu (Carl de Marcken) Date: Thu, 5 May 94 13:23:25 EDT To: all-ai Subject: GSB, Friday May 5, 5:00 PM in 7AI. GSB this week will be at 5:00 PM on Friday. But it will be postponed if Maja Mataric's 3:45 thesis defense ("Interaction and Intelligent Behavior") extends into the evening hours. We would rather lab members attend Maja's talk, cheer her on, and pay tribute to a gifted researcher and model human being before toasting on her behalf in the 7th floor playroom at our weekly benefit. As with all who know her, I remember my first encounter with Maja. In 1989, on a breezy Spring day, I was walking around the Charles and had just passed the Hatch Shell on my way to the Harvard Bridge, enjoying the blue horizon and crisp air. There was a small crowd gathered further up the esplanade and as I approached I saw the object of their attention: a group of eight ducklings separated from their mother and obviously frightened. A boy on a bike was in the process of suggesting that they be carried over to their mother (on the other side of the rise of land, fretting inconsolably) when a young woman stopped him, borrowed a red baseball cap from another spectator, and began waving it slowly in front of one of the ducklings. As its eyes began tracking it, she moved it to and fro until the child begin to waddle towards it, followed by its siblings. Soon they were all weaving about in a mad stumbling dance and at just the right moment, with a glance up the embankment, she snatched the hat back: the ducklings moved as a swarm, trading turns in the lead of a meandering band out of rhythm, but drifting ever towards their mother. As we all watched amazed, they crested the grass hill, saw their mother, and rushed frantically to her side. "Flocking", Maja explained, and modestly jogged away. Mike Bolotski tells of Maja's contribution to maintaining peace and stability in the new world order, and her role in the deep shadows of international diplomacy. Her frequent European "conference" trips are invariably followed by dramatic progress in previously stalled negotiations. Questions of her whereabouts are quietly diverted: "oh, she's in the other paper session", or "she's getting lunch". And in a richly paneled room in an anonymous European capital, tensions evaporate, documents are signed, handshakes exchanged, and two tank battalions of the former People's Army of Eastern Slobovia are quietly pulled back from the border. Most of her friends have similar stories. Whether it be her groundbreaking work in behavioral psychology that lead to the Foundation Trilogy or her humanitarian efforts to end conflict in her native land through subtle manipulation of third order adaptive social momentum components, she has left her mark on the world and continues to do so. We at MIT in the AI Lab are influenced by her "dispersive" model of research group cooperation, and who can count how many UROPs have come of age under her tutelage, discovering the unbridled scientific joy that comes from breaking the curse of the exponent and keeping more than 5 robots functioning for 30 minutes straight. Yes, if she leaves us we will miss Maja. And that is why I suggest that we enjoy a last celebration, and get rip-roaring drunk at this week's G I R L S C O U T B E N E F I T where Marvin Minsky, Gottfried Leibniz, Maya Angelou and Rodney Brooks will be spontaneously composing short poems in her honor.