- Email: [email protected]
The first anniversary of INNS
0893-6080/89 $3.00 + .00 Copyright © 1989 Pergamon Press pic
Neural Networks. Vol. 2. pp. 1-8.1989 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
1988 PRESIDENTIAL REPORT
The First Anniversary of INNS presented to the
First Annual Meeting of the International Neural Network Society by
Stephen Grossberg INNS Founder and President
September 6, 1988 Park Plaza Hotel Boston, Massachusetts THE PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF INNS Welcome! Welcome to the first anniversary celebration of the International Neural Network Society. This occasion commemorates a dream coming true: the establishment, after a half century of pioneering research, of an intellectual home for all practitioners and students of neural network research. When the Society was first incorporated a year and a half ago, many realized that there was a great need for us to come together in a new institution, but no one could have predicted the overwhelming response to the Society's call. We are now, it seems, the fastest growing scientific Society on earth. In the 14 months since members began to join, 3071 have joined (at least, as of September 1) and people have been joining at a linear rate of over 200 members a month with no signs yet of saturation. The data are in Figure 1. Moreover, ours is a truly international society. There are members from 38 countries around the world. Twenty percent of the registered attendees at this meeting have travelled to Boston from other countries (Table 1). There are also members from 49 of the United States. If you know neural network researchers in Idaho, please get them to sign up right away! Thank you for joining! Thank you for participating here in the largest presentation of neural network research that has ever yet occurred in recorded history. As neural network researchers, we all spend a lot
of time thinking about nonlinear dynamical systems. We know how important initial conditions can be to a system's long-term behavior. Today I would therefore like to reaffirm, while they are still fresh, the initial conditions that our founders had in mind when they formed our Society, in the hope that these ideas will continue to guide our community to a thriving and useful future. Such a future is well worth planning, because we are entrusted with an essential and even a noble taskthe task of striving to achieve a theoretical understanding of biological intelligence-our own intelligence-the very foundation of human civilization. We are committed to using this knowledge to advance our technology, and thereby to enrich and safeguard our and future lives.
THE PURPOSE OF INNS The purpose of INNS is clearly stated at the beginning of the Society'S Articles of Incorporation. That purpose is "to create a scientific and educational forum for students, scientists, engineers, and others to learn about, share, contribute to and advance the state of knowledge concerning the modelling of behavioral and brain processes and the application of neural modelling ideas to problems and applications in technology." Several questions could naturally be raised about this statement of purpose. Most important, why do we need our own society to achieve these goals?
S. Grossberg
2
-3071
M
3~-------------------------------------,
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e
r
2
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3 0 -2
0
t
2
4
6
8
Months
10
12
14
t
16
September 1, 19S8
June 1, 19S7
FIGURE 1. Membership rate.
TABLE 1
Countries Of Attendees
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Denmark Finland France Greece Hong Kong Hungary Ireland Israel Italy Japan Mexico New Zealand Norway People's Republic of China Philippines Poland Portugal Republic of China Republic of South Africa Saudi Arabia Singapore South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland The Netherlands United Kingdom United States USSR West Germany Yugoslavia
The most obvious reason concerns the highly interdisciplinary nature of the problems treated by neural network researchers. Our community contains psychologists, neurobiologists, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, and industrialists. No previously established society has supported the full range of neural network research. The need for a new forum to provide this support has been most eloquently demonstrated by the interdisciplinary scope of our membership (Figure 2). Most of our members are drawn from four almost equally represented professional groups. Twenty percent are in the life sciences, particularly the psychological and neural sciences; 19% are in the mathematical and physical sciences; 25% are in the computer and information sciences; and 27% are from several different branches of the engineering sciences. Two percent are from business, and the remaining 7% are from a variety of other fields. These statistics quietly but persuasively affirm that a new intellectual coalition is being formed-a coalition with just the right balance of skills to theoretically understand biological intelligence and to apply this understanding to technology. Another reasonable question about this statement of purpose is: Given that a new society was needed, what should its relationship be to other societies whose members are also interested in neural network research? The most simple answer is: cooperation. INNS provides a bridge between societies. It creates a new institutional framework that supports interdisciplinary knowledge transfers and cooperative programs to achieve the full potential of our field. In fact, INNS has been privileged to form this meeting in cooperation with fourteen other societies which are inter-
1988 Presidential Report
3 7.00% 2.00%
20.0%
•
Life Sciences 11 Engineering EJ Physics / Ma th I] Comp./In£. Sci. D Business Other "~'I
25.00%
•
19.00% FIGURE 2. INNS membership statistics.
ested in neural network research. I would like to thank these societies for their cooperation (Table 2). Each of us most probably belongs to societies in one or more other disciplines. I myself now belong to nine societies. We should not expect this to change. It is a healthy measure of the interdisciplinary skills that we need to be effective as neural network researchers. On the other hand, as a pioneer who has spent the last 30 years doing neural network research, much personal experience confirms that a field cannot really exist without it own institutional home. No matter how benevolent the landlord, being a tenant farmer is never as good as farming your own land. We need institutions whose primary goal is the development of neural network research to adequately represent our field intellectually, educationally, politically, and economically. One of the best success stories I know that may guide INNS in forming its own institutions concerns the Society for Neuroscience, which was founded in 1970 and whose membership has grown at a steady rate since then, now exceeding 12,500 individuals. The Society for Neuroscience formed because separate programs in anatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neuroendocrinology, and so on, did not adequately match the interdisciplinary nature of the problems that these specialities sought to solve. The Society for Neuroscience has brilliantly provided this interdisciplinary framework, and has thereby energized one of the most important scientific movements of our time. It is my hope that INNS will playa similar role in transforming and amplifying the theoretical study of biological intelligence. A third and final question about the Society's purpose is: Why should both the biology and the technology of neural network research be supported by
a single society? In fact, some people have claimed that INNS is not interested in technology. Nothing could be further from the truth. An adequate reply to this question needs to include several observations. First there is an historical fact: Many of the ideas that are finding their way into neural network technology were suggested through an analysis of biological constraints. INNS provides a mechanism for expediting this type of technology transfer. In the reverse direction, a great deal of computational and mathematical technique is needed to convert biological intuition into a fully developed neural network model. Another important reason for such a fusion is also based upon historical experiences; in particular, the experiences of the Artificial Intelligence community. These experiences suggest that in order to properly encourage either biological modelling or technological modelling, one needs to welcome them both into a single institution where they are both equally valued. This is because, although biological and technological modelling can greatly energize one anTABLE 2 Cooperating Societies
American Association for Artificial Intelligence American Mathematical SOCiety Association for Behavior Analysis Cognitive Science Society IEEE Boston Section IEEE Computer Society IEEE Control Systems Society IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Optical SOCiety of America Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Mathematical Biology Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
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other, the standards for their evaluation are totally different. To validly advance our understanding of biological intelligence, one must explain and predict a great deal of biological data. This seems obvious enough. It is equally obvious that in order to advance our understanding of machine intelligence, one need never mention brains or behavior, but one cannot fail to solve outstanding technological problems. There is, however, an overwhelming temptation to confuse biological and technological standards when they are not clearly differentiated. Whenever that has been allowed to happen in the past, diminishing returns have rapidly set in. Then a weak technological advance may be propped up by saying it works just like the brain; or a metaphorical brain theory with a few data implications maybe heralded as the next hi-tech sensation. Then the hyperbole rapidly buries the science. Our field does not need more hyperbole. By clearly distinguishing and equally welcoming both types of research, an intellectual balance can be reached. Such a balance can maintain the integrity of each modelling style. It also enables modelling standards to gracefully change as ideas are gradually transferred from biological modelling, through computational and mathematical analysis towards technological application.
THE BUILDERS OF INNS So far, I've talked only about the spiritual goals of our Society. I should not, however, neglect its bodily needs. To some extent, giving birth to a new society is like giving birth to a baby. Let me tell you, it is a very messy and painful experience, but it is also a wonderful one. On the other hand, nothing about giving birth to a new society is automatic! In that respect, starting a society is more like building a house. The quality of our future lives in this house will depend upon how well it was built. A large number of people have already worked hard to build this house. Their names and responsibilities are prominently listed at the front of your meeting program. I hope that many more people will also pitch in to help now that the foundation has been laid. As is often the case in a volunteer organization, there are a few people without whose tireless work and devotion we would not be here today. I would like to thank these people now. Two people began to actively serve the Society in the early winter of 1987, months before the Society was incorporated. Hardly a day has gone by during the past 20 months when they have not created a new procedure or carried out a necessary task. These people are Harold Szu and Gail Carpenter. Harold Szu, our Secretary and Treasurer, has worked tirelessly on everything from negotiating with
S. Grossberg
the lawyers who incorporated our Society to organizing and executing its membership database and finances. Harold has received excellent help from his assistant Frank Polkinghorn and several student volunteers. Gail Carpenter, our meeting's organization chairman, has also been elected our new Vice President. Gail has planned and coordinated a seemingly endless series of meeting-related projects, from negotiating our hotel contracts, to organizing meeting finances, structure, publications, and announcements. Gail has worked closely with J. R. Schuman Associates, our meeting management company, especially with Judy Leyburn. The Schuman company has gone way beyond the call of duty by cheerfully donating many hours of labor at no cost to the Society. This is also true of my own staff, especially Cindy Suchta and Carol Yanakakis, who have worked tirelessly on membership, meeting, and journal projects since the Society was conceived. Maureen Caudill has done a marvelous job of coordinating, under breathtaking time constraints, the processing, refereeing, and publication of more than 550 meeting abstracts. She worked closely on this with her mother, Harriet Caudill, and with Gail Carpenter and Pergamon Press on preparing our impressive book of abstracts and the meeting program book. Many other people have also given the Society a high level of service. I would particularly like to thank our program chairmen, Dana Anderson and Jim Anderson; our tutorial chairmen, Walter Freeman and Harold Szu; and our cooperating societies chairman, Mark Kon, for their much-valued help. Special thanks go to the distinguished INNS governing board for offering excellent counsel throughout the year, and to the hard-working program committee members who ended up doing twice as much refereeing as anyone planned due to the unexpectedly large number of abstracts that we received. Last but not least, Bernie Widrow, our general conference chairman, who has also been elected our new President, has offered a level of wise counsel and trouble-shooting throughout the year that has been priceless. Talking about price, none of us realized that INNS would become such a large society within one year. No one knew how much work would be needed, but it had to get done and they did it. In 1989 and thereafter, our membership dues and meeting income will provide just enough money to seed our next meeting and to hire a professional staff person to coordinate and carry out the Society's basic functions of membership, meeting, election, and journal. I want to emphasize that all Society prices have been set at the lowest levels consistent with carrying out these basic functions. We want to make INNS affordable to as many people as possible.
1988 Presidential Report
This spirit of community service was what led J. R. Schuman Associates to donate much free time to our meeting. It also led Pergamon Press to agree that it would publish six issues of the INNS journal Neural Networks in 1989 at the same low price that they charged to publish four issues in 1988. Pergamon Press made this generous offer to keep the 1989 membership rates at their 1988 levels, at least to individuals who renew their 1989 membership in 1988, and thereby to encourage the Society's continued growth. I would like to thank the President of Pergamon Press, Bob Miranda, and the entire Pergamon journal staff, for their consistent support of Neural
Networks. THE PROSPECTS FOR MEETING FUSION While we are talking about meeting costs, it is also important to mention another set of initial conditions that will greatly influence all of our lives as neural network researchers. These are the initial conditions which explain why there are three large neural network meetings in the United States within six months of each other in 1988, and why two large neural network meetings are already planned for the summer of 1989 in the same city, Washington, DC. This seems pretty crazy, doesn't it? Why haven't all these three meetings been fused into one? I myself started out two years ago as one of the strongest advocates of meeting fusion. Fusion was, in fact, one of my major goals when I initiated the process whereby INNS was formed. As both the general chairmen of the 1987 IEEE San Diego meeting and the first President of INNS, I enthusiastically began fusion negotiations with the President of the San Diego chapter of IEEE while the 1987 San Diego meeting was still going on. Now, over a year later, fusion negotations are still actively continuing. I travelled to Washington, DC just a few weeks ago to spend the afternoon with Bernie Widrow, Harold Szu, and Allen Stubberud negotiating fusion. The fusion problem is clearly a very difficult one. Some people ask their colleagues if they want fusion in the same way that people have sometimes been asked if they favor motherhood. Of course, we all favor both motherhood and fusion. When asked if you favor motherhood, however, you know that you will next be asked to give your quick agreement to a very controversial policy. Whenever this happens, it is important to get the facts first. The fusion issue is such a major one, one that may influence the character and the very existence of the Society, that the basic facts need to be known by our members, so that their collective wisdom can guide this decision. The INNS governing board will be meeting on Friday evening to discuss this issue. I
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recommend that you evaluate the facts before that time and communicate with the governing board and officers before we meet. One key fact to keep in mind is that fusion with one large IEEE neural network meeting would in no way prevent other large neural network meetings from being planned. In fact, the only rule about this now within IEEE is that two or more large meetings should not be scheduled at the very same time. For example, the IEEE Information Theory Society runs the Denver meeting and it also sits on the board that directs the San Diego meeting. Another important fact is that fusion of our meeting with the IEEE San Diego meeting might actually encourage more meetings to be planned, rather than less, by removing the incentive of other Societies to cooperate with INNS. For example, the largest IEEE Society, the IEEE Computer Society, is not involved in either the Denver meeting or the San Diego Meeting. This year, the Computer Society cancelled its own meeting plan and is cooperating with INNS. All available financial data suggest that a fused meeting would either cost our members more money or could bankrupt our Society. For example, the fees for the 1988 San Diego meeting were substantially higher than those for our meeting here and, even so, did not give students or poster presenters equal privileges. There are also surprising hidden costs. For example, the local San Diego chapter of IEEE would receive 30% of all meeting revenues every other year in perpetuity. This cost was negotiated within IEEE as they offered our own Society 25-30% of the meeting revenues, a level that would have left us bankrupt. In addition, the meeting must be held in San Diego every other year, unless the local San Diego chapter decides otherwise. How would such a fused meeting be administered? So far, it seems that IEEE rules would have to be followed. There are many such rules that cover every aspect of meeting organization, including such details as what can be published, who can publish it, and even how many copies can be made. These rules were made to serve the largest federation of engineering societies in the world, and are needed in that context to regulate a large bureaucratic structure. These rules could prevent our Society from flexibly making its own rules in response to the changing needs of its rapidly growing membership. If that happened, our new intellectual coalition might collapse. Despite these very real difficulties, there is a great desire to improve the meeting calendar. The IEEE San Diego meeting organizers, especially Troy Nagle and Allen Stubberud, are greatly thanked for their willingness to work closely with us towards this end. A modified fusion proposal is now being actively discussed. I will mention this proposal after review-
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6
ing how the present meeting schedule arose, and recommending four guidelines that should, I believe, constrain whatever meeting format is adopted. These guidelines would regulate only our annual meeting, not other meetings which INNS may choose to sponsor.
THE 1988 AND 1989 SCHEDULE OF LARGE MEETINGS Hardly a week goes by when there is not a special meeting session or a special journal issue that reports on recent neural network research. Most of us would probably agree that multiple smaller workshops and symposia on special topics are good for the field. Many people wonder and worry, however, why three major neural network meetings were planned in the United States within a six-month period in 1988. Two major meetings are also planned for 1989 within two months of each other in Washington, DC. Since most of our members do not know how such an outcome happened, I will now tell you how, so that the informed collective wisdom of our community can help to discover the best solution for us all. I will include a few more details than a summary would usually require, because these details reveal basic issues that we, as a community, need to resolve. The first large neural network meeting to be announced was the IEEE Denver meeting that was held in November, 1987. Many people felt, however, that this meeting was not being organized to represent the whole field. As a result, planning of the IEEE San Diego meeting began. This meeting was held in June, 1987. Before these meetings were held, it became clear that the field needed greater institutional unity. As a result, in the Fall of 1986, I initiated the process that led to formation of INNS. As part of this process, representatives of the Denver and San Diego planning committees formed a joint planning committee to fuse their meetings in 1988. Everyone expected this meeting to become a single joint meeting between IEEE and INNS in 1988. Instead we had three. How did we get from there to here? The joint planning committee unanimously asked Gail Carpenter to negotiate a hotel contract in Boston for 1988. This was not easy to do in the Winter of 1987, because hotel contracts for large meetings are often made two or three years in advance. This is a fact we all need to understand. In addition, the Denver representatives asked that the time of the meeting be scheduled in early Fall, 1988, rather than June, 1988, so that the INNS Call for Abstracts would not conflict with their November, 1987 meeting date. The hotel contract was negotiated so that final approval was not required until July, 1987. We all hoped that a fused meeting plan would be negotiated
at the San Diego 1987 meeting, because the INNS governing board was also going to hold its first meeting there. At this board meeting, I was elected first President of INNS. I was also the general chairman of the IEEE San Diego meeting, so I thought: What better set of circumstances could exist for negotiating a successful fusion? At the direction of the INNS governing board, I with several other INNS board members enthusiastically began fusion negotiations while we were still at the San Diego meeting. We negotiated directly with the President of the San Diego Chapter of IEEE, who pledged to take our offer to the appropriate national IEEE representatives. What we did not know was that, according to one of the many IEEE rules, the San Diego chapter literally owned the IEEE San Diego meeting in perpetuity. Moreover, this meeting had made a small fortune in profits. This brings us to one of the sobering facts that we, as a community, must face. Any fashionable field is a potential source of income, power, and fame, no less than of golden opportunities to serve a deserving community. How these conflicting goals are worked out will influence how well our field prospers. To make a long story short, IEEE broke off fusion negotiations by unilaterally deciding to hold its own 1988 meeting in San Diego. This decision was made just a few days before INNS had to sign its Boston contract, so we did. That put two large neural network meetings on the 1988 meeting map. I immediately asked several planners of the San Diego meeting to move their meeting back from June to Mayor earlier in order to improve the meeting schedule. Instead, later that summer they unexpectedly announced a date in late July, just six weeks before the INNS meeting. I was told that this date was chosen without regard to INNS needs. It was chosen to compete with the AAAI meeting. At the 1987 IEEE Denver meeting, the Denver meeting planners unexpectedly decided to hold their own second meeting in November, 1988. Hence, three meetings came into being. The IEEE realized that national oversight of the locally controlled San Diego meeting was needed, so they decided to form the Neural Network Committee (NNe) to take over the San Diego meeting. Our own governing board immediately formed a fusion committee to negotiate with NNC. We made initiatives over a nine month period to begin these negotiations. We could not wait any longer without risking that no large hotel would still be available in a desirable location in Fall, 1989. We moved ahead when we were finally told in February, 1988 that NNC could not form until May, 1988 and could confirm no policy decisions before July, 1988 at the San Diego meeting. In addition, no one seemed to have a clear idea of how or whether NNe would work. In particular,
1988 Presidential Report
NNC has no binding authority to restrict the proliferation of large neural network meetings even among the participating IEEE societies, and key IEEE societies, such as the IEEE Computer Society, declined to join. Consequently, INNS sought its own 1989 contract. After an intensive search on the east coast, we secured a contract at a fine hotel in Washington, DC, the Omni Shoreham Hotel, for September 5-9, 1989. This time slot opened unexpectedly when another group cancelled their tentative hold on the time. We had to sign the contract quickly because several other groups requested this time within days after our initial hold. The meeting time and place were then widely publicized last April and May. Our officers also immediately wrote multiple letters to NNC members requesting that they schedule their meeting in a different city and as early in Spring or Summer as possible. Until at least late June, the IEEE had not secured a hotel contract for its 1989 meeting. At the 1988 San Diego meeting in July, it was announced that the NNC would also hold its 1989 meeting in Washington, DC two months before the INNS meeting.
FOUR MEETING GUIDELINES The four recommended guidelines are as follows: 1. Costs. Meeting costs in all categories for the next three years should not rise faster than inflation, unless costs go up faster than inflation, or new services are offered. In the latter eventualities, prices could be increased to cover costs and to seed the same activities in the subsequent year. 2. Earnings. Any agreement on profit-sharing should be compatible with the expectation that INNS would earn no less than it has earned from the present meeting. This policy is needed because present income is just sufficient to finance Society functions in the coming year. 3. Benefits. Any meeting plan should enable members to get all the benefits that they received at this year's meeting, including a reduced registration fee and a uniform policy for publishing all accepted abstracts and making them accessible to all Society members. 4. Intellectual Scope and Procedures. To preserve our intellectual coalition, the selection of meeting sessions should be at least as wide as it is in this year's meeting brochure. The selection of contributed papers for these sessions should be carried out in a democratic and verifiable fashion by a program committee. This program committee should be approved by the Society President and Vice President and should include three or more experts in the topic of each session.
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Procedures have been established this year which can professionally accomplish these goals in subsequent years, thereby freeing the Society's leadership to plan additional initiatives to serve our community. These are the minimal benefits which we need to serve our members and which we would receive without fusion.
MODIFIED FUSION PLAN The following modified fusion proposal could realize all these benefits, yet could also lay the groundwork for closer cooperation with IEEE and other interested Societies. This plan is, moreover, consistent with practices of other large societies. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to change the plans for both meetings to be held in Washington, DC in 1989. INNS signed and advertised its hotel contract in April. The IEEE signed and advertised its hotel contract in July. Severe financial penalties would result if these contracts were violated. In 1990 and thereafter, both the INNS meeting and the IEEE meeting would continue to be held with full autonomy. As a result, each meeting could determine its own meeting rules and prices. These meetings would be kept out-of-phase both temporally and geographically. In addition, a one-day satellite meeting of the INNS would occur right before or right after the IEEE meeting, and conversely. These two satellite meetings would be held on topics that are of particular interest to the satellite organizations. Should community demand require, more than one satellite meeting could be planned, with more than one cooperating society, as is common, for example, in meetings of the Society for Neuroscience. Given this framework of active cooperation, in 1991 or subsequently, INNS and IEEE could use the cooperative framework established through the satellite meetings to jointly sponsor additional meetings in Europe or Asia with the support of a local host. This modified plan of satellite meetings is workable if our members continue to support the Society's annual meeting and journal. The neural network field may survive a proliferation of meetings and journals if the unifying and democratic institutions of INNS remain strong. Think about it. Please let the INNS leadership know your thoughts.
THE SOCIETY'S FUTURE In closing, I would like to express three of my personal hopes for the Society'S future. Our future lies in the quality of talent that gets attracted to neural network research. To attract the best people, I hope
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that we always strive to support and promote the best work, no matter where it may pop up. Our future also lies in the quality of service that people offer to our community. I hope that everyone tries to give at least a little more than he gets. Then a huge reservoir of good will and productivity can be generated that would benefit us all. Finally, I hope that we take seriously the immense humanizing potential of our field's subject matter. We are, after all, the community that is supposed to
S. Grossberg
build beautiful theories of the biological mind. If we approach that daunting task with an appropriate reverence, and use our growing knowledge in compassionate ways, then our field may gradually come to have a good influence even beyond its great promise to science and technology. We have founded this Society to serve you, our members. It offers us an opportunity that arises once every two decades or so. May you enjoy it and support it in good health.
Neural Networks. Vol. 2. pp. 1-8.1989 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
1988 PRESIDENTIAL REPORT
The First Anniversary of INNS presented to the
First Annual Meeting of the International Neural Network Society by
Stephen Grossberg INNS Founder and President
September 6, 1988 Park Plaza Hotel Boston, Massachusetts THE PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF INNS Welcome! Welcome to the first anniversary celebration of the International Neural Network Society. This occasion commemorates a dream coming true: the establishment, after a half century of pioneering research, of an intellectual home for all practitioners and students of neural network research. When the Society was first incorporated a year and a half ago, many realized that there was a great need for us to come together in a new institution, but no one could have predicted the overwhelming response to the Society's call. We are now, it seems, the fastest growing scientific Society on earth. In the 14 months since members began to join, 3071 have joined (at least, as of September 1) and people have been joining at a linear rate of over 200 members a month with no signs yet of saturation. The data are in Figure 1. Moreover, ours is a truly international society. There are members from 38 countries around the world. Twenty percent of the registered attendees at this meeting have travelled to Boston from other countries (Table 1). There are also members from 49 of the United States. If you know neural network researchers in Idaho, please get them to sign up right away! Thank you for joining! Thank you for participating here in the largest presentation of neural network research that has ever yet occurred in recorded history. As neural network researchers, we all spend a lot
of time thinking about nonlinear dynamical systems. We know how important initial conditions can be to a system's long-term behavior. Today I would therefore like to reaffirm, while they are still fresh, the initial conditions that our founders had in mind when they formed our Society, in the hope that these ideas will continue to guide our community to a thriving and useful future. Such a future is well worth planning, because we are entrusted with an essential and even a noble taskthe task of striving to achieve a theoretical understanding of biological intelligence-our own intelligence-the very foundation of human civilization. We are committed to using this knowledge to advance our technology, and thereby to enrich and safeguard our and future lives.
THE PURPOSE OF INNS The purpose of INNS is clearly stated at the beginning of the Society'S Articles of Incorporation. That purpose is "to create a scientific and educational forum for students, scientists, engineers, and others to learn about, share, contribute to and advance the state of knowledge concerning the modelling of behavioral and brain processes and the application of neural modelling ideas to problems and applications in technology." Several questions could naturally be raised about this statement of purpose. Most important, why do we need our own society to achieve these goals?
S. Grossberg
2
-3071
M
3~-------------------------------------,
e m b
e
r
2
s x 1
o 1\
3 0 -2
0
t
2
4
6
8
Months
10
12
14
t
16
September 1, 19S8
June 1, 19S7
FIGURE 1. Membership rate.
TABLE 1
Countries Of Attendees
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Denmark Finland France Greece Hong Kong Hungary Ireland Israel Italy Japan Mexico New Zealand Norway People's Republic of China Philippines Poland Portugal Republic of China Republic of South Africa Saudi Arabia Singapore South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland The Netherlands United Kingdom United States USSR West Germany Yugoslavia
The most obvious reason concerns the highly interdisciplinary nature of the problems treated by neural network researchers. Our community contains psychologists, neurobiologists, mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, and industrialists. No previously established society has supported the full range of neural network research. The need for a new forum to provide this support has been most eloquently demonstrated by the interdisciplinary scope of our membership (Figure 2). Most of our members are drawn from four almost equally represented professional groups. Twenty percent are in the life sciences, particularly the psychological and neural sciences; 19% are in the mathematical and physical sciences; 25% are in the computer and information sciences; and 27% are from several different branches of the engineering sciences. Two percent are from business, and the remaining 7% are from a variety of other fields. These statistics quietly but persuasively affirm that a new intellectual coalition is being formed-a coalition with just the right balance of skills to theoretically understand biological intelligence and to apply this understanding to technology. Another reasonable question about this statement of purpose is: Given that a new society was needed, what should its relationship be to other societies whose members are also interested in neural network research? The most simple answer is: cooperation. INNS provides a bridge between societies. It creates a new institutional framework that supports interdisciplinary knowledge transfers and cooperative programs to achieve the full potential of our field. In fact, INNS has been privileged to form this meeting in cooperation with fourteen other societies which are inter-
1988 Presidential Report
3 7.00% 2.00%
20.0%
•
Life Sciences 11 Engineering EJ Physics / Ma th I] Comp./In£. Sci. D Business Other "~'I
25.00%
•
19.00% FIGURE 2. INNS membership statistics.
ested in neural network research. I would like to thank these societies for their cooperation (Table 2). Each of us most probably belongs to societies in one or more other disciplines. I myself now belong to nine societies. We should not expect this to change. It is a healthy measure of the interdisciplinary skills that we need to be effective as neural network researchers. On the other hand, as a pioneer who has spent the last 30 years doing neural network research, much personal experience confirms that a field cannot really exist without it own institutional home. No matter how benevolent the landlord, being a tenant farmer is never as good as farming your own land. We need institutions whose primary goal is the development of neural network research to adequately represent our field intellectually, educationally, politically, and economically. One of the best success stories I know that may guide INNS in forming its own institutions concerns the Society for Neuroscience, which was founded in 1970 and whose membership has grown at a steady rate since then, now exceeding 12,500 individuals. The Society for Neuroscience formed because separate programs in anatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neuroendocrinology, and so on, did not adequately match the interdisciplinary nature of the problems that these specialities sought to solve. The Society for Neuroscience has brilliantly provided this interdisciplinary framework, and has thereby energized one of the most important scientific movements of our time. It is my hope that INNS will playa similar role in transforming and amplifying the theoretical study of biological intelligence. A third and final question about the Society's purpose is: Why should both the biology and the technology of neural network research be supported by
a single society? In fact, some people have claimed that INNS is not interested in technology. Nothing could be further from the truth. An adequate reply to this question needs to include several observations. First there is an historical fact: Many of the ideas that are finding their way into neural network technology were suggested through an analysis of biological constraints. INNS provides a mechanism for expediting this type of technology transfer. In the reverse direction, a great deal of computational and mathematical technique is needed to convert biological intuition into a fully developed neural network model. Another important reason for such a fusion is also based upon historical experiences; in particular, the experiences of the Artificial Intelligence community. These experiences suggest that in order to properly encourage either biological modelling or technological modelling, one needs to welcome them both into a single institution where they are both equally valued. This is because, although biological and technological modelling can greatly energize one anTABLE 2 Cooperating Societies
American Association for Artificial Intelligence American Mathematical SOCiety Association for Behavior Analysis Cognitive Science Society IEEE Boston Section IEEE Computer Society IEEE Control Systems Society IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Optical SOCiety of America Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Mathematical Biology Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
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other, the standards for their evaluation are totally different. To validly advance our understanding of biological intelligence, one must explain and predict a great deal of biological data. This seems obvious enough. It is equally obvious that in order to advance our understanding of machine intelligence, one need never mention brains or behavior, but one cannot fail to solve outstanding technological problems. There is, however, an overwhelming temptation to confuse biological and technological standards when they are not clearly differentiated. Whenever that has been allowed to happen in the past, diminishing returns have rapidly set in. Then a weak technological advance may be propped up by saying it works just like the brain; or a metaphorical brain theory with a few data implications maybe heralded as the next hi-tech sensation. Then the hyperbole rapidly buries the science. Our field does not need more hyperbole. By clearly distinguishing and equally welcoming both types of research, an intellectual balance can be reached. Such a balance can maintain the integrity of each modelling style. It also enables modelling standards to gracefully change as ideas are gradually transferred from biological modelling, through computational and mathematical analysis towards technological application.
THE BUILDERS OF INNS So far, I've talked only about the spiritual goals of our Society. I should not, however, neglect its bodily needs. To some extent, giving birth to a new society is like giving birth to a baby. Let me tell you, it is a very messy and painful experience, but it is also a wonderful one. On the other hand, nothing about giving birth to a new society is automatic! In that respect, starting a society is more like building a house. The quality of our future lives in this house will depend upon how well it was built. A large number of people have already worked hard to build this house. Their names and responsibilities are prominently listed at the front of your meeting program. I hope that many more people will also pitch in to help now that the foundation has been laid. As is often the case in a volunteer organization, there are a few people without whose tireless work and devotion we would not be here today. I would like to thank these people now. Two people began to actively serve the Society in the early winter of 1987, months before the Society was incorporated. Hardly a day has gone by during the past 20 months when they have not created a new procedure or carried out a necessary task. These people are Harold Szu and Gail Carpenter. Harold Szu, our Secretary and Treasurer, has worked tirelessly on everything from negotiating with
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the lawyers who incorporated our Society to organizing and executing its membership database and finances. Harold has received excellent help from his assistant Frank Polkinghorn and several student volunteers. Gail Carpenter, our meeting's organization chairman, has also been elected our new Vice President. Gail has planned and coordinated a seemingly endless series of meeting-related projects, from negotiating our hotel contracts, to organizing meeting finances, structure, publications, and announcements. Gail has worked closely with J. R. Schuman Associates, our meeting management company, especially with Judy Leyburn. The Schuman company has gone way beyond the call of duty by cheerfully donating many hours of labor at no cost to the Society. This is also true of my own staff, especially Cindy Suchta and Carol Yanakakis, who have worked tirelessly on membership, meeting, and journal projects since the Society was conceived. Maureen Caudill has done a marvelous job of coordinating, under breathtaking time constraints, the processing, refereeing, and publication of more than 550 meeting abstracts. She worked closely on this with her mother, Harriet Caudill, and with Gail Carpenter and Pergamon Press on preparing our impressive book of abstracts and the meeting program book. Many other people have also given the Society a high level of service. I would particularly like to thank our program chairmen, Dana Anderson and Jim Anderson; our tutorial chairmen, Walter Freeman and Harold Szu; and our cooperating societies chairman, Mark Kon, for their much-valued help. Special thanks go to the distinguished INNS governing board for offering excellent counsel throughout the year, and to the hard-working program committee members who ended up doing twice as much refereeing as anyone planned due to the unexpectedly large number of abstracts that we received. Last but not least, Bernie Widrow, our general conference chairman, who has also been elected our new President, has offered a level of wise counsel and trouble-shooting throughout the year that has been priceless. Talking about price, none of us realized that INNS would become such a large society within one year. No one knew how much work would be needed, but it had to get done and they did it. In 1989 and thereafter, our membership dues and meeting income will provide just enough money to seed our next meeting and to hire a professional staff person to coordinate and carry out the Society's basic functions of membership, meeting, election, and journal. I want to emphasize that all Society prices have been set at the lowest levels consistent with carrying out these basic functions. We want to make INNS affordable to as many people as possible.
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This spirit of community service was what led J. R. Schuman Associates to donate much free time to our meeting. It also led Pergamon Press to agree that it would publish six issues of the INNS journal Neural Networks in 1989 at the same low price that they charged to publish four issues in 1988. Pergamon Press made this generous offer to keep the 1989 membership rates at their 1988 levels, at least to individuals who renew their 1989 membership in 1988, and thereby to encourage the Society's continued growth. I would like to thank the President of Pergamon Press, Bob Miranda, and the entire Pergamon journal staff, for their consistent support of Neural
Networks. THE PROSPECTS FOR MEETING FUSION While we are talking about meeting costs, it is also important to mention another set of initial conditions that will greatly influence all of our lives as neural network researchers. These are the initial conditions which explain why there are three large neural network meetings in the United States within six months of each other in 1988, and why two large neural network meetings are already planned for the summer of 1989 in the same city, Washington, DC. This seems pretty crazy, doesn't it? Why haven't all these three meetings been fused into one? I myself started out two years ago as one of the strongest advocates of meeting fusion. Fusion was, in fact, one of my major goals when I initiated the process whereby INNS was formed. As both the general chairmen of the 1987 IEEE San Diego meeting and the first President of INNS, I enthusiastically began fusion negotiations with the President of the San Diego chapter of IEEE while the 1987 San Diego meeting was still going on. Now, over a year later, fusion negotations are still actively continuing. I travelled to Washington, DC just a few weeks ago to spend the afternoon with Bernie Widrow, Harold Szu, and Allen Stubberud negotiating fusion. The fusion problem is clearly a very difficult one. Some people ask their colleagues if they want fusion in the same way that people have sometimes been asked if they favor motherhood. Of course, we all favor both motherhood and fusion. When asked if you favor motherhood, however, you know that you will next be asked to give your quick agreement to a very controversial policy. Whenever this happens, it is important to get the facts first. The fusion issue is such a major one, one that may influence the character and the very existence of the Society, that the basic facts need to be known by our members, so that their collective wisdom can guide this decision. The INNS governing board will be meeting on Friday evening to discuss this issue. I
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recommend that you evaluate the facts before that time and communicate with the governing board and officers before we meet. One key fact to keep in mind is that fusion with one large IEEE neural network meeting would in no way prevent other large neural network meetings from being planned. In fact, the only rule about this now within IEEE is that two or more large meetings should not be scheduled at the very same time. For example, the IEEE Information Theory Society runs the Denver meeting and it also sits on the board that directs the San Diego meeting. Another important fact is that fusion of our meeting with the IEEE San Diego meeting might actually encourage more meetings to be planned, rather than less, by removing the incentive of other Societies to cooperate with INNS. For example, the largest IEEE Society, the IEEE Computer Society, is not involved in either the Denver meeting or the San Diego Meeting. This year, the Computer Society cancelled its own meeting plan and is cooperating with INNS. All available financial data suggest that a fused meeting would either cost our members more money or could bankrupt our Society. For example, the fees for the 1988 San Diego meeting were substantially higher than those for our meeting here and, even so, did not give students or poster presenters equal privileges. There are also surprising hidden costs. For example, the local San Diego chapter of IEEE would receive 30% of all meeting revenues every other year in perpetuity. This cost was negotiated within IEEE as they offered our own Society 25-30% of the meeting revenues, a level that would have left us bankrupt. In addition, the meeting must be held in San Diego every other year, unless the local San Diego chapter decides otherwise. How would such a fused meeting be administered? So far, it seems that IEEE rules would have to be followed. There are many such rules that cover every aspect of meeting organization, including such details as what can be published, who can publish it, and even how many copies can be made. These rules were made to serve the largest federation of engineering societies in the world, and are needed in that context to regulate a large bureaucratic structure. These rules could prevent our Society from flexibly making its own rules in response to the changing needs of its rapidly growing membership. If that happened, our new intellectual coalition might collapse. Despite these very real difficulties, there is a great desire to improve the meeting calendar. The IEEE San Diego meeting organizers, especially Troy Nagle and Allen Stubberud, are greatly thanked for their willingness to work closely with us towards this end. A modified fusion proposal is now being actively discussed. I will mention this proposal after review-
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ing how the present meeting schedule arose, and recommending four guidelines that should, I believe, constrain whatever meeting format is adopted. These guidelines would regulate only our annual meeting, not other meetings which INNS may choose to sponsor.
THE 1988 AND 1989 SCHEDULE OF LARGE MEETINGS Hardly a week goes by when there is not a special meeting session or a special journal issue that reports on recent neural network research. Most of us would probably agree that multiple smaller workshops and symposia on special topics are good for the field. Many people wonder and worry, however, why three major neural network meetings were planned in the United States within a six-month period in 1988. Two major meetings are also planned for 1989 within two months of each other in Washington, DC. Since most of our members do not know how such an outcome happened, I will now tell you how, so that the informed collective wisdom of our community can help to discover the best solution for us all. I will include a few more details than a summary would usually require, because these details reveal basic issues that we, as a community, need to resolve. The first large neural network meeting to be announced was the IEEE Denver meeting that was held in November, 1987. Many people felt, however, that this meeting was not being organized to represent the whole field. As a result, planning of the IEEE San Diego meeting began. This meeting was held in June, 1987. Before these meetings were held, it became clear that the field needed greater institutional unity. As a result, in the Fall of 1986, I initiated the process that led to formation of INNS. As part of this process, representatives of the Denver and San Diego planning committees formed a joint planning committee to fuse their meetings in 1988. Everyone expected this meeting to become a single joint meeting between IEEE and INNS in 1988. Instead we had three. How did we get from there to here? The joint planning committee unanimously asked Gail Carpenter to negotiate a hotel contract in Boston for 1988. This was not easy to do in the Winter of 1987, because hotel contracts for large meetings are often made two or three years in advance. This is a fact we all need to understand. In addition, the Denver representatives asked that the time of the meeting be scheduled in early Fall, 1988, rather than June, 1988, so that the INNS Call for Abstracts would not conflict with their November, 1987 meeting date. The hotel contract was negotiated so that final approval was not required until July, 1987. We all hoped that a fused meeting plan would be negotiated
at the San Diego 1987 meeting, because the INNS governing board was also going to hold its first meeting there. At this board meeting, I was elected first President of INNS. I was also the general chairman of the IEEE San Diego meeting, so I thought: What better set of circumstances could exist for negotiating a successful fusion? At the direction of the INNS governing board, I with several other INNS board members enthusiastically began fusion negotiations while we were still at the San Diego meeting. We negotiated directly with the President of the San Diego Chapter of IEEE, who pledged to take our offer to the appropriate national IEEE representatives. What we did not know was that, according to one of the many IEEE rules, the San Diego chapter literally owned the IEEE San Diego meeting in perpetuity. Moreover, this meeting had made a small fortune in profits. This brings us to one of the sobering facts that we, as a community, must face. Any fashionable field is a potential source of income, power, and fame, no less than of golden opportunities to serve a deserving community. How these conflicting goals are worked out will influence how well our field prospers. To make a long story short, IEEE broke off fusion negotiations by unilaterally deciding to hold its own 1988 meeting in San Diego. This decision was made just a few days before INNS had to sign its Boston contract, so we did. That put two large neural network meetings on the 1988 meeting map. I immediately asked several planners of the San Diego meeting to move their meeting back from June to Mayor earlier in order to improve the meeting schedule. Instead, later that summer they unexpectedly announced a date in late July, just six weeks before the INNS meeting. I was told that this date was chosen without regard to INNS needs. It was chosen to compete with the AAAI meeting. At the 1987 IEEE Denver meeting, the Denver meeting planners unexpectedly decided to hold their own second meeting in November, 1988. Hence, three meetings came into being. The IEEE realized that national oversight of the locally controlled San Diego meeting was needed, so they decided to form the Neural Network Committee (NNe) to take over the San Diego meeting. Our own governing board immediately formed a fusion committee to negotiate with NNC. We made initiatives over a nine month period to begin these negotiations. We could not wait any longer without risking that no large hotel would still be available in a desirable location in Fall, 1989. We moved ahead when we were finally told in February, 1988 that NNC could not form until May, 1988 and could confirm no policy decisions before July, 1988 at the San Diego meeting. In addition, no one seemed to have a clear idea of how or whether NNe would work. In particular,
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NNC has no binding authority to restrict the proliferation of large neural network meetings even among the participating IEEE societies, and key IEEE societies, such as the IEEE Computer Society, declined to join. Consequently, INNS sought its own 1989 contract. After an intensive search on the east coast, we secured a contract at a fine hotel in Washington, DC, the Omni Shoreham Hotel, for September 5-9, 1989. This time slot opened unexpectedly when another group cancelled their tentative hold on the time. We had to sign the contract quickly because several other groups requested this time within days after our initial hold. The meeting time and place were then widely publicized last April and May. Our officers also immediately wrote multiple letters to NNC members requesting that they schedule their meeting in a different city and as early in Spring or Summer as possible. Until at least late June, the IEEE had not secured a hotel contract for its 1989 meeting. At the 1988 San Diego meeting in July, it was announced that the NNC would also hold its 1989 meeting in Washington, DC two months before the INNS meeting.
FOUR MEETING GUIDELINES The four recommended guidelines are as follows: 1. Costs. Meeting costs in all categories for the next three years should not rise faster than inflation, unless costs go up faster than inflation, or new services are offered. In the latter eventualities, prices could be increased to cover costs and to seed the same activities in the subsequent year. 2. Earnings. Any agreement on profit-sharing should be compatible with the expectation that INNS would earn no less than it has earned from the present meeting. This policy is needed because present income is just sufficient to finance Society functions in the coming year. 3. Benefits. Any meeting plan should enable members to get all the benefits that they received at this year's meeting, including a reduced registration fee and a uniform policy for publishing all accepted abstracts and making them accessible to all Society members. 4. Intellectual Scope and Procedures. To preserve our intellectual coalition, the selection of meeting sessions should be at least as wide as it is in this year's meeting brochure. The selection of contributed papers for these sessions should be carried out in a democratic and verifiable fashion by a program committee. This program committee should be approved by the Society President and Vice President and should include three or more experts in the topic of each session.
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Procedures have been established this year which can professionally accomplish these goals in subsequent years, thereby freeing the Society's leadership to plan additional initiatives to serve our community. These are the minimal benefits which we need to serve our members and which we would receive without fusion.
MODIFIED FUSION PLAN The following modified fusion proposal could realize all these benefits, yet could also lay the groundwork for closer cooperation with IEEE and other interested Societies. This plan is, moreover, consistent with practices of other large societies. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to change the plans for both meetings to be held in Washington, DC in 1989. INNS signed and advertised its hotel contract in April. The IEEE signed and advertised its hotel contract in July. Severe financial penalties would result if these contracts were violated. In 1990 and thereafter, both the INNS meeting and the IEEE meeting would continue to be held with full autonomy. As a result, each meeting could determine its own meeting rules and prices. These meetings would be kept out-of-phase both temporally and geographically. In addition, a one-day satellite meeting of the INNS would occur right before or right after the IEEE meeting, and conversely. These two satellite meetings would be held on topics that are of particular interest to the satellite organizations. Should community demand require, more than one satellite meeting could be planned, with more than one cooperating society, as is common, for example, in meetings of the Society for Neuroscience. Given this framework of active cooperation, in 1991 or subsequently, INNS and IEEE could use the cooperative framework established through the satellite meetings to jointly sponsor additional meetings in Europe or Asia with the support of a local host. This modified plan of satellite meetings is workable if our members continue to support the Society's annual meeting and journal. The neural network field may survive a proliferation of meetings and journals if the unifying and democratic institutions of INNS remain strong. Think about it. Please let the INNS leadership know your thoughts.
THE SOCIETY'S FUTURE In closing, I would like to express three of my personal hopes for the Society'S future. Our future lies in the quality of talent that gets attracted to neural network research. To attract the best people, I hope
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that we always strive to support and promote the best work, no matter where it may pop up. Our future also lies in the quality of service that people offer to our community. I hope that everyone tries to give at least a little more than he gets. Then a huge reservoir of good will and productivity can be generated that would benefit us all. Finally, I hope that we take seriously the immense humanizing potential of our field's subject matter. We are, after all, the community that is supposed to
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build beautiful theories of the biological mind. If we approach that daunting task with an appropriate reverence, and use our growing knowledge in compassionate ways, then our field may gradually come to have a good influence even beyond its great promise to science and technology. We have founded this Society to serve you, our members. It offers us an opportunity that arises once every two decades or so. May you enjoy it and support it in good health.