Move over C-3PO, R2D2 and the Darleks, 'real' artificial intelligence is taking the 21st century by storm.

And this week researchers and practitioners from around the world have come together in Australia to share their knowledge in this ever-advancing area.

Central Queensland University has sponsored and organised AI'2004, the 17th Australian Computer Society (ACS) Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

The Conference, which took place this week at the Cairns Convention Centre, attracted leading researchers and practitioners from Australia and overseas and focused on all aspects of artificial intelligence.

This conference was run in conjunction with Complex'2004, the 7th Australian National Conference on Complex Systems. For details please refer to the home page http://complex2004.cqu.edu.au .

General chair for the conference Associate Professor Russel Stonier, from CQU, said AI'2004 promised to devulge theoretical advances and the latest applied developments in Artificial Intelligence.

"The Conference has attracted some very good guest speakers and presenters, along with a number of CQU staff and students who will be presenting papers.".

AI-2004 featured keynote addresses from:.

 Dr. Mehran Sahami (Google/Stanford University); TITLE:"Harnessing AI Technologies to Improve Web Search".

 Prof. Paul Compton (University of New South Wales); TITLE:"Incremental Development of Knowledge-Based Systems".

Prof. Ah Chung Tsoi (Executive Director for the Australian Research Council's Mathematics, Information and Communications inter-disciplinary cluster).

TITLE:"A New Neural Model for Structured Data".