The biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) is the leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and is commonly listed together with IJCAI

International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence is a meeting of researchers from the different areas of artificial intelligence . It is organized by the IJCAI, Inc., and has been held every other year since 1969. Originally, the other years saw the meetings of the ECAI, AAAI, and a...

 and AAAI

American Association for Artificial Intelligence

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence or AAAI is an international, nonprofit, scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines...

 as one of the three major general AI conferences worldwide. The conference series has been held without interruption since 1974, originally under the name AISB.

The conferences are held under the auspices of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI) and organized by one of the member societies. The journal AI Communications, sponsored by the same society, regularly publishes special issues in which conference attendees report on the conference.

Publication of a paper in ECAI is considered by some journals to be archival, meaning that the paper should be considered equivalent to a journal publication and that the contents of ECAI papers cannot be reformulated as separate journal submissions unless a significant amount of new material is added.

ECAI-2008 took place in Patras

Patras

Patras , ) is Greece's third largest urban area and the regional capital of West Greece, located in northern Peloponnese, 215 kilometers west of Athens...

, Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

.
ECAI-2010 took place in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.
ECAI-2012 will take place in Montpellier

Montpellier

-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.