The International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) have been going since 1969 and this year, it’s being held in Montréal. Here’s more from an August 15, 2025 International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence news release on EurekAlert,
“AI at the service of society” is the guiding theme of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), taking place from August 16 to 22, 2025 in Montreal, Canada. Since its inception in 1969, IJCAI has played a pivotal role as a forum to showcase the frontiers of artificial intelligence research and applications and thus represents the oldest continuously running conference on artificial intelligence.
In 2025, the conference with more than 2000 attendees, has been brought to Canada by Gilles Pesant, the Local Arrangements Committee Chair, Professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal and IVADO [Institut de valorisation des données] researcher. “What makes IJCAI special is that it brings together the latest research from many different areas of artificial intelligence. It’s a great opportunity for the Canadian AI community to showcase the world-class contributions and outstanding talent,` says the founder of the Quosséça research lab (QUebec Optimization and Satisfaction Strategies Exploiting Constraint Algorithms) and current President of the Association for Constraint Programming. Prof. Pesant is known for developing advanced algorithms for complex scheduling and planning problems. Among his current research interests are neuro-symbolic AI systems which combine machine learning and constraint programming.
Canada’s AI Leadership
This year marks the 30th anniversary of a breakthrough that transformed artificial intelligence by giving machines the ability to learn from and remember sequences such as speech, language, and time-series data – Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture. While not developed in Canada, the story of LSTM is intertwined with Canada’s leadership in artificial intelligence. During the “AI winter,” when much of the world abandoned neural networks, Canada became a refuge for pioneering AI research. Visionaries like Geoffrey Hinton, now a Nobel Prize winner, and Yoshua Bengio, among others, continued to advance deep learning despite widespread skepticism. Their perseverance and the resilience of the Canadian research community laid the foundation for the AI revolution that is transforming the world today. Canada continues to lead through such institutions as MILA, Vector Institute, AMII, IVADO, and the Canadian AI Safety Institute.
The IJCAI 2025 program features a lineup of internationally recognised keynote speakers, covering the full spectrum of AI research, including:
Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer in representation learning and one of the godfathers of deep learning. He is a recipient of the 2018 Turing Award—often called the “Nobel Prize of Computing”—which he shares with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun for demonstrating how deep learning models can scale effectively with large datasets and computational power. Bengio is a professor at the Université de Montréal and the founder of Mila – Quebec AI Institute, one of the world’s largest academic labs dedicated to deep learning, which has helped establish Montreal as a global hub for AI research.
Every time someone uses a search engine or an AI-powered chatbot, they benefit from technologies that bridge the gap between human language and machine understanding — a challenge directly addressed by Heng Ji’s research. An invited IJCAI speaker, Ji is a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, renowned for her pioneering work on how AI systems extract and distill knowledge from vast amounts of unstructured data. Far from being confined to academia, she is also an active voice in AI policy, contributing her expertise to discussions on the ethical and responsible development of AI.
Luc De Raedt, professor of computer science at KU Leuven and director of Leuven.AI, is widely recognized for his pioneering contributions to integrating machine learning with symbolic reasoning. Beyond his research, he has played a significant leadership role in fostering public dialogue on responsible AI, spearheading initiatives and organizing debates on the societal impacts of AI to help shape conversations around ethical and trustworthy AI development. In his IJCAI2025 kenyote address he will talk about ‘Neurosymbolic AI : combining Data and Knowledge’.
In this effort, he is not alone. Bernhard Schölkopf, director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and co-founder of ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems), is another leading figure giving an invited talk on ‘From ML for science to causal digital twins’. In addition to his scientific contributions — particularly in kernel methods and causal inference — Schölkopf is a prominent advocate for ethical and trustworthy AI in Europe. He plays a key role in shaping AI research agendas and informing policy discussions around responsible AI.
The Montreal program also features invited talks by IJCAI 2025 awardees: Aditya Grover (UCLA and Inception Labs), recipient of the IJCAI-25 Computers and Thought Award; Rina Dechter (University of California, Irvine), recipient of the IJCAI-25 Award for Research Excellence; and Cynthia Rudin (Duke Univeristy), recipient of the IJCAI-25 John McCarthy Award.
The IJCAI 2025 scientific program highlights how AI is shaping both cutting-edge research and real-world impact. The AI, Arts & Creativity track explores AI’s growing role in generating and supporting creative work—from music and design to storytelling and architecture. The Human-Centred AI track addresses the challenges of building AI systems aligned with human values, integrating technical, cognitive, ethical, and societal perspectives. The AI for Social Good track focuses on AI-driven solutions for pressing global challenges, encouraging collaborations with governments, NGOs, and researchers to support initiatives like the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the AI4Tech track showcases how AI is driving breakthroughs in critical technologies across sectors such as health, finance, mobility, and smart cities. Complementing these thematic tracks, IJCAI 2025 includes as well a set of impactful competitions and challenges to push the boundaries of applied AI, including the Challenge on Deepfake Detection and Localization, the AI for Drinking Water Chlorination Challenge, and the Pulmonary Fibrosis Segmentation Challenge. Together, these elements reflect the pulse of AI today—advancing science while addressing the needs of society. IJCAI 2025 also presents an AI Art Gallery featuring works that examine how machines balance agency and vulnerability, and how their interactions with humans and the environment shape future possibilities. These artworks engage with these questions through AI, robotics, AR, VR, and other emerging technologies.
The program also includes the AI Lounge: Between Wonder and Caution – Insights from Three Experts, an admission-free public discussion featuring science communication journalist in debate with three community representatives: Heng Ji (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Kate Larson (University of Waterloo), and Cynthia Rudin (Duke University).
To support authors who may experience difficulties obtaining Canadian visas, a satellite event will be hosted in Guangzhou, China, from August 29 to August 31, 2025.
The IJCAI 2025 conference is supported by its sponsors, including the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ) and Palais des Congrès de Montréal (Diamond Sponsor), GMI Cloud, FinVolution Group, and Baidu and Ant Research as Silver Sponsors.
Full Program
See full program at https://2025.ijcai.org/
Organizers and Institutional Support
Conference Chair: Shlomo Zilberstein University of Massachusetts, Amherst / USA
Program Chair: James Kwok, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology / China
Local Arrangements Committee Chair: Gilles Pesant, Polytechnique Montréal / Canada
Local Publicity chair: Lina Marsso, Assistant Professor, Polytechnique Montréal / MiLA / Canada
Sponsorship / Exhibit / Industry Day Chair: Nancy Laramée, IVADO, Canada
Lead student journalist on social media: Liliane-Caroline Demers, Polytechnique Montreal
Webmaster: Mehil Shah, Dalhousie University, Canada
More information on the IJCAI’s website: https://2025.ijcai.org
Should you be interested in the parent organization, which began life in California, US, you can find out more here.
