Book excerpt: Fifty years ago, A. Turing predicted that by 2000 we would have a machine that could pass the Turing test. Although this may not yet be true, AI has advanced signi?cantly in these 50 years, and at the dawn of the XXI century is still an activeandchallenging?eld.Thisyearisalsosigni?cantforAIinMexico,withthe merging of the two major AI conferences into the biennial Mexican International Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (MICAI) series. MICAI is the union of the Mexican National AI Conference (RNIA) and the International AI Symposium (ISAI), organized annually by the Mexican Society forAI(SMIA,since1984)andbytheMonterreyInstituteofTechnology(ITESM, since1988),respectively.The?rstMexicanInternationalConferenceonArti?cial Intelligence, MICAI 2000, took place April 11-14, 2000, in the city of Acapulco, Mexico.ThisconferenceseekstopromoteresearchinAI,andcooperationamong Mexican researchers and their peers worldwide. We welcome you all. Over 163 papers from 17 di?erent countries were submitted for consideration to MICAI 2000. After reviewing them thoroughly, MICAI’s program committee, referees, and program chair accepted 60 papers for the international track. This volume contains the written version of the papers and invited talks presented at MICAI. We would like to acknowledge the support of the American Association for Arti?cial Intelligence (AAAI), and the International Joint Conference on Art- cial Intelligence (IJCAI). We are specially grateful for the warm hospitality and generosity o?ered by the Acapulco Institute of Technology.