Call for Papers

AISB Symposium on Language Learning for Aritificial Agents (L2A2)

Final Call for Papers - Deadline extended to 8 February

We are pleased to announce the inception of a new Symposium on Language Learning for Artificial Agents, to be held as part of the 2019 edition of the annual conference of the Society for Artificial Intelligence and Simulated Behaviour (AISB). The conference will take place at Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK, 16-18 April, 2019.

Our symposium will be a venue for presenting and discussing recent and ongoing work in the various areas related to the development of artificial linguistic agents. At the heart of this event is the topic of grounded language learning and the host of computational techniques that are being explored as approaches to this scientifically and socially significant area of research.

We anticipate an event exploring the boundary between theory and practice, embracing enthusiasm for recent and ongoing progress in the application of computational techniques to linguistic modelling while at the same time welcoming thoughtful analysis of the ramifications – scientific, social, and philosophical – of the advent of linguistic communication between humans and artificial agents. With this in mind, we invite authors from any field to submit academic papers presenting complete or ongoing empirical work, theoretical research, descriptions of datasets, postion papers, and other material relevant to this topic. Subjects of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Representation learning
• Ontology construction
• Construction grammar
• Learning language from multimodal data
• Multi-lingual approaches to grounded language learning
• Deep learning approaches to grounded language learning
• Embodied approaches to natural language processing
• Modelling non-linguistic components of language learning
• Symbol grounding/ungrounding problems
• Language games
• Embodied conversational agents
• Human interactions with artificial agents
• Computational models of developmental linguistics
• Modelling language on multiple timescales
• Evolutionary computational linguistics
• Social considerations in developing artificial linguistic agents

Keynote Speaker: Anthony Cohn
We are very pleased to announce that Anthony Cohn, Professor of Automated Reasoning at the University of Leeds, will be giving the keynote lecture for the symposium. Anthony has worked for many years in the general domain of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on knowledge representation and reasoning. He has been behind seminal research in spatial logic and reasoning, ontology construction, and robotics; his work has led to his involvement in a diverse range of disciplines, including computer vision, engineering, and archaeology. Of particular interest to our symposium is his work in language acquisition for artificial agents and embodied representation. In recent years, in recognition of his contributions to the field, he has been the recipient of the AAAI Distinguished Service Award (2012) and the IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award (2015). He is, in addition to a number of other accolades, a past Chair and current Fellow of AISB, making his involvement in the conference this year especially meaningful.

Important Dates:
submission deadline – 8 February, 2019
notification – 28 February, 2019
camera-ready final draft – 18 March, 2019
conference – 16-18 April, 2019

Authors may submit short papers of up to four pages or long papers of up to eight pages (page counts excluding references). Please submit papers through our symposium portal:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=l2a2

And keep an eye on our symposium website for any forthcoming updates:

https://l2a2.github.io/symposium

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by members of our programme committee. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to give a 30 minute (long papers) or 15 minute (short papers) presentation at the symposium. (Please note participating authors will be required to register with the conference.) Papers will be published as part of the proceedings of AISB 2019.

Review will be double-blind, so please avoid including any information which might identify authors in submissions. Submissions should be made according to the AISB style guidelines. LaTeX and Word Templates can be found here (direct link to download):

http://aisb2019.falmouthgamesacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/AISB2019-style.zip

Symposium participants will be able to take part in a range of other symposia and workshops taking place at AISB 2019. For more details on the conference, including information about location, accommodation, and registration, please follow this link:

http://aisb2019.falmouthgamesacademy.com/

See here for a pdf version of this call for papers:

http://l2a2.github.io/cfp-pdf.pdf

Contact:

For any enquiries regarding the symposium, please contact Stephen McGregor by email at semcgregor@hotmail.com.