Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 12:17:59 +0000
From: Bruce Edmonds <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: CFP: AI/MAS symposium on "Starting from Society"
*** Call for Papers ***
STARTING FROM SOCIETY
- the application of social analogies to computational systems
a symposium at
"Time for AI and Society"
2000 Convention of the Society for the Study of
Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour
(AISB-00)
17th-20th April 2000
University of Birmingham
England
The Symposium will take place over two days during the Convention.
URL for the Symposium:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce/sfs/
NATURE OF THE SYMPOSIUM
Background:
Recently there have been a number of workshops and special issues that
indicate increasing interest in this area, including:
* a 1997 AAAI Fall symposium on "Socially Intelligent Agents";
* a special issue of Applied Artificial Intelligence on "Socially
Intelligent Agents";
* a double special issue of Adaptive Behavior on "Simulation
Models of Social Agents";
* a special issue of Computational and Mathematical Organisation
Theory on "Social Intelligence";
* a collection within the series Advances in Consciousness
Research on "Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology";
* a workshop at the 5th Pacific Rim International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence on "Issues in Cross Cultural
Communication: Towards Culturally Situated Agents";
* a workshop in Agents98 on "Agents in interaction - acquiring
competencies through imitation" and,
* the 1999 AISB Symposium on "Imitation in Animals and
Artefacts".
Understanding how societies work and the role they play in the
construction and function of intelligence has turned out to be much more
complex and important than most researchers in AI would have predicted.
This is in marked contrast to sociology and social cognitive science
where this has been common knowledge for some time. It is now time to
pay attention to these social phenomena in their own right so that they
can be analysed and applied in AI.
Topic:
This symposium is to consider how ideas and analogies drawn from
observations of real societies might be applied to computational
systems. Recently biology has been a source of inspiration for AI, e.g.
spawning the field of evolutionary computation. Now ideas and analogies
drawn from the social sciences are starting to be used in computational
systems. This is partly because it is being
recognised that controlling interacting societies of artificial agents
is difficult - traditional methods can not anticipate the emergent
outcomes, so that some researchers are looking to real societies.
Another strand is the increasing recognition that much of what we had
labelled as individual intelligence derives
from the society it inhabits. A third strand can be traced to the
influence of social simulation techniques. This symposium will focus on
these areas, welcoming especially interdisciplinary work and work
grounded in observation of real societies and real problems.
Suitable topics include:
* socially situated intelligence;
* social consequences of embodiment;
* effects of local communication;
* social self-limitation;
* social simulation;
* making real societies;
* causes and effects of social embedding;
* socially derived images of the self;
* memetic processes;
* norms and values;
* opinions and prejudices;
* dynamic properties of societies;
* social learning and imitation;
* development and influence of culture,
* environmental influences on societies,
* anthropological models of societies,
* structures of kinship,
* evolution and adaptation of societies.
Please contact either of the Co-chairs for informal advice as to the
suitability of a paper or idea.
SUBMISSION:
Full papers should report original work that is directly relevant to the
topic as described above. These should not have been published
elsewhere. Papers that summarise previously published work or work in
progress are welcome as posters or position papers.
Submissions of full papers should be no more than 4000 words and 8 pages
long (including pictures, references and appendicies with text and
graphics at a readable size). Those submitted as posters or position
papers should be no more than 1000 words and 2 pages long.
Submission is by electronic means only. Submissions should be either
sent to b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk as a MIME-compatible attatchment or using
anonymous ftp to server cfpm.org in directory
/pub/aisb/submissions. It must arrive no later than 6th January 1999
(if there are any difficulties in doing this then contact Bruce
Edmonds).
Acceptable file formats are:
Pure ASCII Text - a ".txt" file
Word 6/95/98 - a ".doc" file
Postscript formatted for A4 paper - a ".ps" file
Adobe's Portable Document Format - a ".pdf" file
Compress submissions using one of the ".zip", ".gz" or ".Z" formats.
If using anonymous ftp please also e-mail Bruce Edmonds informing him
of your submission.
Please ensure that the paper includes all contact details - an e-mail
address is compulsory. Papers must be in English.
TIMETABLE
Submission Deadline: 6th January 1999
Notification of Acceptance: 12th Febuary 2000
Full Paper submission deadline: 12th March 2000
The Convention: 17th April - 20th April 2000
PROGRAMME CHAIR((s))
Bruce Edmonds,
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce
Centre for Policy Modelling,
Manchester Metropolitan
University
Aytoun Building, Aytoun St.,
Manchester M1 3GH. UK.
E-mail: B.Edmonds@mmu.ac.uk
Fax: +44 (0) 161-247 6802
Tel: +44 (0) 161-247 6479
Kerstin Dautenhahn,
http://www.cyber.rdg.ac.uk/people/kd/WWW/
The University of Reading
Department of Cybernetics
Whiteknights, PO Box 225
Reading, RG6 6AY. UK.
E-mail: K.Dautenhahn@cyber.reading.ac.uk
Fax: +44 (0) 118-931 8220
Tel: +44 (0) 118-931 8218 or 6372
REST OF PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (so far)
Varol Akman (Bilkent, Turkey)
John Campbell (UCL, UK)
Edmund Chattoe (Surrey -> Oxford, UK)
Mark d'Inverno (Westminster, UK)
Jim Doran (Essex, UK)
Anita Fetzer (Stuttgard, Germany)
Scott Moss (Manchester Metropolitan, UK)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WHOLE CONVENTION
The Programme Overseers and Local Arrangements Chairmen are:
Prof. John A. Barnden & Dr. Mark G. Lee
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
England.
{J.A.Barnden,M.G.Lee}@cs.bham.ac.uk
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~{jab,mgl}
Work: (+44) (0)121 414-{3816,4765}
Fax: (+44) (0)121 414-4281
NOTE: Please address all enquiries about the "Starting from
Society" SYMPOSIUM to the Programme Chair(s) above, NOT to
Barnden
or Lee. In particular, please do not send submissions to Barnden
or Lee. Barnden and Lee welcome general enquiries about the
Convention.
The whole Convention will largely consist of some Keynote Talks and
about nine Symposia on a wide range of topics in Artificial Intelligence
and Cognitive Science. Underlying subthemes of the Convention will
include but will not be restricted to: applications of AI to society;
how AI can change society; how society affects individual cognition; how
individual agents work together; society-of-agents views of individual
cognition; and how agents deal with time and change outside and within
themselves. Please see the Convention web page (above) for descriptions
of the individual Symposia.
The Keynote Speakers will be Geoffrey Hinton from University College,
London (England), Marvin Minsky from MIT, and Aaron Sloman from the
University of Birmingham (England). A fourth may be arranged.
The keynote talks will be plenary events.
Convention URL: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mgl/aisb/
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