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Editor for this issue: Anthony M. Aristar <aristartam2000.tamu.edu>
is.aist-nara.ac.jp>CALL FOR PAPERS ECAI-96 Workshop ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- GAPS AND BRIDGES: New Directions in Planning and Natural Language Generation ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- 12th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence August 12 or 13, 1996 Budapest, Hungary Recent research on autonomous cooperative systems has shown that linguistic knowledge is not enough for successful communication: strategic planning, which is prior to and independent of language, plays a key role in planning communicative contributions. There has also been a focus shift in NLG from the study of well-formedness conditions (grammars) to the exploration of communicative adequacy of linguistic forms: speaking is viewed as an indirect means for achieving communicative goals rather than an exercise to produce grammatically correct output. Moreover, new ideas like rational agency (Cohen and Levesque 1990), conflict resolution (Galliers 1989) and resource-bounded agency (Bratman, Israel and Pollack 1988) have become central issues within thi s larger framework: they affect not only planning, but also the realisation of utterances. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of these issues, there is still relatively little work showing ways of integrating them into a system. Yet, one of the most important areas in AI research is the establishment of a link between NLG-systems and intelligent planning systems. This workshop aims at clarifying the role of rational and cooperative planning in generation, contributing to the ultimate goal of building a computational model that integrates these components into a unified whole. Furthermore, the workshop provides an opportunity to examine theoretical models of planning agents and their impact on practical aspects of NLG architecture. Contributions dealing with the following topics are particularly welcome: - generation viewed as a rationally, cooperatively planned goal- oriented activity; - interactions between situational, motivational (speaker and addressee goals), cognitive and linguistic constraints; - generation of discourse based on techniques developed in AI and computational linguistics; - the effect of the various constraints on the generation process as a whole (resource-bounded agency and planning constraints; open-world assumption; time and space constraints); - planning strategies: reactive vs. deliberate planning, anytime planning, resource-bounded planning; - quantitative methods based on corpus analysis (showing which linguistic or communicative acts are instrumental in a given setting), statistical and stochastic models; evaluation. PARTICIPANTS The workshop will be kept small, with a maximum of 40 participants. Preference will be given to active participants selected on the basis of their submitted papers. A small number of participants without a paper will also be considered; such persons should submit a 1-2 page statement of interest and a list of relevant publications. No-paper participants will be requested to give comments on the accepted papers. According to ECAI rules, all workshop attendees must register for the main ECAI-96 conference. In addition, there is a separate workshop registration fee of ECU 50. More information about registration can be found at ECAI-96 Registration page http://www.dfki.uni-sb.de/ecai96/Registration.html WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop is intended to be a genuinely interactive event with constructive development and exchange of ideas rather than a mini-conference. Participants are asked to read some of the articles mentioned in the workshop description before their arrival. Yet, rather than aiming at a consensus for a particular theory or research direction, the participants are encouraged to present thought-provoking ideas which allow for vivid and vigorous discussions. Being aware of the lack of communication between theorists and engineers, the workshop also aims at bridging this gap. Besides emphasizing the innovative aspects of research and their potential for practically oriented work, discussion of practical applications as testbeds for theory will be encouraged. The workshop aims at building a common ground allowing a productive interaction between these two groups. The one-day workshop is structured around individual presentations, group discussions and a panel discussion. The presentations should not exceed 20 minutes, in order to encourage the speakers to reach quickly the point they wan t to make. Every session is followed by an open, 30 minute group discussion. Thus new and thought provoking ideas may serve as starting points for a discussion, allowing each participant to contribute to its development from their own perspective. Demonstration of software could be organised as part of the main ECAI conference. SUBMISSIONS Potential participants are invited to submit extended abstracts on the topics outlined above. Submissions should be no longer than 5 pages, single spaced, and be in line with the ECAI-style sheet, obtainable from http://www.dfki.uni-sb.de/ecai96/download/ecai96.sty http://www.dfki.uni-sb.de/ecai96/download/ecai96.bst Electronic submissions should be sent to: krisMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue