From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2005 - 05:29:29 MST
Another potentially interesting conference...
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See also: http://www.androidscience.com/
CALL FOR PAPERS
Toward Social Mechanisms of Android Science
A CogSci2005 Workshop
Stresa, Italy, 25-26 July 2005
Theme and goals
The embodiment of social and cognitive theories in interactive robots
sets a high bar for their evaluation. Theories that reify descriptions
relying on a human interpreter for their grounding cannot be implemented
in autonomous systems. The demands of coherently integrating responses
cross-modally and coping with open, socially complex environments limit
the applicability of theories that "grew up in the laboratory." Androids
will be confronted with circumstances that exhibit complex
closely-coordinated social dynamics, where stable patterns emerge at
various spatial and temporal scales, and expectations depend in part on
a histories of interaction that are unique to individual relationships.
We define an android to be an artificial system that has humanlike
behavior and appearance and is capable of sustaining natural
relationships with people. Although people may know that an android is
not human, they would treat it as if it were, owing to the largely
subconscious responses it would elicit. To pass the Total Turing Test,
an android would need have the inclination toward "mind reading" that is
characteristic of people. The development of androids is beyond the
scope of mere engineering because, to make the android humanlike, we
must investigate human activity, and to evaluate theories of human
activity accurately, we need to implement them in an android. Thus, we
need an android science.
The aim of this workshop is to begin to lay a foundation for research
in android science, a new field that integrates the synthetic approach
from robotics with the empirical methodologies of the social sciences.
Participants, coming from engineering and the social, cognitive, and
biological sciences seek fundamental principles underlying cognition and
communication between individuals. Cognition is not viewed as solely a
property of brains, to be understood at a micro-structural level, nor as
socially-definable and separable from biomechanical or sensorimotor
constraints. By highlighting agent-world relations, androids have the
potential for helping researchers to bridge the gap between cognitive
neuroscience and the behavioral sciences, leading to a new way of
understanding human beings. Thus, we hope to find principles that will
apply equally well to androids and Homo sapiens.
Topics of interest
- The role of affect and motivation in social development or
communication
- Empathic relationships among people and/or robots
- Inter-species co-evolution, cooperation, and empathy
- Processes of socialization and enculturation
- Extended relationship
- Social learning and adaptation, especially from people
- The evolution, development, and nature of agency, intentionality, or
social intelligence
- Software architectures for embodied social interaction
- The grounding, emergence, or acquisition of communicative signs or
symbols
- Mimesis and its role in communication and development
- The development or implementation of hierarchies of meaning
- Models of personal, interindividual, group, or cultural norms
- Cross-modal synchronization or stabilized plasticity in speech and/or
gesture
- Learning with and from machines
- Androids working alongside people as peers
- Applications in human environments
- Ethical issues concerning androids
- Perception of naturalness, attractiveness, or charisma
- The relationship between appearance and perceived behavior
- Android personalities
- Emotional intelligence
- The Total Turing Test
Target participants
Robotics engineers and computer scientists with an interest in
artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition, and
control, especially those whose target platform includes humanoid
robots; psychologists and sociologists who are concerned with real-time
embodied communication or social development; cognitive scientists who
are concerned with the relationship between brain processes and social
dynamics; social and comparative biologists; and philosophers.
The workshop is of interest to the target participants because androids
will provide a critical test bed for social and cognitive theories in
the future, and research in this domain depends on interdisciplinary
collaboration between engineers and natural and social scientists.
Submissions:
Submissions must be made to the following address by email:
They must be in PDF and conform to the APA Style Manual and the
formatting guidelines of CogSci2005:
http://www.psych.unito.it/csc/cogsci05/submission.html
Deadlines:
Paper title and outline: February 1, 2005
Electronic paper submission deadline: April 1, 2005
Paper author notifications sent: May 15, 2005
Camera-ready copy deadline: June 1, 2005
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