Planning Technologies for Interactive Storytelling

Since AI planning was first proposed for the task of narrative generation in interactive storytelling (IS), it has emerged as the dominant approach in this field. This chapter traces the use of planning technologies in this area, considers the core issues involved in the application of planning technologies in IS, and identifies some of the remaining challenges

Planning multisentential English text using communicative acts

The goal of this research is to develop explanation presentation mechanisms for knowledge based systems which enable them to define domain terminology and concepts, narrate events, elucidate plans, processes, or propositions and argue to support a claim or advocate action. This requires the development of devices which select, structure, order and then linguistically realize explanation content as coherent and cohesive English text. With the goal of identifying generic explanation presentation strategies, a wide range of naturally occurring texts were analyzed with respect to their communicative sttucture, function, content and intended effects on the reader. This motivated an integrated theory of communicative acts which characterizes text at the level of rhetorical acts (e.g., describe, define, narrate), illocutionary acts (e.g., inform, request), and locutionary acts (e.g., ask, command). Taken as a whole, the identified communicative acts characterize the structure, content and intended effects of four types of text: description, narration, exposition, argument. These text types have distinct effects such as getting the reader to know about entities, to know about events, to understand plans, processes, or propositions, or to believe propositions or want to perform actions. In addition to identifying the communicative function and effect of text at multiple levels of abstraction, this dissertation details a tripartite theory of focus of attention (discourse focus, temporal focus, and spatial focus) which constrains the planning and linguistic realization of text. To test the integrated theory of communicative acts and tripartite theory of focus of attention, a text generation system TEXPLAN (Textual EXplanation PLANner) was implemented that plans and linguistically realizes multisentential and multiparagraph explanations from knowledge based systems. The communicative acts identified during text analysis were formalized as over sixty compositional and (in some cases) recursive plan operators in the library of a hierarchical planner. Discourse, temporal, and spatial focus models were implemented to track and use attentional information to guide the organization and realization of text. Because the plan operators distinguish between the communicative function (e.g., argue for a proposition) and the expected effect (e.g., the reader believes the proposition) of communicative acts, the system is able to construct a discourse model of the structure and function of its textual responses as well as a user model of the expected effects of its responses on the reader's knowledge, beliefs, and desires. The system uses both the discourse model and user model to guide subsequent utterances. To test its generality, the system was interfaced to a variety of domain applications including a neuropsychological diagnosis system, a mission planning system, and a knowledge based mission simulator. The system produces descriptions, narrations, expositions, and arguments from these applications, thus exhibiting a broader range of rhetorical coverage than previous text generation systems

Foundations of Human-Aware Planning -- A Tale of Three Models

abstract: A critical challenge in the design of AI systems that operate with humans in the loop is to be able to model the intentions and capabilities of the humans, as well as their beliefs and expectations of the AI system itself. This allows the AI system to be "human- aware" -- i.e. the human task model enables it to envisage desired roles of the human in joint action, while the human mental model allows it to anticipate how its own actions are perceived from the point of view of the human. In my research, I explore how these concepts of human-awareness manifest themselves in the scope of planning or sequential decision making with humans in the loop. To this end, I will show (1) how the AI agent can leverage the human task model to generate symbiotic behavior; and (2) how the introduction of the human mental model in the deliberative process of the AI agent allows it to generate explanations for a plan or resort to explicable plans when explanations are not desired. The latter is in addition to traditional notions of human-aware planning which typically use the human task model alone and thus enables a new suite of capabilities of a human-aware AI agent. Finally, I will explore how the AI agent can leverage emerging mixed-reality interfaces to realize effective channels of communication with the human in the loop.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED11):Book of Abstracts

The ICED series of conferences is the Design Society's "flagship" event. ICED11 took place on August 15-18, 2011, at the campus of the Danish Technical University in Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark. The Proceedings of the conference are published in 10 individual volumes, arranged according to topics. All volumes of the Proceedings may be purchased individually through Amazon and other on-line booksellers. For members of the Design Society, all papers are available on this website. The Programme and Abstract Book is publically available for download

Generation of anaphors in Chinese

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the computer generation of various kinds of anaphors in Chinese, including zero, pronominal and nominal anaphors, from the se¬ mantic representation of multisentential text. The work is divided into two steps: the first is to investigate linguistic behaviour of Chinese anaphora, and the other is to implement the result of the first part in a Chinese natural language generation system to see how it works.The first step is in general to construct a set of rules governing the use of all kinds of anaphors. To achieve this, we performed a sequence of experiments in a stepwise refined manner. In the experiments, we examined the occurrence of anaphors in humangenerated text and those generated by algorithms employing the rules, assuming the same semantic and discourse structures as the text. We started by distinguishing between the use of zero and other anaphors, termed non-zeroes. Then we performed experiments to distinguish between pronouns and nominal anaphors within the nonzeroes. Finally, we refined the previous result to consider different kinds of descriptions for nominal anaphors. In this research we confine ourselves to descriptive texts. Three sets of test data consisting of scientific questions and answers and an introduction to Chinese grammar were selected. The rules we obtained from the experiments make use of the following conditions: locality between anaphor and antecedent, syntactic constraints on zero anaphors, discourse segment structures, salience of objects and animacy of objects. The results show that the anaphors generated by using the rules we obtained are very close to those in the real texts.To carry out the second step, we built up a Chinese natural language generation system which is able to generate descriptive texts. The system is divided into a strategic and a tactical component. The strategic component arranges message contents in response to the input goal into a well-organised hierarchical discourse structure by using a text planner. The tactical component takes the hierarchical discourse structure as input and produces surface sentences with punctuation marks inserted appropriately. Within the tactical component, the first task consists of linearising in depth-first order the message units in the discourse structure and mapping them into syntactic-oriented representations. Referring expressions, the main concern in this thesis, are generated within the mapping process. A linguistic realisation program is then invoked to convert the syntactic representation into surface strings in Chinese.After the implementation, we sent some generated texts to a number of native speakers of Chinese and compared human-created results and computer-generated text to investigate the quality of the generated anaphors. The results of the comparison show that the rules we obtained are effective in dealing with the generation of anaphors in Chinese

Disconnect.Me. User Engagement and Facebook

In the beginning of its 10th year of existence Facebook has engaged and connected 1.2 billion monthly active users. This article-based dissertation Disconnect.Me – User Engagement and Facebook approaches this engagement from the opposite direction: disconnection. The research articles focus on social media specific phenomena including leaving Facebook, tactical media works such as Web 2.0 SuicideMachine, memorializing dead Facebook users and Facebook trolling. The media theoretical framework for this study is built around affect theory, software studies, biopolitics as well as different critical studies of new media. The argument is that disconnection is a necessary condition of social media connectivity and exploring social media through disconnection – as an empirical phenomenon, future potential and theoretical notion – helps us to understand how users are engaged with social media, its uses and subsequent business models. The results of the study indicate that engagement is a relation that precedes user participation, a notion often used to conceptualize social media. Furthermore, this engagement turns the focus from users’ actions towards the platform and how the platform actively controls users and their behavior. Facebook aims to engage new users and maintain the old ones by renewing its platform and user interface. User engagement with the platform is thus social but also technical and affective. When engaged, the user is positioned to algorithmic connectivity where machinc processes mine user data. This data is but sold also used to affect and engage other users. In the heart of this study is the notion that our networked engagements matter and disconnection can bring us to the current limits of network culture.Disconnect.Me – Käyttäjien sitoutuminen ja Facebook Kymmenessä vuodessa Facebook on onnistunut sitouttamaan 1.2 miljardia käyttäjää. Artikkeliväitöskirja Disconnect.Me – Käyttäjien sitoutuminen ja Facebook tarkastelee Facebookia näiden käyttäjien menettämisen näkökulmasta. Artikkeleissa tutkimuskohteena ovat muun muassa Facebookin käytön lopettaminen, käyttäjätilin tuhoavat mediataideteokset, muistoprofiilit ja Facebook-trollit. Menetelmällisesti tutkielma nojautuu erilaisiin mediateoreettisiin näkökulmiin painottuen erityisesti affektiteoriaan, software-tutkimukseen, biopolitiikkaan ja kriittiseen uuden median tutkimukseen. Kirjan keskeinen väite on, että tutkimalla käyttäjien menettämistä empiirisenä ilmiönä, tulevaisuuden uhkana sekä teoreettisena käsitteenä on mahdollista ymmärtää, miten käyttäjät sekä sitoutuvat että sitoutetaan osaksi sosiaalisen median toimintatapoja ja liiketoimintamalleja. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että käyttäjien sitoutuminen on suhde, joka edeltää käyttäjien osallistumista; tässä suhteessa olennaista on, mitä sosiaalisen median alusta voi tehdä käyttäjälle ei niinkään se, mitä käyttäjät itse sosiaalisessa mediassa tekevät. Uudistamalla lakkaamatta alustaansa ja käyttöliittymäänsä Facebook pyrkiikin sitouttamaan uusia käyttäjiä ja samalla pysäyttämään vanhojen käyttäjien menettämisen. Facebookin alusta tekee käyttäjien sitoutumisesta paitsi sosiaalista myös teknistä ja affektiivista. Sitoutumalla käyttäjä asettuu algoritmisen kontrollin pariin, jossa koneelliset prosessit paitsi määrittelevät ja luokittelevat käyttäjänsä datan keruun tarpeisiin myös tekevät käyttäjistä affektiivisia; käyttäjien toiminta ja sisällöntuotanto houkuttelee toisia käyttäjiä sitoutumaan ja osallistumaan Facebookin toimintaan. Kirjan keskeisenä teemana on käyttäjien sitoutumisen ja sitouttamisen merkityksellisyys paitsi käyttäjille myös Facebookille sekä huomio, että tämän suhteen katkeaminen avaa tutkimuksellisesti digitaalisen mediakulttuurin uusia raja-alueita.Siirretty Doriast

The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

This book delivers an introduction and overview of developing intersections between digital methods and literary studies. The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies serves as a starting place for those who wish to learn more about the possibilities, and the limitations, of the oft-touted digital humanities in the literary space. The volume engages with the proponents of digital humanities and its detractors alike, aiming to offer a fair and balanced perspective on this controversial topic. The book combines a survey and background approach with original literary research and, therefore, straddles the divide between seasoned digital experts and interested newcomers

The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

This book delivers an introduction and overview of developing intersections between digital methods and literary studies. The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies serves as a starting place for those who wish to learn more about the possibilities, and the limitations, of the oft-touted digital humanities in the literary space. The volume engages with the proponents of digital humanities and its detractors alike, aiming to offer a fair and balanced perspective on this controversial topic. The book combines a survey and background approach with original literary research and, therefore, straddles the divide between seasoned digital experts and interested newcomers

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new