477 research outputs found
Agents for educational games and simulations
This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications
Cultures of innovation of the African poor : common roots, shared traits, joint prospects? ; on the articulation of multiple modernities in African societies and black diasporas in latin America
The globalized Western culture of innovation, as propagated by major aid institutions, does not necessarily lead to empowerment or improvement of the well-being of the stakeholders. On the contrary, it often blocks viable indigenous innovation cultures. In African societies and African Diasporas in Latin America, cultures of innovation largely accrue from the informal, not the formal sector. Crucial for their proper understanding is a threefold structural differentiation: between the formal and informal sector, within the informal sector, according to class, gender or religion, and between different transnational social spaces. Different innovation cultures may be complementary, mutually reinforcing, or conflicting, leading in extreme cases even to a âclash of culturesâ at the local level. The repercussions of competing, even antagonistic agencies of innovative strategic groups are demonstrated, analyzing the case of the African poor in Benin and the African Diasporas of Brazil and Haiti.Die globalisierte westliche Innovationskultur, wie sie von den groĂen Entwicklungshilfeinstitutionen propagiert wird, fĂŒhrt nicht notwendigerweise zur Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen der Armen. Sie blockiert im Gegenteil oft wertvolle AnsĂ€tze endogener kultureller Innovationen. In afrikanischen Gesellschaften und in der Afrikanischen Diaspora Lateinamerikas entstehen Innovationskulturen ĂŒberwiegend im informellen, nicht im formellen Sektor. Diese Innovationskulturen weisen eine dreifache strukturelle Differenzierung auf: zwischen formellem und informellem Sektor, innerhalb des informellen gemÀà sozialer Schichtung, Geschlecht oder Religion sowie zwischen transnationalen sozialen RĂ€umen. Diese unterschiedlichen Innovationskulturen können sich gegenseitig ergĂ€nzen und verstĂ€rken oder aber auch bekĂ€mpfen, was in ExtremfĂ€llen bis hin zum âKampf der Kulturenâ auf lokaler Ebene fĂŒhrt. Die Auswirkungen dieser konkurrierenden oder antagonistischen Handlungsstrategien innovativer strategischer Gruppen werden an Hand von Fallstudien der Armen in Benin und in der Afrikanischen Diaspora Brasiliens und Haitis aufgezeigt
Learning plan networks in conversational video games
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-123).We look forward to a future where robots collaborate with humans in the home and workplace, and virtual agents collaborate with humans in games and training simulations. A representation of common ground for everyday scenarios is essential for these agents if they are to be effective collaborators and communicators. Effective collaborators can infer a partner's goals and predict future actions. Effective communicators can infer the meaning of utterances based on semantic context. This thesis introduces a computational cognitive model of common ground called a Plan Network. A Plan Network is a statistical model that provides representations of social roles, object affordances, and expected patterns of behavior and language. I describe a methodology for unsupervised learning of a Plan Network using a multiplayer video game, visualization of this network, and evaluation of the learned model with respect to human judgment of typical behavior. Specifically, I describe learning the Restaurant Plan Network from data collected from over 5,000 players of an online game called The Restaurant Game.by Jeffrey David Orkin.S.M
Cultures of Innovation of the African Poor. Common Roots, Shared Traits, Joint Prospects? On the Articulation of Multiple Modernities in African Societies and Black Diasporas in Latin America
The globalized Western culture of innovation, as propagated by major aid institutions, does not necessarily lead to empowerment or improvement of the well-being of the stakeholders. On the contrary, it often blocks viable indigenous innovation cultures. In African societies and African Diasporas in Latin America, cultures of innovation largely accrue from the informal, not the formal sector. Crucial for their proper understanding is a threefold structural differentiation: between the formal and informal sector, within the informal sector, according to class, gender or religion, and between different transnational social spaces. Different innovation cultures may be complementary, mutually reinforcing, or conflicting, leading in extreme cases even to a âclash of culturesâ at the local level. The repercussions of competing, even antagonistic agencies of innovative strategic groups are demonstrated, analyzing the case of the African poor in Benin and the African Diasporas of Brazil and Haiti.Economic development; cultural change; innovations; social structure; African Diaspora; Benin; Brazil; Haiti
What do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About Human-Robot Interaction?
This is a collection of papers presented at the workshop What Do Collaborations with the Arts Have to Say About HRI , held at the 2010 Human-Robot Interaction Conference, in Osaka, Japan
Libre culture: meditations on free culture
Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms
Knowledge Logistics : An Epistemography of the Genesis of a Governmental Guideline
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D.) â University of Nordland, 201
From Word Models to World Models: Translating from Natural Language to the Probabilistic Language of Thought
How does language inform our downstream thinking? In particular, how do
humans make meaning from language -- and how can we leverage a theory of
linguistic meaning to build machines that think in more human-like ways? In
this paper, we propose \textit{rational meaning construction}, a computational
framework for language-informed thinking that combines neural models of
language with probabilistic models for rational inference. We frame linguistic
meaning as a context-sensitive mapping from natural language into a
\textit{probabilistic language of thought} (PLoT) -- a general-purpose symbolic
substrate for probabilistic, generative world modeling. Our architecture
integrates two powerful computational tools that have not previously come
together: we model thinking with \textit{probabilistic programs}, an expressive
representation for flexible commonsense reasoning; and we model meaning
construction with \textit{large language models} (LLMs), which support
broad-coverage translation from natural language utterances to code expressions
in a probabilistic programming language. We illustrate our framework in action
through examples covering four core domains from cognitive science:
probabilistic reasoning, logical and relational reasoning, visual and physical
reasoning, and social reasoning about agents and their plans. In each, we show
that LLMs can generate context-sensitive translations that capture
pragmatically-appropriate linguistic meanings, while Bayesian inference with
the generated programs supports coherent and robust commonsense reasoning. We
extend our framework to integrate cognitively-motivated symbolic modules to
provide a unified commonsense thinking interface from language. Finally, we
explore how language can drive the construction of world models themselves
Prejudice in Venus Traces the Roots of Black Female Iconography
This paper aims to verify how a âfreakâ show performer named The Venus Hottentot of the early 1800âs in England and in France, came to symbolize the sexualized view of the black female icon today. My thesis production of Suzan-Lori Parksâ play Venus will demonstrate how Eurocentric prejudice in the colonial era shaped the historical facts that permeated around this South African womanâs life and death. In keeping with the playâs revised Afrocentric perspective on these alleged facts, ideas about directorial concepts for this show will validate how this play is relevant to contemporary artists and audiences through Parksâ elegant storytelling. This potential narrative of victimization, that could easily come off as maudlin, will be proven to require a sardonic political edge in order to succeed. The directorâs challenges and premise, the writerâs background, the playâs roots in truth and fiction, along with production hurdles to overcome will all be discussed
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