23,749 research outputs found
The Mechanics of Embodiment: A Dialogue on Embodiment and Computational Modeling
Embodied theories are increasingly challenging traditional views of cognition by arguing that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences, and processed at this sensorimotor level, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in an amodal conceptual system. Given the established empirical foundation, and the relatively underspecified theories to date, many researchers are extremely interested in embodied cognition but are clamouring for more mechanistic implementations. What is needed at this stage is a push toward explicit computational models that implement sensory-motor grounding as intrinsic to cognitive processes. In this article, six authors from varying backgrounds and approaches address issues concerning the construction of embodied computational models, and illustrate what they view as the critical current and next steps toward mechanistic theories of embodiment. The first part has the form of a dialogue between two fictional characters: Ernest, the �experimenter�, and Mary, the �computational modeller�. The dialogue consists of an interactive sequence of questions, requests for clarification, challenges, and (tentative) answers, and touches the most important aspects of grounded theories that should inform computational modeling and, conversely, the impact that computational modeling could have on embodied theories. The second part of the article discusses the most important open challenges for embodied computational modelling
Dual Attention Networks for Visual Reference Resolution in Visual Dialog
Visual dialog (VisDial) is a task which requires an AI agent to answer a
series of questions grounded in an image. Unlike in visual question answering
(VQA), the series of questions should be able to capture a temporal context
from a dialog history and exploit visually-grounded information. A problem
called visual reference resolution involves these challenges, requiring the
agent to resolve ambiguous references in a given question and find the
references in a given image. In this paper, we propose Dual Attention Networks
(DAN) for visual reference resolution. DAN consists of two kinds of attention
networks, REFER and FIND. Specifically, REFER module learns latent
relationships between a given question and a dialog history by employing a
self-attention mechanism. FIND module takes image features and reference-aware
representations (i.e., the output of REFER module) as input, and performs
visual grounding via bottom-up attention mechanism. We qualitatively and
quantitatively evaluate our model on VisDial v1.0 and v0.9 datasets, showing
that DAN outperforms the previous state-of-the-art model by a significant
margin.Comment: EMNLP 201
Emergence of Grounded Compositional Language in Multi-Agent Populations
By capturing statistical patterns in large corpora, machine learning has
enabled significant advances in natural language processing, including in
machine translation, question answering, and sentiment analysis. However, for
agents to intelligently interact with humans, simply capturing the statistical
patterns is insufficient. In this paper we investigate if, and how, grounded
compositional language can emerge as a means to achieve goals in multi-agent
populations. Towards this end, we propose a multi-agent learning environment
and learning methods that bring about emergence of a basic compositional
language. This language is represented as streams of abstract discrete symbols
uttered by agents over time, but nonetheless has a coherent structure that
possesses a defined vocabulary and syntax. We also observe emergence of
non-verbal communication such as pointing and guiding when language
communication is unavailable
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