Animation From Instructions

We believe that computer animation in the form of narrated animated simulations can provide an engaging, effective and flexible medium for instructing agents in the performance of tasks. However, we argue that the only way to achieve the kind of flexibility needed to instruct agents of varying capabilities to perform tasks with varying demands in work places of varying layout is to drive both animation and narration from a common representation that embodies the same conceptualization of tasks and actions as Natural Language itself. To this end, we are exploring the use of Natural Language instructions to drive animated simulations. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between instructions and behavior that underlie our work and the overall structure of our system. We then describe in some what more detail three aspects of the system - the representation used by the Simulator, the operation of the Simulator and the Motion Generators used in the system

Dziadziu: A Walk with my grandfather

None provided

AI & IP Innovation & Creativity in an Age of Accelerated Change, 52 Akron L. Rev. 813 (2018)

From a glimmer in the eye of a Victorian woman ahead of her time, AI has become a cornerstone of innovation that “will be the defining technology of our time.” Around 2016, the convergence of computing power, funding, data, and open-source platforms tipped us into an AIdriven 4IR. AI can make a difference in accelerating disruptive innovation by bringing a data-driven approach to invention and creation. To do so, the law must embrace change and innovation as an imperative in a journey towards an ever-shifting horizon. In the creative arts, the work for hire doctrine provides a pragmatic legal vehicle for interests to vest and negotiated by the commercial interests best placed to encourage investment in both the technology and its downstream uses. Like humangenerated work, AI-generated work is an amalgam of mimicry mined from our own learning and experience. The training data it draws upon, both for expressive and non-expressive sues, are merely grist for AI’s mill. Consequently, fair use must be liberally applied to prevent holdup by copyright owners and stifle transformative uses enabled by AI. AI can also be used to decipher complex copyright infringement cases such as those involving musical compositions. In the technological arts, the controversy will revolve around who owns innovative breakthroughs primarily or totally attributed to AI. How should these breakthroughs affect the regard for the notion of PHOSITA? How does AI change the equation when it comes to infringement? And how can AI help save the patent system from obsolescence? In these, AI both enables and challenges how we reward individuals whose ingenuity, industry, and determination overcame the frailty of the human condition to offer us inventions that make our lives more efficient and pleasurable. It will take a clear-eyed view to ensure that copyright and patent laws do not impede the very progress they were designed to promote

2011 GREAT Day Program

SUNY Geneseo’s Fifth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1005/thumbnail.jp

An analysis of radio phone-ins

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Analyse von Phone-In Sendungen am Beispiel der „FM4 Morning Show“. Als Grundlage dieser Arbeit dient ein Korpus von 11 Gesprächen, zwischen Stuart Freeman (SF), dem Moderator der „FM4 Morning Show“ und dem jeweiligen Kandidaten. Diese Interaktionen, welche täglich live ausgestrahlt werden, wurden sorgfältig transkribiert und anschließend analysiert. Es wird besonders auf die Verlaufsform sowie die strukturelle Organisation des Gesprächs eingegangen und typische Phasen des Gesprächs werden analysiert. Dabei wird ein Augenmerk auf die Gesprächseröffnung und –beendigung gelegt. Aus den Rahmenbedingungen und der Struktur der Phone-in Sendung ergibt sich ein spezifisches Machtverhältnis zwischen den Sprechern, welches die Rollenverteilung im Gespräch beeinflusst. Daher werden in dieser Arbeit verschiedene Typen von Sprechern und Hörern unterschieden und ihre Aufgaben und Aktivitäten, wie zum Beispiel die Übernahme und Aufrechterhaltung des Gesprächs, untersucht. Als letzter Punkt wird wegen dem mehrsprachigen Format des Senders auf spezielle Aspekte der „native - non-native communication“ (NS-NNS) eingegangen.The present paper seeks to contribute to the linguistic description of mediated native-non-native conversation. This study examines talk on an Austrian multilingual radio station and explores radio talk as a form of institutional or rather semi-institutional discourse. The sequential organization of phone-ins is explored using the methodology of Conversation Analysis. Furthermore the management of participation in calls to a FM4 radio phone-in program is analyzed and participatory roles of the host, the audience and the caller are examined. In this context the role of the speaker and the listener as well as a variety of activities which are performed by them, such as turn taking, backchanneling or politeness phenomena are outlined. The paper concludes with a chapter in which aspects about the multilingual setting in which the phone-ins are conducted are discussed. It includes the use of more than one linguistic variety within the same conversation, miscommunication and strategies to overcome potential problems

AI & IP Innovation & Creativity in an Age of Accelerated Change

From a glimmer in the eye of a Victorian woman ahead of her time, AI has become a cornerstone of innovation that “will be the defining technology of our time.” Around 2016, the convergence of computing power, funding, data, and open-source platforms tipped us into an AI-driven 4IR. AI can make a difference in accelerating disruptive innovation by bringing a data-driven approach to invention and creation. To do so, the law must embrace change and innovation as an imperative in a journey towards an ever-shifting horizon. In the creative arts, the work for hire doctrine provides a pragmatic legal vehicle for interests to vest and negotiated by the commercial interests best placed to encourage investment in both the technology and its downstream uses. Like human-generated work, AI-generated work is an amalgam of mimicry mined from our own learning and experience. The training data it draws upon, both for expressive and non-expressive sues, are merely grist for AI’s mill. Consequently, fair use must be liberally applied to prevent holdup by copyright owners and stifle transformative uses enabled by AI. AI can also be used to decipher complex copyright infringement cases such as those involving musical compositions. In the technological arts, the controversy will revolve around who owns innovative breakthroughs primarily or totally attributed to AI. How should these breakthroughs affect the regard for the notion of PHOSITA? How does AI change the equation when it comes to infringement? And how can AI help save the patent system from obsolescence? In these, AI both enables and challenges how we reward individuals whose ingenuity, industry, and determination overcame the frailty of the human condition to offer us inventions that make our lives more efficient and pleasurable. It will take a clear-eyed view to ensure that copyright and patent laws do not impede the very progress they were designed to promote

2007 GREAT Day Program

SUNY Geneseo’s First Annual G.R.E.A.T. Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1001/thumbnail.jp

Achieving mutual engagement in ELT classroom interaction : a study of participation in the opening and closing practices of circle time

IPhD ThesisMost studies investigating classroom participation seek an answer for enquiries to such issues as whether students receive adequate opportunities to access interaction and, if so, in what capacity and in what roles. Recently, Conversation Analytic (CA) studies have contributed to the existing body of knowledge on classroom participation by addressing the question of how teachers and students organise such participation in L2 classrooms. However, most of these studies have approached participation in contexts where participation rights are established by the teacher and met by students. In contrast, this study is concerned more with the organisation of participation in EFL classrooms where such conditions do not apply. That is, in the context of this study, teachers need to perform additional interactional practices to encourage participation. The analyses in this study focus on the opening and closing practices of one recurring teacher-led activity in the data—Circle Time (CT). The data come from audiovisual recordings of teacher-student cohort interaction occurring in ‘Fundamental English Listening-Speaking’ (FELS) classes at a Thai university. To examine the organisation of participation, a collection of 30 examples of CT openings and 24 examples of CT closings were made and CA methodology was used in the analysis. CA procedures, including the organisation of sequence, of multimodalities, and of topic, were employed as analytic tools to explicate the classroom participation that participants jointly construct through their verbal behaviour and embodied actions. The findings demonstrate that dedicated openings are the norm for CT openings, and are formed from two action sequences: 1) locating topic for participation, and 2) establishing topic-as-action. The former manifests a clear framework of participation while the latter enhances the participants’ readiness to participate more actively. Regarding CT closings, a typical form of CT closing, termed here dedicated closings, comprise three sequences of action: 1) disengaging from interaction with individual students, 2) gradually bonding contributions and simultaneously connecting participants into one association, and 3) moving out of CT talk. Furthermore, a microanalysis of opening and closing actions illustrates that teachers employ a variety of extra interactional resources, including embodied conducts, turn-design and various techniques of topic development. ii These various types of interactional work are used to establish and maintain multiparty interaction and generate dynamic participation roles among the participants. By participating in CT dedicated opening and closing, students are observed to have more and more opportunities to establish mutual attention, negotiate mutual understanding, and, above all, develop interpersonal relations, or so-called rapport. These three components are evidently oriented to by experienced EFL teachers to achieve mutual engagement of students involved in teacher-led classroom interaction. The main contribution of the study is an enhanced understanding of how participation ‘gets done’ in a CT context where bidding for turns is normally not present. In addition, by using a micro-analytic approach, the study demonstrates how embodied mutual engagement is accomplished in ELT classroom interaction.Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities, Kasetsart University, for granting me a partial scholarshi

Social and epistemological bases of technology transfer: The case of artificial intelligence

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis addresses a problem in the literature on technology transfer of understanding the local appropriation of knowledge. Based on interpretive and analytic traditions developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ethnomethodology, I conceptualise technology transfer as involving communication between discursive communities. I develop the idea of 'performance of community' to argue that explanations of research and technology, and readings of those explanations, are sites for the elaboration of the identity of a discursive community. I explore this approach through a case study in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). I focus on what I call 'explanatory practices', that is practices of describing, identifying and explaining Al, and trace the differences in these practices, according to location, context and audience. The novelty of my thesis is to show the pervasiveness of performance of community within these explanatory practices, through showing the differences in the claimed identity and significance of Al, associated with different locations, contexts and audiences. I draw out some of the implications of my approach by counterposing it to a theory of technology transfer as the passing of neutral units of information, which I argue is implicit in a complaint made by Al vendors that the Al marketplace had been damaged by overselling or hype. In particular, I show that disclaimers of hype (more than the perpetration of it) had always been associated with the marketing of Al. More generally, my claim is that it is politically important to understand that neutral information is not available even as an ultimate standard, and that the local appropriation of knowledge is not an aberration to be controlled, but a component of both successful and unsuccessful communication between discursive communities