2,926 research outputs found
User interface enhancement report
The existing user interfaces to TEMPUS, Plaid, and other systems in the OSDS are fundamentally based on only two modes of communication: alphanumeric commands or data input and grapical interaction. The latter are especially suited to the types of interaction necessary for creating workstation objects with BUILD and with performing body positioning in TEMPUS. Looking toward the future application of TEMPUS, however, the long-term goals of OSDS will include the analysis of extensive tasks in space involving one or more individuals working in concert over a period of time. In this context, the TEMPUS body positioning capability, though extremely useful in creating and validating a small number of particular body positions, will become somewhat tedious to use. The macro facility helps somewhat, since frequently used positions may be easily applied by executing a stored macro. The difference between body positioning and task execution, though subtle, is important. In the case of task execution, the important information at the user's level is what actions are to be performed rather than how the actions are performed. Viewed slightly differently, the what is constant over a set of individuals though the how may vary
Autonomous Reboot: the challenges of artificial moral agency and the ends of Machine Ethics
Ryan Tonkens (2009) has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents (AMAs) satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe - both "rational" and "free" - while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of Machine Ethics to create AMAs that are perfectly, not merely reliably, ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach, who have pushed for the reinvention of traditional ethics in order to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation, and for redoubled efforts toward a comprehensive vision of human ethics to guide machine ethicists on the issue of moral agency. Options thus present themselves: reinterpret traditional ethics in a way that affords a comprehensive account of moral agency inclusive of both artificial and natural agents, âmuddle throughâ regardless, or give up on the possibility. This paper pursues the first option, meets Tonkens' "challenge" and addresses Wallach's concerns through Beaver's proposed means, by "landscaping" traditional moral theory in resolution of the necessary comprehensive and inclusive account that at once draws into question the stated goals of Machine Ethics, itself
Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author
The question motivating this review paper is, how can
computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn-
ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to
link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory,
and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional
question driving research in interactive narrative is, âhow can an in-
teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while
maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?â This question
derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that,
as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency.
Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip-
ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based
on Brechtâs Epic Theatre and Boalâs Theatre of the Oppressed are
reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the
conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question
that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional
question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in-
teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity
Interactive Knowledge Construction in the Collaborative Building of an Encyclopedia
International audienceOne of the major challenges of Applied Artificial Intelligence is to provide environments where high level human activities like learning, constructing theories or performing experiments, are enhanced by Artificial Intelligence technologies. This paper starts with the description of an ambitious project: EnCOrE2. The specific real world EnCOrE scenario, significantly representing a much wider class of potential applicative contexts, is dedicated to the building of an Encyclopedia of Organic Chemistry in the context of Virtual Communities of experts and students. Its description is followed by a brief survey of some major AI questions and propositions in relation with the problems raised by the EnCOrE project. The third part of the paper starts with some definitions of a set of âprimitivesâ for rational actions, and then integrates them in a unified conceptual framework for the interactive construction of knowledge. To end with, we sketch out protocols aimed at guiding both the collaborative construction process and the collaborative learning process in the EnCOrE project.The current major result is the emerging conceptual model supporting interaction between human agents and AI tools integrated in Grid services within a socio-constructivist approach, consisting of cycles of deductions, inductions and abductions upon facts (the shared reality) and concepts (their subjective interpretation) submitted to negotiations, and finally converging to a socially validated consensus
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American callings : humanitarian selfhood in American literature from Reconstruction to the American century
textIn "American Callings" I argue that late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American literature dealing with cross-cultural humanitarianism contains a strand that sought to rectify the potentially oppressive shortcomings of humanitarian practice. The authors whose work I examine--novelists William Dean Howells and Albion Tourgeé, reformer Jane Addams, humorist George Ade, and memoirists Mary Fee and George Freer--grappled in their writing with two reciprocal questions. First, they meditated on how humanitarianism shapes, changes, and constitutes the self. Second, they theorized how increased self-awareness and self-criticism might help the humanitarian actor avoid the pitfalls of humanitarian practice that critics, in their time and ours, have seized upon.
"American Callings" thus challenges three critiques that have been instrumental to American literary studies for decades: critiques of sentimental humanitarianism's complicity in projects of cultural domination, realism's investment in the status quo, and reform's role in maintaining social discipline through surveillance. The dissertation disputes the prevalent assertion that literature dealing with cross-cultural humanitarianism constitutes a sentimental, imperialistic, and ultimately violent discourse. I accomplish this by looking to instances of what Gregory Eiselein (1996) has called "eccentric" reform, efforts articulated from within a culture but in opposition to certain aspects of it. Drawing on narratives of what I call "humanitarian selfhood" in three historical contexts--industrializing urban centers in the North, the South during Reconstruction, and the Philippines during the U.S. occupation--"American Callings" traces an "eccentric" literary genealogy, one that offers up the humanitarian dynamic as a heuristic wherein the humanitarian agent arrives at a new kind of self-understanding by way of wrestling with the questions raised by service to others. The literature written by and about these humanitarians, I suggest, then provides an opportunity for readers to be transformed, as well.Englis
Acoustic classification of Australian frogs for ecosystem survey
Novel bioacoustics signal processing techniques have been developed to classify frog vocalisations in both trophy and field recordings. The research is useful in helping ecologists monitor frog community activity and species richness over long-term. Two major contributions are the construction of novel feature descriptors in the Cepstral domain, and the design of novel classification systems for multiple simultaneously vocalising frog species
Semantic information, autonomous agency, and nonequilibrium statistical physics
Shannon information theory provides various measures of so-called "syntactic
information", which reflect the amount of statistical correlation between
systems. In contrast, the concept of "semantic information" refers to those
correlations which carry significance or "meaning" for a given system. Semantic
information plays an important role in many fields, including biology,
cognitive science, and philosophy, and there has been a long-standing interest
in formulating a broadly applicable and formal theory of semantic information.
In this paper we introduce such a theory. We define semantic information as the
syntactic information that a physical system has about its environment which is
causally necessary for the system to maintain its own existence. "Causal
necessity" is defined in terms of counter-factual interventions which scramble
correlations between the system and its environment, while "maintaining
existence" is defined in terms of the system's ability to keep itself in a low
entropy state. We also use recent results in nonequilibrium statistical physics
to analyze semantic information from a thermodynamic point of view. Our
framework is grounded in the intrinsic dynamics of a system coupled to an
environment, and is applicable to any physical system, living or otherwise. It
leads to formal definitions of several concepts that have been intuitively
understood to be related to semantic information, including "value of
information", "semantic content", and "agency"
From meme to memegraph: The curious case of Pepe the Frog and white nationalism
This thesis explores Pepe the Frog, a comic book character that became a meme, then went mainstream, and then became appropriated by the Alt-Right in support of the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Users in the Internet have declared this meme a god, others have claimed it as a piece of crypto-art, while White Nationalists use it to propagate their ideology. I draw on McGeeâs notion of the ideograph to argue that, in a networked environment characterized by limited attention and heightened speed of circulation, memes have the capacity to ideologically condense publics. This gives rise to what I label the memegraph. The memegraph accounts for the birth, evolution, and constitution of publics around nascent, memetic ideographs. By inspecting the role of time and attention in memetic media, and examining the circulation of verbal and visual arguments, this thesis conceptualizes the role of memetic media in constituting and mobilizing publics
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