Improvising Linguistic Style: Social and Affective Bases for Agent Personality

This paper introduces Linguistic Style Improvisation, a theory and set of algorithms for improvisation of spoken utterances by artificial agents, with applications to interactive story and dialogue systems. We argue that linguistic style is a key aspect of character, and show how speech act representations common in AI can provide abstract representations from which computer characters can improvise. We show that the mechanisms proposed introduce the possibility of socially oriented agents, meet the requirements that lifelike characters be believable, and satisfy particular criteria for improvisation proposed by Hayes-Roth.Comment: 10 pages, uses aaai.sty, lingmacros.sty, psfig.st

A Flaming-Viot Process and Bayesian non Parametric

This paper provides a construction of a Fleming-Viot measure valued diffusion process, for which the transition function is known, by extending recent ideas of Gibbs sampler based Markov processes. In particular, we concentrate on the Chapman-Kolmogorov consistency conditions which allows a simple derivation of such a Fleming-Viot process, once a key, and apparently new combinatorial result for P´olya-urn sequences has been established.Chapman-Kolmogorov; Diffusion process; Dirichlet process; Polyaurn scheme; Population genetics.

More than skills: What can approaches to Digital Literacies learn from Academic Literacies?

Defining digital literacies is challenging because ‘literacies’ has been used in different ways, shifting from its association with the critical engagement with texts to encompass broader definitions relating to skills-based agendas (Lea, 2011). Support for the development of digital literacies in citizens, students and lecturers has over the last decade become a popular debate, with hundreds of digital literacy frameworks developing (for review see All Aboard!, 2015; and Hoechsmann, 2015). Yet, treatment of digital literacies as transferable, discrete sets of skills may not do justice to anyone. The academic literacies approach has developed from similar challenges around teaching text based skills (Lea and Street, 1998; Lea and Street, 2006; Lillis, 2006). Their consideration of the nuanced and complex practices around texts offers a sociological insight into the development of digital literacies. In this article, we contrast an academic literacies approach with JISC’s current thinking around digital capabilities, followed by a discussion of the parallels between Lea and Street’s (1998, 2006) academic literacies model and Bennett’s Digital Practitioner Framework (Bennett, 2014; Sharpe, 2010)

Gibbs sampling for Bayesian non-conjugate and hierarchical models by using auxiliary variables

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74035/1/1467-9868.00179.pd