AAAI'02 Workshop on Meaning Negotiation (fwd)

Thought this might be of interest to some folk here.

Dan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 19:44:22 -0400
From: Paolo Bouquet <bouquet@cs.unitn.it>
Reply-To: Inductive Learning Group <INDUCTIVE@LISTSERV.UNB.CA>
To: INDUCTIVE@LISTSERV.UNB.CA
Subject: AAAI'02 Workshop on Meaning Negotiation
Resent-Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 23:53:47 +0000
Resent-From: owner-inductive@LISTSERV.UNB.CA
Resent-Subject: AAAI'02 Workshop on Meaning Negotiation

Please, distribute to anyone may be interested. Apologies of you
receive multiple copies of the Call.

-------------------------

                               MeaN-2002
                          AAAI-02 Workshop on

                          MEANING NEGOTIATION
                          ===================

                        held in conjunction with
          the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
                               (AAAI-02)

                  http://boogie.cs.unitn.it/AAAI-02-MN/

                                July 28, 2002
                         Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

  The development of distributed applications over large networks of
computers raises the issue of semantic interoperability between
autonomously developed sources of information or service
providers. The problem seems especially critical in applications like
semantic web, knowledge management, web-services, marketplaces,
personal digital assistants, mobile applications.

  A common strategy for dealing with semantic interoperability is to
create large, shared conceptual schemas (often called ontologies) that
are then used as a common reference for agents using autonomous (and
typically heterogeneous) conceptualizations. Shared conceptualizations
are supposed to play the role that the reference to a common world of
objects and facts plays in human communication. However, if the
reference to a common world does not always guarantee the success of
communication (i.e., communication free of ambiguities and
misunderstandings), the problem gets even worse when we try to replace
the common world with an abstract structure (e.g., a shared ontology),
which - being a linguistic structure - is by definition compatible
with many different interpretations.

  The aim of the workshop is to investigate an alternative approach to
semantic interoperability based on MEANING NEGOTIATION (MN). The idea
of MN is that any real-world approach to semantic interoperability
between autonomous entities (namely entities that cannot assess
semantic problems by "looking into each other's head", like humans or
software agents) should involve (among other things) a social process
of negotiating an agreement on the content (semantics) and the
speaker's intention (pragmatics) of a communication. As a simple
example, imagine that you ask a travel agent in Miami information
about hotels in Venice. In the first place, the agent will try to
establish which Venice you are talking about (e.g., Venice in Florida
or Venice in Italy?), which is the semantics, and then the purpose of
your trip (e.g., leisure or business), the dates (e.g., summer or
winter), the price range (e.g., cheap or expensive), which is the
intention. After this negotiation phase (in this case, based on
questions and answers), the travel agent will be able to provide
meaningful suggestions. Other forms of MN may involve: existence (do
black holes exist?); appropriateness of a classification (is the
attack to the Twin Towers to be classified as a "terrorist attack" or
as a "war declaration"?); relationships between concepts (is
"artificial intelligence" a sub topic of "computer science" or
"psychology"?); ambiguity (under what conditions "bug" and "error" can
be treated as synonyms?); and so on.

  The problem of meaning negotiation can be addressed from many
different perspectives, using different conceptual and technological
tools, and with different motivations in mind. We invite contributions
from a variety of areas, including knowledge representation,
multi-agent systems, databases, natural language processing, machine
learning, game theory, epistemology, philosophy of language, cognitive
science, psychology, sociology, organization and management sciences.

Topics
------

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  * formal, computational, game-theoretic, cognitive, epistemological,
    social models of MN;
  * multi-agent communication languages and protocols;
  * role of mental attitudes (e.g., beliefs, intentions);
  * semantic interoperability;
  * ontology integration/mapping;
  * integration/matching of structured and semi-structured data;
  * context-based approaches to MN;
  * natural language processing techniques for MN;
  * coordination/cooperation strategies for MN;
  * innovative scenarios for MN (e.g., Semantic Web, Knowledge
    Management, E-business, Marketplaces, Personal Digital Assistants,
    mobile applications)
  * business cases.

Format of the workshop
----------------------

Since the workshop is trying to establish a new interdisciplinary
approach, time will be allowed both for paper presentations and
discussion/brainstorming.

Attendance
----------

Oral presentations will be selected from the papers submitted to the
organizers. The selected paper will be included in the workshop
working notes.

Criteria for acceptance include: relevance to the topic, significance
of the contribution, inter-disciplinarity, presentation of interesting
applications, accessibility to a multi-disciplinary audience. POSITION
or FOUNDATIONAL papers are also very welcome.


Submission requirements
-----------------------

We encourage submissions from researchers and practitioners in
academia, industry, government, and consulting. Students, researchers
and practitioners are invited to submit extended abstracts (max. 4
pages) describing original, novel, and inspirational work. Accepted
formats are Postscript and PDF. The abstracts will be reviewed by an
international group of researchers and practitioners.  Submissions
should be sent by e-mail to Paolo Bouquet (bouquet@cs.unitn.it).

Important Dates
---------------

March 15, 2002: Deadline for WS submissions
April 26, 2002: Notification of acceptance to authors
May 12, 2002:   Deadline for camera-ready workshop notes and other
                information
July 28, 2002:  workshop on Meaning Negotiation


Workshop Committee
------------------

Paolo Bouquet
  Department of Information and Communication Technologies
    and
  Cognitive Science Laboratory
  University of Trento (Italy)
  E-mail: bouquet@cs.unitn.it
  Phone: +39-0461-882135   Fax: +39-0461-882124
Frank van Harmelen
  Division of Mathematics and Computer Science
  Vrije Universiteit (the Netherlands)
  E-mail: Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl
Fausto Giunchiglia
  Department of Information and Communication Technologies
  University of Trento (Italy)
  E-mail: fausto.giunchiglia@ict.unitn.it
Deborah McGuinness
  Knowledge Systems Laboratory
  Stanford University (California, USA)
  E-mail: dlm@ksl.stanford.edu
John Mylopoulos
  Department of Computer Science
  University of Toronto (Canada)
  E-mail: jm@cs.toronto.edu
Mike Papazoglou
  INFOLAB
  Tilburg University  (the Netherlands)
  E-mail: mikep@kub.nl
Massimo Warglien
  Dipartimento di Economia e Direzione Aziendale
  University of Venice (Italy)
    and
  Cognitive Science Laboratory
  University of Trento
  E-mail: warglien@unive.it

--
=====================================================
*  Paolo Bouquet   http://www.cs.unitn.it/~bouquet/ *
*  University of Trento - Dept. of Computer Science *
*  Via Inama, 5 - I-38100 Trento                    *
*  Phone: +39 0461 882135 - Fax: +39 0461 882124    *
=====================================================