Call for Papers:

IJCAI 1997 Workshop on

Collaboration, Cooperation and Conflict in Dialogue Systems

August 1997, Nagoya Japan

Contents

  • Submissions
  • Timetable
  • Further Information

    • Introduction

    In recent years, collaboration has become a very important topic in AI research. Work on autonomous cooperative systems has shown the importance of collaboration in different domains: besides collaborating with users in providing requested information and solving their problems, the systems should also be able to collaborate to complete tasks within a group of other specialist intelligent systems that need to work together (as in multi-agent infrastructures, for example). Also, research in natural language dialogue has brought new insights about collaboration: how to establish mutual belief for dialogue (and, consequently, task) fulfillment, as well as how to cooperate to enable successful communication between the conversants.

    Despite a growing interest in the issues involved with collaboration, particularly the communication constraints and tradeoffs required for efficient task fulfillment, there is still relatively little work showing ways of integrating these ideas into operational dialogue systems. This workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss the ideas of collaboration, cooperation and conflict in dialogue management, and exchange experiences developing computational models intended to integrate these aspects into a unified framework.

    We intend to consider different aspects of cooperation and collaboration in dialogue systems and to discuss the related problems specific to dialogue management. The emphasis is on human-human and human-computer communication, and on the ways collaboration is manifested in these situations: how the partners jointly construct dialogue acts, infer non-explicitly expressed intentions, negotiate appropriate references, generate cooperative answers, co-produce utterances, give feedback, help each other in task achievement, etc.

    One of the goals of the workshop is to clarify the notions of cooperation and collaboration in dialogue. These notions are closely related to each other, but likely not the same: cooperativeness is one of the design principles for dialogue systems, but such systems do not necessarily collaborate with the user. To what degree is cooperation necessary for collaboration and how does it appear in dialogue? Cooperation turns into benevolence if the agent attempts to fulfill the partner's goals without questioning their contextual relevance, but this is not necessarily collaboration. On the other hand, if the agents pursue their own goals without considering those of their partners or the joint task, their actions can hardly be described as cooperative or collaborative.

    Collaboration and cooperation are also related to conflict situations where the partners have conflicting goals and they need to negotiate to reach a resolution. In dialogue, various types of conflicts may occur due to misunderstandings, erroneous perception, partial knowledge, false beliefs, etc. How does cooperation/collaboration work in solving conflicts? How are mutual beliefs established to complete the task? What are the mechanisms by which a partner's goals are recognized and joint goals established?

    Also, new reasoning mechanisms are needed to deal with the tentativeness of conclusions. Collaborative dialogues require formal methods and effective techniques for efficient reasoning, context representation and agent modelling. Hence, the workshop welcomes practical work on these issues relating to cooperative/collaborative dialogue systems.

    We primarily seek contributions which discuss one or more of the following issues:

    1. How can we define "collaborative dialogues"? Are all dialogues collaborative? How do corpus studies back up the classification?
    2. What kind of individual commitments are needed for collaboration? How do social settings (roles, acquaintance) affect communication and collaboration? How are these commitments and settings represented in a dialogue model?
    3. What is the role of cooperation in collaborative dialogue? Can collaborative activity include benevolence or uncooperativeness? Does collaboration require sincerity (e.g., can cheating be collaborative)?
    4. How does collaboration contribute to conflict resolution and recovery from misunderstandings? How can costs and benefits of collaboration be measured?
    5. How is collaboration and cooperation related to task performance? What mechanisms are needed to combine collaborative task plans with dialogue contributions?
    6. How can cooperation/collaboration principles and mechanisms be expressed in formal, computational models of communication or interaction? How can these models be implemented?
    7. Is collaboration the main issue to problems in dialogue management? What are the solutions, future research problems?
    One of the aims of the workshop is also collaboration in the sense of joint research activity: to share resources and help the growth of the field by joint activity.

    Participants

    The workshop will be kept small, with a maximum of 40 participants. Preference will be given to active participants selected on the basis of their submitted papers. According to IJCAI rules, all workshop attendees must register for the main conference.

    Workshop format

    The workshop is intended to be a genuinely interactive event with constructive development and exchange of ideas rather than a mini-conference. Ample time will be allowed for commenting on the papers and open group discussion, thus ensuring time for discussions that go beyond ordinary conference-style questions. We also want to encourage participants to present ideas which have the potential for thought-provoking argumentation and constructive development, rather than to aim at a consensus in a particular research direction. The workshop is meant to provide a forum where new ideas and insights can take form via the collaboration of experts with diverse backgrounds.

    This workshop also concerns the balance between theoretically and practically oriented research. While emphasizing the innovative aspect of research, we would also like to point out the importance of practical applications and implemented dialogue systems: applications are good testbeds for evaluating the usefulness and originality of theories and ideas. Given the occasional lack of communication between theorists and system builders, the workshop aims at creating an atmosphere that allows for a productive interaction between these two groups. Demonstration of software would be highly appreciated and could be organized as part of the main IJCAI conference.

    Submissions

    Potential participants are invited to submit extended abstracts on the topics outlined above. Submissions should be no longer than 6 (six) pages exclusive of references, single spaced, and be in line with the IJCAI-style sheet.

    Electronic submissions, in postscript format, should be sent to:
    sadek@lannion.cnet.fr (David Sadek), (for submissions from Asia and Europe)
    or to:
    traum@cs.umd.edu (David Traum) (for submission coming from America and Australia)

    Authors should also send, in plain text, a title page including the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and a short abstract of less than 200 words. Alternatively, three hardcopies can be mailed to the corresponding addresses below. Accepted submissions will be reproduced in the working notes of the workshop which will be distributed to each participant.

    Important dates:

    April 15th 1997 Deadline for submission of papers extended
    May 1 Notification of acceptance
    May 1 Papers due for the working notes
    August 25 (tentative) Workshop

    Organizing Committee

    Programme Committee

    Further information

    Should you have any questions or need additional information on the workshop, please contact any of the organizing committee members by e-mail or at the addresses above.

    Further information on the IJCAI-97 conference, including updated information on hotel and travel information, can be obtained from the IJCAI home page
    Updated information on this workshop and the final papers will be made available via the workshop home page.

    David Traum