Sea Crest Convention Center, North Falmouth, MA, November 2-4, 2001
The question is not whether intelligent machines can have emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.Minsky, The Society of Mind
For some researchers, emotions come into play as soon as (and only when) we consider individuals in interaction with their social environment. In any case, and regardless whether we are willing to accept that emotions evolved as a communication tool, emotions and their expression are an essential element in social interactions, where they play many different roles: signaling, directing attention, motivating interactions, situation assessment, construction of self- and other's image, expectation formation, intersubjectivity, etc. Some students see emotions at the very heart of what being social means. This idea, also held by folk psychology views, leads somehow to a Gordian knot: are we social because we have emotions, or do we have emotions because we are a highly social species? Should we rather talk of "co-evolution" of emotions and sociality?
In the last years, the AI community has echoed the importance of emotions in social interactions in a growing number of applications: expressive and social robots, animated and storytelling characters with "feelings", expressive interfaces, systems for human-computer emotional interaction, etc. This symposium proposes a framework where researchers can exchange ideas and reflect on the motivations, scientific grounds, and practical consequences of these efforts. It aims at doing so in a multi-disciplinary environment, bringing together researchers from different communities concerned with the study of emotions and of social intelligence.
The symposium investigates the role of emotions in grounding inter-personal behaviors and social cognition, from the perspective of both, the individual and the collectivity. The main focus is on natural and artificial agents (in all sorts of embodiments) in social environments, and on the possibilities for cross-fertilization between research in artificial emotions and studies of emotions in animals and humans. Contributions on emotions in individual agents are also welcomed, but authors should state how their work is relevant from the perspective of social interactions and cognition.
Submissions are sought regarding, among others, the following issues, in artificial or in biological systems embedded in a social environment:
Contributions from fields other than AI, ALife, and robotics (e.g., arts, biology, ethology, humanities, neurosciencies, philosophy, psychology, social sciences), are also strongly encouraged.
Interaction among participants will be fostered, and ample time will
be devoted to discussions. Presentations will be short and organized
around particular topics. Poster sessions will allow for more detailed
and technical discussions.
Cynthia Breazeal, MIT, USA
Lola D. Cañamero (Chair), University of Hertfordshire, UK
Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Philippe Gaussier, ENSEA, France
Eva Hudlicka, Psychometrix, USA
Susanne Kaiser, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Andrew Ortony, Northwestern University, USA
Paolo Petta, OEFAI, Austria
Rosalind Picard, MIT, USA
Potential participants who would wish to present their work at the symposium should submit a short paper (up to 5000 words) or extended abstract (1500 to 2500 words). Contributions should describe work in progress, completed work, positions, or give insight into the current state or perspectives of research in artificial, animal, or human emotions, with particular emphasis on the social aspects of emotions. Other potential participants should send a statement of interest (1 to 2 pages), briefly describing their work and their interest in the symposium. All submissions must include: title, author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), mailing and electronic addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Some of the participants will be asked to contribute a paper to the final working notes. All participants will be invited to bring a poster presenting their work.
Please send your contributions by e-mail (ASCII or URL from which your
contribution can be downloaded are preferred; otherwise attached PDF,
UNIX-compatible postscript, or RTF file), to the symposium chair:
Lola Cañamero
Adaptive Systems Research Group
Dept. od Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9AB, UK
E-mail: L.Canamero@herts.ac.uk (Mail me)
Phone: +44-(0)1707-284308
Fax: +44-(0)1707-284303
The symposium will consist of working groups, debate and presentation sessions, keynote talks, posters, demos, and a final open discussion.
About one month before the symposium starts, participants will be asked to form working groups to discuss by e-mail and come up with a list of issues that should be addressed during the symposium, at a working group session scheduled the second day. One or two persons will coordinate each working group. Participants should prepare their presentations trying to address these topics from the perspective of their own work, rather than a mere description of their contributed paper.
The first two days (Nov. 2 and 3) will mainly consist of sessions organized around some of the topics proposed above, or others that could emerge from the contributions of the participants. Each session will be assigned a chairperson, and one or two discussants. Presentation sessions (one and a half hour each) will consist of full presentations (about 20 minutes, including questions), short presentations ("poster spotlights", 5 minutes), and an open discussion. After the presentations, each session will end by an open discussion of 20-30 minutes. A discussion session in the form of a debate (one hour and a half) will be organized on the first or the second day.
Keynote talks are also planned, of around 45 minutes each, one of them by an expert on emotions in artificial systems, and another one by an expert on emotions in natural systems.
In addition, poster displays and system demonstrations that can also be attended by participants to other symposia will be scheduled the first day (1 hour to 1 hour and a half). All the participants to the symposium will be invited to contribute a poster and give a demo if they would wish to do so. Ideally, posters should be on display for the duration of the symposium so that participants can discuss around posters also during coffee breaks.
The last day (Nov. 3) will be split in two sessions. Either a keynote
talk or a presentation session will be scheduled for the first half
of the morning. The last session will start by a short summary of the
results of the working groups by the coordinator of each group (5 to
10 minutes each). The last part will be a general, open discussion to
assess the outcomes of the symposium, discuss about the state of
research in the field, and think of a sort of research program for the
coming years.
Last modified: June 11, 2001
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