All posts by : Bertie Müller

The Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with the AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, UK) is pleased to announce the next seminar of its Spotlight Seminars on AI initiative:

January 30 – 5:00 P.M. (CET)

Title: Evaluating Commonsense Reasoning in Large Language Models

Speaker: Anthony Cohn, University of Leeds, UK

Streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/@AixiaIt/streams

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the ability of LLMs to perform commonsense reasoning, particularly with regard to spatial reasoning. Across a wide range of LLMs, although they show abilities rather better than chance, they still struggle with many questions and tasks, for example when reasoning about directions, or topological relations. I will also discuss issues arising from the fact that some of the most powerful language models currently are proprietary systems, accessible only via (typically restrictive) web or software programming interfaces. This is the Language-Models-as-a-Service (LMaaS) paradigm. In contrast with scenarios where full model access is available, as in the case of open-source models, such closed-off language models present specific challenges for evaluating, benchmarking, and testing them.

Bio: Anthony (Tony) Cohn is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School of Computer Science, University of Leeds. His current research interests range from theoretical work on spatial calculi (receiving a KR test-of-time classic paper award in 2020) and spatial ontologies, to cognitive vision, modelling spatial information in the hippocampus, and Decision Support Systems, particularly for the built environment, as well as robotics. He is Foundation Models lead at the Alan Turing Institute where he is conducting research on evaluating the capabilities of large language models, in particular with respect to commonsense reasoning, and is also a co-investigator on a project combining LLMs and probabilistic answer set programming. He is Editor-in-Chief of Spatial Cognition and Computation and was previously Editor-in-chief of the AI journal. He has previously been President of IJCAI, EurAI, KR inc, and AISB. He is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A Simon Cognitive Systems Prize, and is also (uniquely) the recipient of Distinguished Service Awards from the three main international AI societies: IJCAI, AAAI and EurAI, as well as from KR Inc. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Learned Society of Wales, the AI societies AAAI, AISB, EurAI and AAIA, as well as the CORE Academy (International Core Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and the International AI Industry Alliance.

The joint AI*IA/AISB Committee of the Spotlight Seminars on AI,

Giuseppe De Giacomo

Floriana Grasso

Antonio Lieto

Bertie Müller

Luciano Serafini

Further information on this and upcoming talks in the Winter series can be found at https://aixia.it/en/incontri/spotlight-seminars-on-ai-winter-2025/

The Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with the AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, UK) is pleased to announce the next seminar of its Spotlight Seminars on AI initiative:

30 June – 4:00PM (BST)
Title: Symbolic Reasoning for Large Language Models
Speaker: Guy Van den Broeck, UCLA, USA

Link Streaming (Live section): https://www.youtube.com/c/AixiaIt

Many expect that AI will solve society’s problems by simply being more intelligent than we are. Implicit in this bullish perspective is the assumption that AI will naturally learn to reason from data: that it can form trains of thought that “make sense”, similar to how a human expert might reason about a case, or more formally, how a mathematician might prove a theorem. This talk will investigate the question whether this behavior can be learned from data, and how we can design the next generation of AI techniques that can achieve such capabilities. It will focus on neurosymbolic reasoning for large language models, both at training and generation time, using probabilistic circuits as the architecture that bridges learning and reasoning.
Bio: Guy Van den Broeck is an Associate Professor and Samueli Fellow at UCLA, in the Computer Science Department, where he directs the StarAI lab. His research interests are in Machine Learning, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and Artificial Intelligence in general. His papers have been recognized with awards from key conferences such as AAAI, UAI, KR, and OOPSLA. Guy is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Fellowship, and the IJCAI-19 Computers and Thought Award.

The joint AI*IA/AISB Committee of the Spotlight Seminars on AI,

Giuseppe De Giacomo
Floriana Grasso
Antonio Lieto
Bertie Muller
Luciano Serafini

When: 13-14 April 2023

Where: Swansea, Wales, UK

The AISB Convention is a flourishing annual conference that thrives from an interdisciplinary audience and facilitates discourse amongst a diverse set of researchers and research cultures. Attendance will be free for AISB members.

The 2023 convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) will be held as a hybrid in-person and online event 13-14 April 2023. The convention will consist of several tracks based on popular symposia of previous AISB conventions instead of separately organised symposia. This decision was made to streamline the processes involved in organising the convention in the context of reduced timeframes due to COVID-19 disruptions from the past years and the longer-term changes this has brought about for the reseach community. In addition to the thematic tracks, we will run a general track that can accommodate papers on any topic related to AI.

Please see below for a list of tracks for 2023.

AI & Games (AIG)

This track focuses on the application of artificial intelligence or intelligent-like techniques, frameworks and theories to the creation of intelligent games.
AI can be used in any manner suitable in the game, from the algorithm to making the game more engaging, personalised, and/or interactive.
The following non-exhaustive list of research and practice shows potential submission topics:

• Use of AI techniques (e.g. planning, learning, evolution etc.)
• Design and engineering of AI components
• Procedural content generation
• Intelligent or adaptive player interaction
• Game analytics
• Data-driven player modelling
• Agent decision making systems
• Intelligent agents
• Environmental simulations
• Interactive narrative generation
• Intelligent narrative technologies
• Experimental AI
• Serious games & gamification

AI Ethics (AIE)

Recent years have seen an increased awareness of ethical issues stemming from a lack of responsibility in the design and deployment of AI- and data-driven technology systems. This track explores solutions to these issues. Some topics of interest:

• Algorithmic fairness
• Diversity
• Data governance
• Accountability
• Data privacy
• AI ethics principles
• Implementing ethical reasoning
• AI regulation
• Explainable AI

Computational Creativity (CC)

Computational creativity is continuing to attract researchers from both arts and science backgrounds. Philosophers, cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and artists have all contributed to and enriched the literature.
Many argue a machine is creative if it simulates or replicates human creativity (e.g. evaluation of AI systems via a Turing-style test), while others have conceived of computational creativity as an inherently different discipline, where computer generated (art)work should not be judged on the same terms, i.e. being necessarily producible by a human artist, or having similar attributes, etc.
More general topics of interest for this symposium include, but are not limited to:

• Novel systems and theories in computational creativity, in any domain, e.g. drawing and painting, music, storytelling, poetry, conversation, games, etc.
• The evaluation of computational creative systems, processes and artefacts
• Theory of computational aesthetics
• Representational issues in creativity, including visual and perceptual representations
• Social aspects of computational creativity, and intellectual property issues
• Creative autonomy and constraint
• Computational appreciation of artefacts, including human artwork

Philosophy & AI (AIP)

With its origins in the Philosophy after AI symposium from previous AISB Conventions, this track sets out to investigate the philosophical and linguistic perspectives of the research paths which deal with language as it is conceived by AI. Contributions to a general philosophical discourse on AI are also welcome.
We invite talks on the following (but not exclusively) topics:

• Linguistics and AI;
• AI research on language;
• Learning, creativity and AI;
• Meaning and AI;
• Creativity, machine-learning and language;
• Robots and communication;
• Truth, post-truth and AI;
• Social media, devices and human sociality.

General Track (GT)

This track accommodates AI research that does not align with any of the other special tracks. Possible topics include:

• Agents and multi-agent systems
• Agent-based social simulation
• Verification of AI systems
• Combining learning and reasoning
• Argumentation
• AI & cyber security
• Natural language processing
• Knowledge representation

Submission

Submissions to any of the tracks are in the form of extended abstracts and are subject to peer review. Proceedings will then accommodate final papers as short or regular papers. These are limited to the following page restrictions.

• Extended abstract (max. 2 pages)
• Short paper (max. 4 pages)
• Regular paper (max. 8 pages )

Web site and submission links will be available from mid-January 2023.

Important Dates

• Submission: 6 March 2023
• Notification of acceptance: 27 March 2023
• Camera-ready paper: 3 April 2023

Program Committee

General Chair: Bertie Müller (Swansea University)

Track Chairs: TBA

• Track AIG:
• Track AIE:
• Track CC:
• Track AIP:
• Track GT: