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IDEA – Interdisciplinary Design of Emotion Sensitive Agents - International Workshop co-located with AAMAS 2023

Description

The Interdisciplinary Design of Emotion Sensitive Agents (IDEA) workshop is a one full-day workshop organized within the AAMAS2023 conference (Tuesday, 30 May, London, United Kingdom).

Emotion Sensitive Agents (ESA), i.e. agents equipped with emotional sensitivity, may it be for accounting for (human-centered) or replicating (human-like) emotion, are an uprising interest topic in agent and multiagent design and applications. Understanding the theory and technique for designing such agents and assessing their impact on individuals and society inherently require an interdisciplinary scrutiny, from grounding ESA models in, for example, psychology-based background, to developing solid validation methodologies and assessing the consequences of such systems in larger socio-technical frames.

The IDEA Workshop is planned to create an arena for facilitating interactions and crossing profiles and ideas between participants across multiple horizons. While academics from the AAMAS community are primarily expected, we want this event to bolster insights from other perspectives, in particular academics from other disciplines, as well as businesses and regulatory bodies. We intend to create: 1) a safe space, for network creation, through engaging with each other, sharing feedback and initiating collaborations; for growing a body of knowledge, through understanding of the feasibility and prospects of ESA, developing an understanding of the field, and laying foundations for later work (e.g. conceptual foundations of computational models); and 2) a strategic space, for further establishment and consolidation of interdisciplinary ESA research.


Topics

We welcome all submissions dedicated to study the design of ESA (or some of its facets) along all steps of the design chain: theories, models, implementations, validation, applications, and impact (ethical, social, legal, economic, cultural etc.). Submissions can have any disciplinary origin (e.g. computer science, psychology, social sciences, critical studies). The only key requirement is the integration of an orientation towards including insights from several disciplines.

IDEA is intended to be a place of exchange for fostering personal learning and creating networks, as well as for establishing (e.g. theoretical, conceptual, methodological) ideas that are necessary for moving a study from a workshop to a conference. As such, provocative ideas, works in progress, scrutiny of existing models, description of original applications, as well as conceptual and methodological foundations (which may be difficult to develop in disciplinary conferences), are welcome.

(Non-exhaustive!) relevant tracks include:

  • Technical advancement of ESA
    • Enablers of computational models (e.g. structured theoretical frameworks, review of schools of psychology)
    • Human-like ESA design
    • Human-centered ESA design
    • Computational models and implementations of ESA
    • Design and deployment methodologies
    • ESA development tools
    • Standards and/or guidelines for ESA design
  • Methodological advancement of ESA research
    • Fundamental theoretical underpinnings and challenges of ESA research
    • Research methodologies
    • Validation methodologies
    • Methods for interdisciplinary ESA research
    • Participatory methodologies
    • Tracks for future research
  • ESA and society
    • Assessment of a case-study (e.g. user experiments, organizational impact)
    • Assessment of technological frameworks
    • Environmental, social, legal, ethical or cultural etc. considerations
    • ESA and social simulation
    • ESA and responsible and trustworthy AI design
    • Narratives and cultural expressions of ESA
    • Futures of ESA
  • Applications of ESA
    • Detailed application example(s) of ESA
    • Original applications of ESA (e.g. arts, literature)
    • Teaching ESA
    • Application areas of ESA
    • Risks and opportunities of ESA technologies


Submission guidelines and review process

Contributions are to be submitted by the 14th of February 2023, end of the day anywhere on Earth, on EasyChair (submission link). Submissions are limited to 12 pages (including references, excluding annexes) and must follow the Springer LNCS style. Shorter papers are also welcome.

All contributions will follow a first screening by the organising committee, for compliance with basic scientific standards. Submissions passing this first screening will be peer-reviewed by at least two independent Programme Committee members ("double-blind") and these reviews will be screened by the organising committee. The accepted papers will have to be revised and resubmitted. The revised and resubmitted papers will be screened by the workshop organizers. At least one author of each accepted submission must register for the workshop and present the work.

The evaluation criteria of contributions include:

  • scientific soundness
  • methodological robustness
  • connection to previous relevant research
  • importance to the domain of modelling emotion sensitive AI
  • clarity of the exposition
  • degree of interdisciplinarity (i.e. integration of elements from other disciplines)
  • degree of grounding in psychology-approaches (if relevant)
  • novelty (non-critical to acceptance decision)


Dates and deadlines

  • February 24, 2023: Deadline for submission of contributions to workshop
  • March 20, 2023: Paper acceptance notification
  • May 30, 2023: IDEA workshop (at least one author has to be present)


Publication

The best two papers of the IDEA Workshop will be published within the AAMAS conference (Springer issue*). These papers will be chosen by the organising committee based on their quality as depicted in the reviews and their potential for enabling future research in line with the scope of the IDEA Workshop. Other papers can be made public on the website unless authors wish to withdraw. Conditioned on the received submissions and strategic discussions, the publication of a special issue in an appropriate journal or post-proceedings in Springer’s LNCS series (pending confirmation) is intended.

* The authors should be aware that if the nominated workshop paper is also an AAMAS paper (or some other published paper at another venue), the version in the Springer books should have additional material (at least 30% more).