Workshop: Human Centered Case-Based Reasoning HCCBR @ ICCBR 2009

Update: Due to the lack of enough submissions the workshop needed to be cancelled.

The human is always at the center of my research. So it is no surprise that I’ll try to investigate another facet of socio-technical computational systems in the upcoming workshop on Human Centered Case-Based Reasoning HCCBR. The workshop is part of the 8th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning ICCBR 2009 and will take place 20–23 July 2009, in Seattle, Wahington. Here is an excerpt of the call for papers (submission deadline: 23 March 2009):

Human-centered computing focuses on methodologies and technologies to improve the interaction and performance of socio-technical systems. Intelligent systems are not longer considered to be black boxes that provide a full solution to a problem on their own, instead, problem solving is seen as an interactive process. Case-Based Reasoning would appear to be a natural fit for such integrated human/computer systems.

A number of important questions are raised by Human-centered approaches. It is important to gain a better understanding of how each part of the combined system can help to extend the capabilities of the other. It is also of interest to examine how human knowledge modelling and construction can best be supported through technology.

Many of these issues are already being addressed in other disciplines, however, the question remains as to how findings from the social sciences and psychology may be integrated into the design of CBR systems. This integration ranges from psychologically plausible knowledge models to the delivery of an attractive end user experience.

Another important research topic in human centred computing centres around the issue of communication and, in particular, explanations. Problem descriptions, as well as other input, can be incomplete and changing. As a consequence, there has to be communication between human and software agents. Communication requires mutual understanding that can be essentially supported by explanations.

Further, context sensitive processing plays a key role in many modern IT applications. Context-awareness and context-based reasoning are essential not only for mobile and ubiquitous computing, but also for a wide range of other areas such as collaborative software, web engineering, personal digital assistants, information sharing, health care workflow and patient control, adaptive games, and e-Learning solutions.

From an intelligent systems perspective, a further challenge is to integrate context with other types of knowledge as an additional major source for reasoning, decision-making, and adaptation and to form a coherent and versatile architecture. There is a common understanding that achieving desired behaviour from intelligent systems will depend on the ability to represent and manipulate information about a rich range of contextual factors.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring human aspects of the design, implementation, and use of intelligent systems, from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and methodologies across different research and application areas. The workshop will examine methods, mechanisms, and techniques to keep the human in the centre of attention during the whole lifecycle of an intelligent system, from initial problem description through to knowledge acquisition and modelling and on to interactive use and maintenance.

Please consider submitting a paper!

UKCBR and AI 2008 in Cambridge

Already a month ago I enjoyed very much going to the 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence AI 2008 and the UK Case-Based Reasoning workshop UKCBR 2008. The workshop was the thirteenth of this successful series. It was the first time I went to either event and I intend to go again. That they took place in Cambridge at Peterhouse college was an added bonus. You can find some photos here.

I had my hands full with four presentations over the course of the three days.

At UKCBR I presented the “Explanation Capabilities of the Open Source Case-Based Reasoning Tool myCBR” (co-authored with my student Daniel Bahls). I am also happy that Miltos Petridis, organiser of UKCBR invited me to demonstrate the rapid prototyping capabilities of myCBR in a demonstration session.

A special highlight was the invited talk “Using Statistical Translation Models for Textual CBR” by Luc Lamontagne from Laval University, Québec, Canada.

At AI-2008 I gave two talks, both related to my explanation research. The presentation “Code Tagging and Similarity-based Retrieval with myCBR”, also co-authored with Daniel, presented the coTag system. coTag is a code tagging plug-in that allows annotating code snippets in the integrated development environment eclipse. It offers an easy-to-use interface for tagging and searching not only for exactly the same but for similar tags. For better understanding how coTag comes up with its solution we used the above mentioned explanation capabilities of myCBR.

My second talk was based on a paper I wrote with another student, Florian Mittag: “ReduxExp: An Open-source Justification-based Explanation Support Server”. Here we worked on a mechanism for recording decisions of information systems. In the talk I described the architecture of ReduxExp and first experiences with the system.

Highlights of AI 2008 surely were the machine intelligence competition with live presentations (strictly limited to 15 minutes each) and the Gala Dinner held by candlelight (and without enough heating!) in the dining hall of Peterhouse college.

Loebner Prize 2008

“The Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence ( AI ) is the first formal instantiation of a Turing Test. The test is named after Alan Turing the brilliant British mathematician. Among his many accomplishments was basic research in computing science. In 1950, [...] Alan Turing asked the question “Can a Machine Think?” He answered in the affirmative, but a central question was: “If a computer could think, how could we tell?” Turing’s suggestion was, that if the responses from the computer were indistinguishable from that of a human, the computer could be said to be thinking. [...]

In 1990 Hugh Loebner agreed with The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies to underwrite a contest designed to implement the Turing Test.”

[From Loebner Prize for Artificial Intelligence]

This summer I was involved as a preliminary phase judge (Loebner Prize 2008) and enjoyed testing some of the systems. I am not entirely sure about the value of the test itself, but I am sure that these kinds of contests help improving interactiveness of software systems.

ECCBR 2008

Last week I attended the ninth European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning ECCBR 2008 in Trier, Germany. Just around the corner of Kaiserslautern, one could say.

The conference was again a great experience. The community is special. I always feel welcome and at home. From talking to other participants to this conference series I know that even people who attended the conference for the first time feel the same.

A first highlight of this year’s conference was the invited talk by Pádraig Cunningham and Barry Smyth. They analysed research themes in CBR conference literature. One motivation was to check whether our often pessimistic view of our community was founded. It was quite nice to learn that they found that the CBR community is in fact quite healthy. What a relief Their analysis discovered a few evolving CBR themes such as recommender systems and diversity, case-base maintenance, adaptation, creativity and knowledge-intensive CBR, and conversational CBR. Their evaluation shows clear evidence of sustained innovation and maturing research. An important discovery surely is that the impact factor is comparable with big AI conferences such as ECAI and ECML.

ECCBR 2008 also presented an innovation: The Computer Cookery Contest CCC. The task:

Write your own software application for the live competition. Show that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let your computer’s recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook and an international jury of scientists! [From the call for participation]

The competition was quite entertaining. Some of the systems provided, well, interesting recipes when they needed to change ingredients in order to accommodate for ingredients at hand / in the fridge. You can find the results here.

There were also two personal highlights: I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on open source software and I had a talk together with Armin Stahl where we presented myCBR for rapid prototyping and also its explanation capabilities.

The discussion panel was chaired by Ralph Traphöner, a former colleague. Mehmet Göker, with whom I have organised ECCBR 2006, took the view of a global player in software use whereas Eyke Hüllermeier, professor at University of Marburg, took on the role of academia. They discussed with three open source software providers, i.e., with Christian Brockmann (eclipse project smila), Pedro Gonzalez Callero (jColibri), and me (myCBR).

The talk about myCBR was received very well. Over the course of the conference I was asked to show the tool to several attendees who either planned to evaluate myCBR in commercial settings or want to use it for teaching purposes. In my part of the talk I presented some of the explanation capabilities built into myCBR. Go and check out myCBR

Either technology or magic? I say, magic of technology is what we want, err, don’t we?

The recent death of the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke reminded me of one of my favourite quotes:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Third of Clarke’s three “laws” of prediction.)

Modern information technology is for many people—and sometimes even for me—indistinguishable from magic. You cast a spell, i.e., interact in a specific way with some user interface, and if you waved your magical wand the right way—and only then—you achieve your goal. Such devices as the Nintendo Wii video game console or the iPhone with their motion detection capabilities allow for completely new interactions with the user and more natural interactions among users.

But there is a big problem with magic: You are required to believe in it and to not ask questions about it. Magic’s dark side is all about hiding, making believe, obscuring, and blinding. I do not say that software developers intentionally engineer obfuscating applications, but from a user’s point of view it often just looks the same.

Of course, there are times where I suspend my disbelief, where I need to suspend my disbelief. Every time I watch a movie or read a novel I am required to do so in order to be entertained. But life is (unfortunately?) not only entertainment. Computer systems need to have beautiful and elegant, easy-to-use interfaces that evoke a sense of wonder like magic does. This just helps keeping your spirits up and makes working more fun. There is no need for dull and boring applications. But interfaces should never be shallow. Systems should help people learn about what is going on in a software system if people want to know. Systems should provide transparency when asked for. Systems should explain their used vocabulary when asked about.

So, my dear developers, keep on providing magical interfaces, but let the interested users have a peek behind the curtains whenever they want.

ExaCt2008 deadline extended

When I plan a workshop I always look for interfering deadlines. This time I overlooked an obvious deadline, even though this deadline—Call 3 for IST project proposals in the seventh research framework programme (FP7) of the European Union—was also very important to me. I will blog about my proposals later.

Well, as my third workshop on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2008 (see also my blog entry here) is affected by the FP7 deadline I extended the submission deadline to 16 April 2008.

The Computer Says ‘No’

One of my favourite quotes from the British TV show Little Britain is this one:

Even though this is a different context programs often just do that, they say ‘No’.

The art of comics – Understanding ontologies better?!

Comics always were a part of my life. I still love comics, even though my time for them is scarce. I grew up reading tons of comics at my cousin’s place, which was easily reachable via our backyard. I spent a lot of time there with Batman, Superman, The Fantastic Four, and many more super-heroes. Of course, at that time comics were seen as a very bad influence on impressionable young minds; at least as bad as computer games today, I suppose. As my cousin also drew comics herself I learned already back then a lot about the structure of comics and what makes super-heroes tick. But it took me over 25 years to actually learn some more about comics. Scott McLoud opened my eyes in his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art about a lot of things. This book shows and not only tells, as it uses the same medium it talks about: it itself is a comic book.

Reading Understanding Comics I was astonished how many similarities I found between comics and ontologies, i.e., formal representations of the world. Comics and ontologies represent, each in their own way, views of the world. Comics exaggerate physical and mental abilities, distort laws of nature, and portray extreme characters. Granted. But all is grounded in our own experience and would not work without our experience. For example, often action in comic book scenes takes place only in between the panels, i.e., in the mind of the reader. The artist draws the scene before and after the action takes place, and the reader fills in the blanks. And a kid surely fills in the blanks differently than an adult. I was not aware of my own interaction with the comic.

Comics abstract from the world. They are most of the time intentionally not as photo-realistic as they could be. By stripping away details the artist can let the reader focus on what is important. Scott McLoud presents several techniques used in comics, of which I knew only a few. I was not even aware of most of the others even though I would have argued that I have read comics carefully. Read, yes, but, obviously, not studied carefully.

In another chapter, Scott McLoud addresses upcoming comic artists. He presents a six step process of how to become a comic artist. Again, I was reminded of how to become a knowledge engineer. One needs to master a craft as well as have some talent. Any kind of artist has to decide in which form an idea will be expressed, following some school of art (idiom). Then the artist composes the work, leaving some things in and others out. For crafting the art, the necessary skills and knowledge need to be available. Finally, without some production skills the surface of the art work will not be appealing enough to sell the art work as the surface is the first thing a customer will base the buying decision on. Well, how come that ontologies do not sell, one could wonder.

There are a lot more interesting things to say about this book. Time can flow quite differently in comic books. The triangle of reality, picture plane, and language is discussed in detail. And much more …

After reading Understanding Comics I am able to enjoy comics on an additional level, now having more knowledge about the craftsmanship of comic artists.

I now wonder whether and how some of the techniques could be put to use in developing explanation-aware systems. Any suggestions?

3rd Workshop on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2008

I am organising another workshop on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2008, supported by my colleagues and friends David B. Leake, Stefan Schulz, and Daniel Bahls. This time ExaCt takes place 21–21 July as part of ECAI 2008 in Patras, Greece.

Here is the main part of the call for papers:

OBJECTIVES

The increasing complexity of current knowledge-based systems requires improved explanation capabilities. During the height of expert systems research many workshops (including at ECAI) addressed the issue of explanation capabilities. However, with the decrease in expert systems research, AI explanation research dwindled as well. Consequently, the time is ripe for renewed investigations of explanation in AI.

Other disciplines such as cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy of science, psychology, and education have investigated explanation as well. They consider varying aspects, making it clear that there are many different views of the nature of explanation and facets of explanation to explore. Within the field of knowledge-based systems, explanations have been considered as an important link between humans and machines. There, their main purpose has been to increase the confidence of the user in the system’s result, by providing evidence of how it was derived. Additional AI research has focused on how computer systems can themselves use explanations, for example to guide learning.

Both within AI systems and in interactive systems, the ability to explain reasoning processes and results can have substantial impact. Current interest in mixed-initiative systems provides a new context in which explanation issues may play a crucial role. When knowledge-based systems are partners in an interactive socio-technical process, with incomplete and changing problem descriptions, communication between human and software systems is a central part. Explanations exchanged between human agents and software agents may play an important role in mixed-initiative problem solving.

This workshop series aims to draw on multiple perspectives on explanation, to examine how explanation can be applied to further the development of robust and dependable systems and to illuminate system processes to increase user acceptance and feeling of control.

If you would like to participate in discussions on this topic or like to receive further information about this workshop you might consider joining the Yahoo!-group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/explanation-research.

Information on explanation research is also collected at http://on-explanation.net.

GOALS AND AUDIENCE

The main goal of the workshop is to bring researchers, scientists from both industry and academics, and representatives from different communities and areas such as those mentioned above, together to study, understand, and explore explanation in IT-applications. In addition to presentations and discussions of invited contributions and invited talks, this workshop will offer organised and open spaces for targeted discussions and creating an interdisciplinary community. Demonstration sessions will provide the opportunity to showcase explanation-enabled/-aware applications.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Suggested topics for contributions (not restricted on IT views):

• Models for explanations
• Integrating application and explanation knowledge
• Explanation-awareness in applications
• Methodologies for developing explanation-aware systems
• Learning to explain
• Context-aware explanation vs. explanation-aware context
• Confidence and explanations
• Security, trust, and explanation
• Requirements and needs for explanations to support human understanding
• Explanation of complex, autonomous systems
• Co-operative explanation

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline: April 10, 2008
• Notification of acceptance: May 10, 2008
• Camera-ready versions of papers: May 26, 2008

Read more at the workshop website.

On explanation-awareness

I use the term explanation-aware now for quite a while, but noticed only today that I have not written about it here. Well, it’s about time, isn’t it?

Complex information / knowledge-based systems require more intelligent handling of communication between system and user. The user needs to have the opportunity to ask about unknown concepts or, generally, what is going on in the system. My current research work is aiming at improving system responses by working towards explanation-awareness of such systems. Systems that intend to exhibit explanation-awareness must be more than simple reactive systems.

The basic explanation scenario (see figure) has three participants: user, originator, and explainer. The originator is the problem solver. It achieves the main goal of the system, i.e., providing decision support of some kind. The explainer’s task is to provide the answers to questions the user has about concepts used by the originator or about how the originator came to a conclusion or why it presented some decision. Explainer and originator need to be coupled quite tightly in order to provide detailed explanations, but the explainer also needs to have its own knowledge base, which goes beyond the problem solving knowledge of the orginator.

When the term awareness is used in conjunction with the term explanation it implies consciousness about explanation. When a system exhibits explanation-awareness, it is capable of reasoning about explanations. When we use the word aware we are making a strong statement about the capabilities of the entity described. As being knowledgeable is central to being aware, some kind of reasoning capabilities, or intelligence, is implied. Thus, a computer system that aims at becoming explanation-aware must regard explanations from the knowledge level.

There are lots of open questions to phrase and solve in order to come up with a lightweight framework and a methodology for constructing explanation-aware information systems.

Explanation opportunities at the book-seller’s

I just had a longer discussion with my wife about information systems she uses at work. My wife is working part-time as a book-seller for many years now and is often frustrated about the different capabilities of the search and ordering tools of different distributors. The systems have different user interfaces and different search algorithms. Especially the latter are the source of her frustration. Even though certain books are available from the distributors, the search engines produce different results. The book-seller has to know what he or she is searching for to find it. An idiocy par excellence.

If those search systems would provide a means to inquire on how those results were obtained (i.e., by providing action explanations) my wife and other users could either learn how the respective search works and to better use the search engines, or could complain about the search behaviour to the vendors. Either way, transparency provided by explanations would improve the overall performance.

1st Sino-German Symposium on Knowledge Handling

[Update: Here is the link to the symposium website!]

Klaus Mainzer, philosophy professor at University of Augsburg, and Jiyou Jia, professor at the department of educational technology at Peking University, organised this interdisciplinary symposium at the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion (see also here). The event provided me with the opportunity to get in contact with quite a lot of interesting people, and I took this opportunity

Over the course of two and a half days 28 presentations where given, 14 by each delegation. The presentations ranged from natural language processing and e-learning over cognitive systems, knowledge theory, and embodiment to knowledge management, supply-chain management, and human computer interaction.

I gave a talk “On explanation: Supporting the Use of Complex Information Systems”, which got quite some response. One participant voiced definitive interest. We will have to work out how to collaborate.

One of the presented systems I liked immediately and which I like to promote here is GroupMe!:

It combines Semantic Web technologies and Web 2.0 technologies, and demonstrates a new kind of social tagging system.

There were a lot more interesting going on. A website with the presentations will be set up at Peking University and I will link the information here as soon as it is available. You can find pictures from symposium participants on my flickr account (here and here).

The symposium closed with a visit of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and a walk through the beautiful Peking university campus (photos).

1st Sino German Symposium on Knowledge Handling in Beijing, China (PRC)

Today I start my trip to Beijing (I haven’t yet blogged about it as I just recognized. How lazy …). I have been invited to participate in the First Sino German Symposium on Knowledge Handling: Representation, Management, and Personalised Application, where I will give a talk on explanation. Here is more about the event:

The Chinese-German Center (CDZ) for science foundation which is a common institution of the DFG (German Science Foundation) and the National Science Foundation of China accepted the proposal of Prof. Dr. Klaus Mainzer for the „1st Sino-German Symposium on Knowledge Handling: Representation, Management and Personalized Application“ (4.-8. November 2007) in Beijing. The CDZ supports conferences concerning key topics of science which should be discussed by experts and leading scientists of China and Germany. The main issue of the conference is the development of personalized information and communication systems tailored to the individual profile of a user and his/her preferences. The topic is interdisciplinarily considered from technical, cognitive, social, and economic points of view. The conference is organized by Prof. Dr. Klaus Mainzer as Director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Informatics and his former coworker and Ph.D. student in Augsburg Prof. Dr. Jiyou Jia (Beijing University). (see University of Augsburg)

As this is my first trip to China I am very excited. I am looking forward to this experience.

[composed and posted with ecto]

Sledgehammer inspiration

“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” These famous lines from the 1980ies sitcom Sledge Hammer could be easily applied to information systems, don’t you think? You just have to trust them. They know what they are doing. You—the users—do not know. You have no means of learning what is going on inside, just as frustrating as trying to find out how Sledge ticks …

[composed and posted with ecto]

Constant learning, constant reminding

Supervising a PhD student is a learning task for the respective supervisor. Granted. But it’s also a reminding task as I was reminded of (no pun intended) this morning.

Björn Forcher, a colleague and PhD student I supervise on the topic of explanation, discussed with me his current ideas on his research work. He talked about what could be explained and pointed out that not everything can be (easily) explained by humans. So we should not expect an information system to be able to explain everything and easily. This observation is very much in line with my human-centered approach to (explanation) research (an observation that tends to slip from my mind regularly. Well …). This again reminded me of an interesting discussion I had with the students of my last Semantic Web class about identifying things and URIs resulting in the observation that people do have problems in everyday life with identifying things or people. How often do you talk with someone about someone else until you realise that both of you talked about different people? So why should information systems should have fewer identification problems?

My point here is: Think about computational problems always also in “real world” terms. One might get surprised.

[composed and posted with ecto]

ExaCt 2007 – A Workshop as it should be

This year’s workshop on Explanation-aware Computing at AAAI-07 was by far the best workshop I ever did. Everything just fit together perfectly. All participants were proactive, positive, and productive. So, thanks to all participants and my fellow organisers! I enjoyed the workshop very much. You will find the presentations soon at the workshop homepage.

I especially like to thank both invited speakers, Doug Walton and Bruce Porter. It was great having you there. Deborah McGuinness, who presented two papers and was, unfortunately, only able to attend on the first day, already accepted my invitation to give a talk at the next ExaCt workshop in 2008 (if time permits).

Besides plans for another workshop we also talked about a tutorial for further promoting explanation research. If you are interested in the topic you might want to join the Yahoo! group on explanation research. And keep an eye on the website on-explanation.net!

[composed and posted with ecto]

Regenerate

Teaching practical courses tend to become tedious, boring, repetitive. Each summer term I teach a practical course on knowledge management. The overall task is to build an information retrieval web application using some Java framework. The last exercise was to explain the retrieval results to the user. Practical courses rank quite low on a student’s priority list, which in turn is quite visible in the extent of their implementation results. The implementations are not generally of low quality, but the results are often just enough and not inspired one bit. Most of the time the applications are plain and dull. So taking the oral exams after each of the three main exercises usually is just that: plain and dull.

Yesterday, I finished this term’s practical course together with my colleague (Thanks, Christopher!). Two students, who already stood out in other courses, delivered a very interesting and beautiful GUI for their search engine. They especially took care of providing explanations in a visually entertaining and informative way by using, e.g., different font sizes that show the degree of matching terms in query and found document. They borrowed the visual metaphor from tag cloud representations and cleverly altered it for their needs. I immediately sent them to another colleague in order to let them inspire him

They really made my day and got me motivated again for future practical courses!

[composed and posted with ecto]

ECAP, Day #2

And still more from the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 …

The second day of ECAP is quite packed. Since nine o’clock in the morning until after seven in the evening three tracks are firing one presentation after the other on me. Some discussions I can follow …

The morning started with the keynote talk “The unsolved mystery of why evolution is so creative” by Mark A. Bedau from Reed College, Portland / European Center for Living Technology, Venice / ProtoLife SRL, Venice. Mark Bedau presented the arrow of complexity hypothesis: “Evolution inherently creates increasingly complex adaptive organisations”. There is no answer to this hypothesis yet, but by capturing the essence of complex systems in computer models and observing robust regularities we may come up with a model of evolutionary creativity. This talks very much showed how important models and the task of modelling have become.

On the panel on “The future of artificial intelligence”, chaired by Jordi Vallverdú, Paul van der Vet, Anton Nijholt, Susan Stuart, Mark Bedau, and I presented previous and current work, and how we look at the future of AI. My main point: Future AI is coupled to the (Social & Semantic) Web! (see slides)

Now, more presentations to go, and a conference dinner to enjoy!

[composed and posted with ecto]

ECAP, Day #1, morning

I am at the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Already yesterday I met by chance next year’s organiser, Jean Sallantin, Research Director at LIRM (Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics). He has some interesting and challenging ideas on Wiki-usage for preparing the next conference. As he thinks already about using XWiki, Stéphane Laurière, my trusted colleague in the Nepomuk project, was the logical connection to make. And there are some other interesting ideas.

The conference started with some introductions and welcome notes. One was given by Luciano Floridi, President of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy IACAP, which is doing quite good on “the market of philosophical thinking”. He provided an overview of the IACAP structure with the three chapters (Asian Pacific) APCAP, (European) ECAP, and (North American) NACAP, each with their own successful conference. Expansion plans are under work for creating a Latin American chapter (LACAP) and for including China, Japan, and India. Going for a non-profit organisation is another important step, a step IACAP needs to take in order to give the association a legal form. Luciano Floridi asked us to advertise IACAP. Well: Become a member, dear reader, and support IACAP.

The conference’s first and very interesting keynote talk was given by Jeroen van der Hoven (Delft University of Technology and Australian National University) on “The ethics of Wideware Engineering”. Wideware (or “cognitive scaffolding”) encompasses more than hardware or software. At least, that is my understanding now. Quoting Clark and Chalmer’s “extended mind hypothesis”, “the mind leaks into the environment. […] Where does the mind stop and where does the rest o the world begin?”. This corresponds quite well to the semantic desktop and its metaphor of a “semantically enlarged supplement to [human] memory”.

Thought-provoking, at least for me, was Jeroen van der Hoven’s analysis of “epistemic enslavement”. For example, a flight operator in his epistemic niche (his technical environment, which provides data on flight paths etc.) needs to believe what is presented to him screen. In his epistemic niche there is no opting-out for the narrowly embedded user of the system. “If I believe that the system provides the output (p) on good grounds, then I myself have good grounds to believe that (p).” This is called epistemic dependence. The user here has no cognitive ability to find non-obvious defeaters! From all that follows epistemic enslavement. “Non-compliance with system output constitutes taking a moral risk the user cannot justify at the moment of non-compliance.” For example, the flight operator cannot think for himself. He needs to rely on the system.

The basic ethical issue, thus, in Wideware Engineering is: “Do we get epistemic enhancement/engineering at the expense of our moral autonomy (”think for yourself“)?” I believe my research on explanation heads exactly into that direction where decision support systems are concerned, in order to provide the user with the information to lessen the moral risk mentioned above. Of course, such real-time systems in flight control are an extreme, but expert or decision support systems in medicine also need to deal with the issue of responsibility.

So much for now …

[composed and posted with ecto]

The future of Artificial Intelligence

Last year’s fifty’s anniversary of Artificial Intelligence sparked discussions about the results of AI research. Many advances already became so mainstream that they are not visible anymore. Fuzzy control in washing machines is a famous and often cited success story, but by far not the only one. AI research also led to view software development in a new light, e.g., modelling became a commodity.
But where is AI heading?

I am a firm believer in weak AI. (“Weak AI refers to the use of software to study or accomplish specific problem solving or reasoning tasks that do not encompass […] the full range of human cognitive abilities.” [Wikipedia]) Maybe at some point in the far future some intelligent behaviour emerges from the development and use of complex information systems, but I don’t think we are capable of understanding what intelligence is and how to create intelligent machines in the first place. I believe in further developing many more decision support systems, each very specialised but on the other hand better integrated with the environment and with improved communication abilities. I do not talk about spoken language understanding capabilities here but of more intelligent user interfaces in general.

In my opinion, research on intelligent user interfaces is an important topic. Intelligent user interfaces rely on symbolic reasoning as only symbolic reasoning allows for explanation capabilities, which in turn are the basis for improved understanding and, thus, a better synchronisation of knowledge of the user and the information system. It is probably worthwhile to look into hybrid approaches where sub-symbolic reasoning engines are supported by symbolic reasoners that can interpret what the sub-symbolic reasoner is doing. But this is outside the scope of my explanation research.

Software systems get embedded more and more in electronic devices providing contextual and personalised information. New opportunities arise for supporting everyday activities. For example, GPS-enabled digital cameras already provide the necessary position metadata to place photos on GoogleMaps or create other Web 2.0 mash-ups. And powerful mobile devices such as Apple’s upcoming iPhone lets me wonder what one could intelligently do with it. So it will surely play an important part in my upcoming FP7 project proposal.

User centric design, personalisation, context, social software are topics addressed by our research department for quite some time. Their importance is visible in and through our projects as well as the Competence Center Computational Culture and the newly created Competence Center Human Centered Visualisation HCV.

Explanation, Dialog, and Communication: Supporting the Use of Complex Information Systems

I gave another talk on explanation, dialog, and communication, this time at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, on January 24, 2007. Klaus-Dieter Althoff invited me to discuss this topic with his work group.

Explanation, Dialog, and Communication: Supporting the Use of Complex Information Systems

Update: Handout of slides

I will give an invited talk at Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland, on January 11, 2007. (see announcement)

Abstract
Explanation, trust, and transparency are concepts that are strongly associated with information systems. One trusts a computer system much more if it can explain what it is doing and, thus, can „prove“ its trustworthiness. An information system (and more so a knowledge-based one) should be able to explain at every point in time why it prefers solution A over solution B. Furthermore, it should tell about the meaning of concepts used, and where an information item originally came from („knowledge provenance“). Explanations are part of human understanding processes and part of most dialogs, and, therefore, need to be incorporated into system interactions in order to, for example, improve decision-making processes. As information systems grow more and more complex, computer support is needed. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important for computer systems to have advanced explanation capabilities.

Complex personal information systems will be part of the results of the EU project Nepomuk – The Social Semantic Desktop [1]. Those systems will allow annotating and linking of arbitrary information objects on one‘s desktop such as documents, emails, address book entries, photos, and bookmarks. In addition, Nepomuked systems such as gnowsis automatically crawl and classify (or tag) information objects, thus linking them to one’s personal information model ontology (PIMO). (For example, address book entries become PIMO persons.) But more complex lifting operations are under development, and explanation needs become obvious.

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) systems are another example of complex information systems. In e-commerce scenarios, the case base often is filled from product catalogs. Modeling the similarity measures for products is a complex task for the knowledge engineer, who can be supported by providing explanations about the structure and content of the case base. Such support features are currently being implemented in the open source CBR tool myCBR [2]. First results will be shown.

References
[1] http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org
[2] http://mycbr-project.net

Two explanation scenarios

Explanations are always tied to some goal or intention in order to understand something better. One asks questions either explicitly or implicitly during a conversation. The conversation partner does not even need to be another person (or computer program). Often we ask questions to ourselves, e.g., in order to comprehend what we read or how a system works. Currently, I am working with two students at two scenarios where I think explanations are helpful.

Scenario 1: Similarity measure modeling in case-based reasoning (CBR) is a complex task. In commercial settings consultants help the users of CBR tools, i.e., the to-be knowledge engineers, to learn necessary skills. The goal of explanation I pursue here is to collect questions knowledge engineers ask the consultants and transfer some of the rules of thumb CBR that consultants use into the system. First implementation results of the work will be available soon. Check the myCBR homepage.

Scenario 2: Applications being built using Nepomuk standards and components will be knowledge-based systems of high complexity. Users of such applications will need support in some places where automatisms enrich already entered knowledge. The gnowsis system already shows how complex the upcoming Nepomuked applications will become. One of its components, the so-called Rebirth Machine, already generates new concepts in the personal information model PIMO from data on your desktop (also known as lifting). For example, the Rebirth Machine generates PIMO Persons from address book entries. As there could be some “magic” involved the user might wonder where certain concepts came from (knowledge provenance) and how they were generated and/or interconnected (cognitive explanations).

Wrapping-up MRC2005 and ExaCt2005

One of the results of my IJCAI workshop MRC2005 is a Springer book with revised, selected papers. It is called “Modeling and Retrieval of Context”. The book will appear soon in the Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series LNAI.

I also wrapped up the AAAI fall symposium on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2005. Thanks to Michael Richter, a selection of papers is soon published as a special issue of the journal Computing and Informatics.

[ExaCt 2005] Washington calling

Only a few days are left until my AAAI symposium on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2005 in Washington, D. C., starts. I am very much looking forward to it and to the city of Washington.

IJCAI-05-Workshop on Modeling and Retrieval of Context (MRC 2005)

The presentation slides of (most of) the talks are now available as pdf files: Agenda – MRC2005