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COGNITION & LANGUAGE
Adam Vogel: Emergence of Gricean Maxims from Multi-agent Decision Theory
Thursday December 06, 2012 | 03:00 -04:00 PM | Cordura Hall 100

Please join us for a research talk by Adam Vogel, a PhD student in Computer Science.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Abstract:

Gricean maxims of communication are based on the co-operative principle - the idea that general laws of conversation are inspired by agents co-operating to achieve a common conversational goal. In this talk I will discuss a multi-agent decision theoretic model of communication, based on the Partially Observable Decision Process (POMDP), which accounts for a variety of Gricean effects. By modeling interlocutors as rational agents acting in a multi-agent, cooperative, and partially observable world, basic assumptions about rationality lead to conversation maxims such as truthfulness, relevance, and quantity. In this model, agents track not only their own beliefs about the world, but also the beliefs of their partners. Speech acts are special actions which change other's beliefs, with agents taking into account how changes in beliefs will effect future actions. While the POMDP provides an expressive language for decision making problems, inference is computationally expensive. To ameliorate this problem we utilize language not just as a tool for communication, but further as a cognitive technology for abstracting salient features of the environment. I will discuss an implementation of this model in a two-player online co-operative game, a variation of the CARDS task developed by Chris Potts et al.

Joint work with Max Bodoia, Chris Potts, and Dan Jurafsky