White House

Human ability to communicate is incomplete without the use of humor. If a computational system is ever to approximate human communication ability or act as a competent partner in a conversation with a human, humor must be accounted for. The general goal of the proposed Symposium is to advance the state of the art in the direction of developing an AI system (“the system”) capable of understanding the mechanism of a joke at a level sufficient for providing a punch line to a human generated setup (even if unintentional) and conversely, for computer reacting competently to a human generated punch line that follows a setup, generated by either participant. The effort is multidisciplinary in nature, and the participants from all of the contributing disciplines, viz., computational semantics, knowledge representation, computational psychology, AI theory, humanoid robotics, human-computer interface, human factors, to name just a few, are invited to participate.

The Symposium will include a few invited papers, submitted research papers, and encourage the participants to suggest panels, round table discussions, mini-symposia, special sessions, etc. There will be a clear focus on discussion: in fact, to the extent possible, we will encourage the electronic circulation of invited and accepted presentations prior to the Symposium, so that most of the time allotted to each paper be spent on its discussion.

NSF Grant for Student Stipends

We have been awarded a small grant to support student participation in the Symposium with papers and posters. To apply please email both Co-Chairs with the proposed title for your posters and a half-page abstract. An exceptional proposal may be selected for oral presentation instead.

Preliminary Program is now available