On Reflection and Meta-Level Architecture and
their Applications in AI
Background
-----------
Humans can think not only about the world around them but also
about their own actions, ideas and experiences. They have the
ability to step back from a principle activity and consider the
state of that activity and how it is being conducted. The process
by which people think about the thinking process itself is called
reflection or meta-level reasoning.
Serious efforts to implement computational reflection began in the
field of artificial intelligence, e.g., meta-rules, meta-scripts, etc.
Brian Smith was the first to introduce the concept of reflection
in programming languages. He developed 3-Lisp to prove the
feasibility of the concept. Meta-level reasoning has also
been researched in other fields such as theorem proving,
knowledge representation logic programming, and object-oriented
programming.
Given that the field of AI is still striving for new representational
and software engineering advances that can help developing its
complex systems and applications, it is natural to look for
reflection and meta-level architecture to provide the needed
mechanisms for structuring and programming complex,
adaptive systems.
Workshop focus and goals
------------------------
A one day workshop " On Reflection and Metalevel Architecture and
Their Applications in AI" will be held in conjunction with IJCAI '95,
Montreal, Canada, in which researchers from a broad range of
disciplines within AI can address related issues and share their
intuitions about the workshop topics. Also, with various sub-fields
of AI exploring the same topic (e.g., Logic programming, object-oriented
programming, theorem proving, etc.) it is our hope that holding this
workshop in conjunction with a broad conference like IJCAI could
span these different groups and bring together research that
would benefit from diverse perspectives.
Some of potential topics related to the workshop theme are
(but not limited to):
1) Theoretical foundation of Reflection
2) The Meta concept and its applicability for AI applications
3) Reflective AI languages and programming systems
4) Using reflection to integrate AI programming paradigms
5) Development of learning and adaptive systems based on
reflection
6) Reflective environments for distributed AI
7) Reflection and multi-agent systems
8) Reflection and knowledge level models
9) Multi-level reasoning
10)Meta-level theorem proving
The focus of the workshop will be on discussions and exchange of
ideas rather than presentations or mini conference forum.
Conclusions of the workshop should identify the techniques,
benefits, and drawbacks of using reflection and meta-level
architecture for developing AI applications. They should also
identify both desired and undesired aspects of these techniques that
are most relevant to AI.
Workshop recommendations will be based on the conclusions
reached and will suggest directions for shaping future research to
further advance the state-of-the-art of AI using the concepts and
techniques of reflection and meta-level architecture.
Submission and acceptance criteria
-----------------------------------
Interested participants must submit 5 copies of a full
position paper (not to exceed 10 single spaced pages) that
describes their work and addresses one or more of the issues
discussed above. The papers will be reviewed by the workshop
committee and acceptance will be based on the relevance of the
work to the workshop theme.
Attendance will be by invitation only based on the accepted
papers. For papers with multiple authors, invitation will be
issued only to the first two authors. We expect to issue no
more than 30 invitations. Accepted papers will be copied and
bound as IJCAI workshop proceedings and distributed to all
workshop attendees.
According to IJCAI rules, all workshop attendees must register for
the IJCAI '95 conference. In addition, there is a separate
workshop registration assessed at $50.00. Since it is
recommended to include the workshop registration with the
general IJCAI registration, we will make sure that the deadline for
notification of acceptance and/or rejection provides ample time for
pre-registration.
Submit position papers to:
Mamdouh H. Ibrahim
Electronic Data Systems
Object-Oriented and AI Services
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-7129
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail: mhi@gmr.com
Important dates
---------------
Deadline for position paper submissions March 20, 1995
Notification of acceptance or rejection April 10, 1995
Deadline for receiving camera ready copies May 1st, 1995
Organizing committee
---------------------
Pierre Cointe
Ecole des Mines de Nantes
4 rue Alfred Kastelr
La chantrerie
44070 Nantes Cedex 03
France
E-mail: cointe@emn.fr
Fred Cummins
EDS/OOAIS
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-2016
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail: cummins@ae.eds.com
Fausto Giunchiglia
IRST and University of Trento
38050 Povo - Trento
Italy
Tel: +39 - 461 - 314517 / 314592
Fax: +39 - 461 - 314591 / 302040
E-mail: fausto@irst.it
Mamdouh H. Ibrahim (Chair)
Electronic Data Systems
Object-Oriented and AI Services
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-7129
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail: mhi@gmr.com
Jacques Malenfant
Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle
Universite de Montreal
C.P. 6128, Succursale centre-ville
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3C 3J7
Tel: (514) 343-7479
Fax: (514) 343-5834
E-mail: malenfan@iro.umontreal.ca