{"648466":{"#nid":"648466","#data":{"type":"event","title":"PhD Defense by Prithviraj Ammanabrolu","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETitle:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;Language Learning in Interactive Environments\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EPrithviraj Ammanabrolu\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nPh.D. Candidate\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nSchool of Interactive Computing\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/prithvirajva.com\u0022\u003Ehttp:\/\/prithvirajva.com\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDate:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;Wednesday, July 14th, 2021\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003Cstrong\u003ETime:\u003C\/strong\u003E 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm (ET)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003Cstrong\u003ELocation: CODA C1215 Midtown\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBlueJeans\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/bluejeans.com\/7436488731\/\u0022\u003Ehttps:\/\/bluejeans.com\/7436488731\/\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECommittee:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nDr. Mark Riedl (advisor), School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Charles Isbell, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nDr. Devi Parikh, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nDr. Matthew Hausknecht, Microsoft Research\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDr. Jason Weston, Facebook AI Research and New York University\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ENatural language communication has long been considered a defining characteristic of human intelligence. I am motivated by the question of how learning agents can understand and generate contextually relevant natural language in service of achieving a goal. In pursuit of this objective, I have been studying Interactive Narratives, or text-adventures: simulations in which an agent interacts with the world purely through natural language\u0026mdash;\u0026quot;perceiving\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;acting upon\u0026rdquo; the world using textual descriptions and commands. These games are usually structured as puzzles or quests in which a player must complete a sequence of actions to succeed. My work studies two closely related aspects of Interactive Narratives: operating in these environments and creating them in addition to their intersection\u0026mdash;each presenting its own set of unique challenges.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EOperating in these environments presents three challenges: (1) Knowledge representation\u0026mdash;an agent must maintain a persistent memory of what it has learned through its experiences with a partially observable world; (2) Commonsense reasoning to endow the agent with priors on how to interact with the world around it; and (3) Scaling to effectively explore sparse-reward, combinatorially-sized natural language state-action spaces. On the other hand, creating these environments can be split into two complementary considerations: (1) World generation, or the problem of creating a world that defines the limits of the actions an agent can perform; and (2) Quest generation, i.e. defining actionable objectives grounded in a given world. I will present my work thus far\u0026mdash;showcasing how structured, interpretable data representations in the form of knowledge graphs aid in each of these tasks\u0026mdash;in addition to proposing how exactly these two aspects of Interactive Narratives can be combined to improve language learning and generalization across this board of challenges.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Language Learning in Interactive Environments"}],"uid":"27707","created_gmt":"2021-06-30 12:48:49","changed_gmt":"2021-06-30 12:48:49","author":"Tatianna Richardson","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2021-07-14T14:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2021-07-14T16:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2021-07-14T16:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2021-07-14 18:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2021-07-14 20:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2021-07-14 20:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"102851","name":"Phd proposal"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"78771","name":"Public"},{"id":"174045","name":"Graduate students"},{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}