Archive for the ‘Papers’ Category

Papers at JURIX 2012

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

I’m co-author of two papers at The 25th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2012), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Links to the final drafts are forthcoming.

A Model-Based Critique Tool for Policy Deliberation
Adam Wyner, Maya Wardeh, Trevor Bench-Capon, and Katie Atkinson

Abstract
Domain models have proven useful as the basis for the construction and evaluation of arguments to support deliberation about policy proposals. Using a model provides the means to systematically examine and understand the fine-grained objections that individuals might have about the policy. While in previous approaches, a justification for a policy proposal is presented for critique by the user, here, we reuse the domain model to invert the roles of the citizen and the government: a policy proposal is elicited from the citizen, and a software agent automatically and systematically critiques it relative to the model and the government’s point of view. Such an approach engages citizens in a critical dialogue about the policy actions, which may lead to a better understanding of the implications of their proposals and that of the government. A web-based tool that interactively leads users through the critique is presented.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerEtAlCritique2012,
author = {Adam Wyner and Wardeh, Maya and Trevor Bench-Capon and Katie Atkinson},
title = {A Model-Based Critique Tool for Policy Deliberation},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 25th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2012)},
year = {2012},
pages = {xx-xx},
address = {Amsterdam},
publisher = {IOS Press},
note = {To appear},
comment = {Legal Knowledge and Information Systems. Jurix 2012: The AA-th Annual Conference}
}

An Empirical Approach to the Semantic Representation of Laws
Adam Wyner, Johan Bos, Valerio Basile, and Paulo Quaresma

Abstract
To make legal texts machine processable, the texts may be represented as linked documents, semantically tagged text, or translated to formal representations that can be automatically reasoned with. The paper considers the latter, which is key to testing consistency of laws, drawing inferences, and providing explanations relative to input. To translate laws to a form that can be reasoned with by a computer, sentences must be parsed and formally represented. The paper presents the state-of-the-art in automatic translation of law to a machine readable formal representation, provides corpora, outlines some key problems, and proposes tasks to address the problems.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerEtAlSemanticRep2012,
author = {Adam Wyner and Bos, Johan and Valerio Basile and Paulo Quaresma},
title = {An Empirical Approach to the Semantic Representation of Law},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 25th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2012)},
year = {2012},
pages = {xx-xx},
address = {Amsterdam},
publisher = {IOS Press},
note = {To appear}
}

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Papers, Policy-making, linguistics | Comments Off

Presentations at CMNA 2012 and RuleML 2012

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

I have gave a talk about my paper at the ECAI workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argumentation 2012 and also presented an invited talk at the RuleML 2012 conference. The PDFs of these talks are below.

Questions, arguments, and natural language semantics

Translating Rules in Natural Language to RuleML

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Papers, RDF/XML, argumentation, controlled natural language, linguistics, logic | Comments Off

Papers at ITBAM 2012, ePart 2012, and EKAW 2012

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Recent papers at various conferences. One is in the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology in Bio- and Medical Informatics (ITBAM 2012), Vienna, Austria. Another is in the 4th International Conference on eParticipation (ePart 2012), Kristainsand, Norway. And a final paper is in the 18th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, Galway, Ireland.

Argumentation to represent and reason over biological systems
Adam Wyner, Luke Riley, Robert Hoehndorf, and Samuel Croset.

Abstract
In systems biology, networks represent components of biological systems and their interactions. It is a challenge to efficiently represent, integrate and analyse the wealth of information that is now being created in biology, where issues concerning consistency arise. As well, the information offers novel methods to explain and explore biological phenomena. To represent and reason with inconsistency as well as provide explanation, we represent a fragment of a biological system and its interactions in terms of a computational model of argument and argumentation schemes. Process pathways are represented in terms of an argumentation scheme, then abstracted into a computational model for evaluation, yielding sets of ‘consistent’ arguments that represent compatible biological processes. From the arguments, we can extract the corresponding processes. We show how the analysis supports explanation and systematic exploration in a biology network.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerEtAlITBAM2012,
author = {Adam Wyner and Riley, Luke and Robert Hoehndorf and Samuel Croset},
title = {Argumentation to Represent and Reason over Biological Systems},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology in Bio- and Medical Informatics ({ITBAM} 2012)},
year = {2012},
note = {To appear},
}

Model based critique of policy proposals
Adam Wyner, Katie Atkinson, and Trevor Bench-Capon

Abstract
Citizens may engage with policy issues both to critique official justifications, and to make their own proposals and receive reasons why they are not favoured. Either direction of use can be supported by argumentation schemes based on formal models, which can be used to verify and generate arguments, assimilate objections etc. Previously we have explored the citizen critiqing a justification using an argumentation scheme based on Alternating Action-based Transition Systems. We now present a system which uses the same model to critique proposals from citizens. A prototype has been implemented in Prolog and we illustrate the ideas with code fragments and a running example.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerABCEPart2012,
author = {Adam Wyner and Atkinson, Katie and Trevor Bench-Capon},
title = {Model Based Critique of Policy Proposals},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on e{P}articipation (e{P}art 2012)},
year = {2012},
note = {To appear},
}

Dimensions of argumentation in social media
Jodi Schneider, Brian Davis, and Adam Wyner

Abstract
Mining social media for opinions is important to governments and businesses. Current approaches focus on sentiment and opinion detection. Yet, people also justify their views, giving arguments. Understanding arguments in social media would yield richer knowledge about the views of individuals and collectives. Extracting arguments from social media is difficult. Messages appear to lack indicators for argument, document structure, or inter-document relationships. In social media, lexical variety, alternative spellings, multiple languages, and alternative punctuation are common. Social media also encompasses numerous genres. These aspects can confound the extraction of well-formed knowledge bases of argument. We chart out the various aspects in order to isolate them for further analysis and processing.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{SchneiderEtAlEKAW2012,
author = {Jodi Schneider and Davis, Brian and Adam Wyner},
title = {Dimensions of Argumentation in Social Media},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management ({EKAW} 2012)},
year = {2012},
note = {To appear},
}

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Bioinformatics, IMPACT Project, Papers, Policy-making, argumentation, e-Government | Comments Off

Papers at AAMAS 2012 and ArgMas 2012

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

At the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems Conference in Valencia, Spain, I had a short paper in the main conference and a paper in the Argumentation in Multi-agent Systems Workshop

Opinion gathering using a multi-agent systems approach to policy selection
Katie Atkinson, Trevor Bench-Capon, and Adam Wyner

Abstract
An important aspect of e-democracy is consultation, in which policy proposals are presented and feedback from citizens is received and assimilated so that these proposals can be refined and made more acceptable to the citizens affected by them. We present an innovative web-based application that uses recent developments in multi-agent systems (MAS) to provide intelligent support for opinion gathering, eliciting a structured critique within a highly usable system.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{AtkinsonBCW-AAMAS2012,
author = {Katie Atkinson and Trevor Bench-Capon and Adam Wyner},
title = {Opinion Gathering Using a Multi-Agent Systems Approach to Policy
Selection},
booktitle = {Proceedings of AAMAS 2012},
year = {2012},
editor = {Vincent Conitzer and Winikoff, Michael and Wiebe van der Hoek and
Lin Padgham},
pages = {1171-1172}
}

A functional perspective on argumentation schemes
Adam Wyner, Katie Atkinson, and Trevor Bench-Capon

Abstract
In multi-agent systems (MAS), abstract argumentation and argumentation schemes are increasingly important. To be useful for MAS, argumentation schemes require a computational approach so that agents can use the components of a scheme to present arguments and counterarguments. This paper proposes a syntactic analysis that integrates argumentation schemes with abstract argumentation. Schemes can be analysed into the roles that propositions play in each scheme and the structure of the associated propositions, yielding a greater understanding of the schemes, a uniform method of analysis, and a systematic means to relate one scheme to another. This analysis of the schemes helps to clarify what is needed to provide denotations of the terms and predicates in a semantic model.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerABCArgMAS2012,
author = {Adam Wyner and Atkinson, Katie and Trevor Bench-Capon},
title = {A Functional Perspective on Argumentation Schemes},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Argumentation in
Multi-Agent Systems ({ArgMAS} 2012)},
year = {2012},
editor = {Peter McBurney and Parsons, Simon and Iyad Rahwan},
pages = {203-222},
}

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Papers, Policy-making, argumentation, e-Government | Comments Off

Paper at CMN 2012

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

At the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2012) in Istanbul, Turkey, I participated in the Computational Models of Narrative workshop.

Arguments as Narratives
Adam Wyner

Abstract
Aspects of narrative coherence are proposed as a means to investigate and identify arguments from text. Computational analysis of argumentation largely focuses on representations of arguments that are either abstract or are constructed from a logical (e.g. propositional or first order) knowledge base. Argumentation schemes have been advanced for stereotypical patterns of defeasible reasoning. While we have well-formedness conditions for arguments in a first order language, namely the patterns for inference, the conditions for argumentation schemes is an open question, and the identification of arguments `in the wild’ is problematic. We do not understand the `source’ of rules from which inference follows; formally, well-formed `arguments’ can be expressed even with random sentences; moreover, argument indicators are sparse, so cannot be relied upon to identify arguments. As automated extraction of arguments from text increasingly finds important applications, it is pressing to isolate and integrate indicators of argument. To specify argument well-formedness conditions and identify arguments from unstructured text, we suggest using aspects of narrative coherence.

Bibtex
@INPROCEEDINGS{WynerCMN2012,
author = {Adam Wyner},
title = {Arguments as Narratives},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative ({CMN} 2012)},
year = {2012},
editor = {Mark Finlayson},
pages = {178-180},
}

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Papers, argumentation, text mining | Comments Off

Article in Artificial Intelligence and Law Journal for the 25th Anniversary of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

A forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law will be a long multi-author paper that celebrates 25 years of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Law.

A History of AI and Law in 50 Papers: 25 years of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Law
Bench-Capon et al.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law
To appear.

Each of the authors who contributed to the special issue wrote about a paper from the conference from this 25 year period.

For this special issue, I wrote three sections:

The long paper itself serves as an excellent overview of the field these many years.

Shortlink to this page.

By Adam Wyner

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Papers, case-based reasoning, law, legal knowledge engineering, logic | Comments Off

Recent Papers

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

A couple of more papers which have been accepted at upcoming conferences or workshops. The papers are all downloadable from the links provided.

Arguing with Emotion
Martyn Llloyd-Kelly and Adam Wyner
UMMS July 11, Girona, Spain

The paper at the link is a draft and will be somewhat revised for distribution at the workshop.

Abstract
Emotions are commonly thought to be beyond the pale of rational analysis, for they are subjective, may vary even with respect to the person experiencing the emotion, and may conflict with rational thought. In this paper, we develop the position that emotions can be the objects of argumentation, which we express by introducing emotion terms in emotional argumentation schemes. Thus, we can argue about whether or not, according to normative standards and available evidence, it is plausible that an individual had a particular emotion. This is particularly salient in legal cases, where decisions can depend on explicit arguments about emotional states.

On the Linguistic Analysis of Argumentation Schemes
Adam Wyner
LAGB September 7-10, Manchester, United Kingdom

This is an accepted abstract of a paper which is as yet to be written.

By Adam Wyner
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Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0

Posted in Papers, argumentation, linguistics | Comments Off

Recent Papers

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

My colleagues and I have had the papers below accepted for upcoming conferences. The papers are all downloadable from the links provided.

Towards a Structured Online Consultation Tool
Adam Wyner, Katie Atkinson, and Trevor Bench-Capon
ePart August 2011, Deflt, The Netherlands

Abstract
The Structured Online Consultation tool (SCT) is a component tool in the IMPACT Project which is used to construct and present detailed surveys that solicit feedback from the public concerning issues in public policy. The tool is underwritten by a computational model of argumentation, incorporating fine-grained, interconnected argumentation schemes. While the public responds to easy to understand questions, the answers can be assimilated into a structured framework for analytic purposes, supporting automated reasoning about arguments and counter-arguments.

Multi-agent Based Classifi cation Using Argumentation From Experience
Maya Wardeh, Frans Coenen, Trevor Bench-Capon, and Adam Wyner
PAKDD May 2011, Shenzhen, China

Abstract
An approach to multi-agent classi fication, using an Argumentation from Experience paradigm is describe, whereby individual agents argue for a given example to be classifi ed with a particular label according to their local data. Arguments are expressed in the form of classi fication rules which are generated dynamically. The advocated argumentation process has been implemented in the PISA multi-agent framework, which is also described. Experiments indicate that the operation of PISA is comparable with other classi fication approaches and that it can be utilised for Ordinal Classifi cation and Imbalanced Class problems.

Note: I was added to this paper to present it at the conference. I’m familiar with the argumentation aspects, but the data-mining is new to me.

Semantic Models for Policy Deliberation
Katie M. Atkinson, Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, Dan Cartwright and Adam Z. Wyner
ICAIL June 2011, Pittsburgh, USA

Abstract
Semantic models have received little attention in recent years, much of their role having been taken over by developments in ontologies. Ontologies, however, are static, and so have only a limited role in reasoning about domains in which change matters. In this paper, we focus on the domain of policy deliberation, where policy decisions are designed to change things to realise particular social values. We explore how a particular kind of state transition system can be constructed to serve as a semantic model to support reasoning about alternative policy decisions. The policy making process includes stages that support the construction of a model, which can then be exploited in reasoning. The reasoning itself will be driven by a particular argumentation scheme for practical reasoning, and the ways in which arguments based on this scheme can be attacked and evaluated. The evaluation provides alternative policy positions. The semantics underpin a current web-based implementation, designed to solicit structured feedback on policy proposals.

Towards Formalising Argumentation about Legal Cases
Adam Z. Wyner, Trevor J.M. Bench-Capon, Katie M. Atkinson
ICAIL June 2011, Pittsburgh, USA

Abstract
In this paper we offer an account of reasoning with legal cases in terms of argumentation schemes. These schemes, and undercutting attacks associated with them, are expressed as defeasible rules of inference that will lend themselves to formalisation within the ASPIC+ framework. We begin by modelling the style of reasoning with cases developed by Aleven and Ashley in the CATO project, which describes cases using factors, and then extend the account to accommodate the dimensions used in Rissland and Ashley’s earlier HYPO project. Some additional scope for argumentation is then identified and formalised.

By Adam Wyner
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Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0

Posted in IMPACT Project, Papers, argumentation, case-based reasoning, e-Government | Comments Off

New Paper on Legal Case Factor Annotation and Extraction

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Wim Peters and I have a paper which will appear in the proceedings of Semantic Processing of Legal Texts Workshop at the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference 2010. See the previous blog post about the workshop and the schedule.

Towards Annotating and Extracting Textual Legal Case Factors
Adam Wyner and Wim Peters
To appear in the Proceedings of Language Resources and Evaluation Conference 2010

Abstract
Case based reasoning is a crucial aspect of common law practice, where lawyers select precedent cases which they use to argue for or against a decision in a current case. To select the precedents, the relevant facts (the case factors) of precedent cases must be identified; the factors predispose the case decision for one side or the other. As the factors of cases are linguistically expressed, it is useful to provide a means to automate the identification of candidate passages. We outline and report the results of our approach to the identification of legal case factors which follows a bottom-up knowledge heavy strategy and uses the General Architecture for Text Engineering system. Salient lexical items are selected, concept classes of related terms are created, and annotation rules for simple and compound concepts are provided. The annotated concepts can be extracted from the cases, and cases can be classified with respect to the concepts. In addition to supporting extraction of relevant information, the approach has a didactic use in helping to train lawyers to perform close textual analysis. Finally, we carry out an initial collaborative, online annotation exercise using GATE TeamWare in order to develop a gold standard.

By Adam Wyner
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Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0

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