Dialectical Argumentation Machines
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Dundee
Department Name: School of Computing
Abstract
Humans use argument to express disagreement, to reach consensus and to both formulate and convey reasoning. The theory of argument has found wide application in artificial intelligence, providing mathematical structures for automated reasoning, communication protocols for distributed processing and linguistic models for natural language processing. A key stumbling block, however, has been joining together models that focus on abstract, mathematical relationships with those that focus on concrete, linguistic relationships. The first objective of this project is to develop for the first time a theoretical account that connects static, monologic argumentwith dynamic, multi-person, dialogic argument and ties together abstract, mathematical models with concrete, linguistic representations.Furthermore,models of argument have been predominantly confined to the lab. Our goal is to translate the research advances into high profile, large scale deployments using partners with enormous user bases. Prototype systems in this area have been sufficient to demonstrate the unique advantages of practical argumentation systems to potential users of this research such as those within the broadcasting domain. There is a demonstrated public demand for argument-based exploration of current issues with complex scientific and ethical dimensions, demonstrated, for example, by the longevity and success of high profile programming featuring topical issues discussed in a stylised argumentative debate format. The second objective of this project is to develop the theory into implemented components that can form a foundation for application development to support actual programmes with prototype testing Unique advantages afforded by the technology will allow users to interact with the programme material as if they were themselves contributors, allowing arguments to be probed, tested and extended, and the distinction between in-programme and post-programme content to be blurred. The interaction metaphor shifts from 'message-then-next-message' to 'question-answer-riposte-challenge...'.The rich structure is natural for users, and provides rich metadata for programme-makers. Finally, in 2007 an exciting vision of the world-wide argumentation web (WWAW) was laid out, in which systems such as those constructed to work alongside practical prototypes could interact, both with each other and with other debate and argumentation systems, both populist and academic.Argument fragments, expressed as resources on the Semantic Web, can cross-refer, allowing different debating systems to navigate the WWAW according to various rules of dialogue captured by dialectical games. To bring this vision of the WWAW into reality, the third and final objective of the project is to allow execution of arbitrary dialogue games on a platform that provides interfaces for human players, and both interfaces and control for computer players of dialogue games. In this way, we want to harness the enormous channel to market and the high-profile reference case that is offered by collaboration within broadcasting. At the same time, the project will be developing platform technology that can support exploitation in other areas. During the project, we will work with the Scottish Mediation Network in the context of mediation tools, with the Ontario courts in the context of judicial summaries, and with the Universities of Lugano and Groningen in the context of legal education to identify exploitation routes for the technology.
Publications
Atkinson K
(2017)
Toward Artificial Argumentation
in AI Magazine
Bex F
(2012)
On logical specifications of the Argument Interchange Format
in Journal of Logic and Computation
Bex F
(2013)
Implementing the argument web
in Communications of the ACM
Bex F
(2014)
ArguBlogging: An application for the Argument Web
in Journal of Web Semantics
Budzynska K
(2014)
Towards Argument Mining from Dialogue
Budzynska K
(2013)
Theoretical foundations for illocutionary structure parsing
Budzynska K
(2016)
Theoretical foundations for illocutionary structure parsing1
in Argument & Computation
Budzynska K
(2016)
Theoretical Foundations for Illocutionary Structure Parsing
in Argument & Computation
Chris Reed (Author)
(2009)
Building Bridges between Everyday Argument and Formal Representations of Reasoning
in Building Bridges Between Everyday Argument and Formal Representations of Reasoning
Chris Reed (Author)
(2010)
Mixed initiative argument in public deliberation
Description | The project has delivered (i) a description in formal terms of the Argument Web ontology standard; (ii) an implementation of that description in a database definition; (iii) deployment of that definition with associated tooling; and (iv) a formal account of the connection between this ontology and others in the community. With this foundation in place, further work initiated during this project delivered (a) a theoretical model of the connection between monological and dialogical forms of argument and debate, and (b) software, hardware and methodology for handling real-time argument analysis which remains (in 2017) a unique ability of the group at Dundee. |
Exploitation Route | Various tools developed under the aegis of the project have potential for non-academic use, including a stable release of the OVA analysis software suitable for classroom use, to argugrader application which complements OVA and can be used to automate grading of student analysis; and the argublogging tool aimed at the Web 2.0 community of bloggers and content-creators. Further non-academic contexts are being explored making us of the foundations laid down in this project, including government and edemocracy, intelligence analysis, political science and more. We are also continuing to work with the BBC to find routes to exploitation. |
Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Environment Healthcare Government Democracy and Justice Culture Heritage Museums and Collections Security and Diplomacy |
URL | http://arg.tech |
Description | Released as an RDF specification and a database schema (soon to be accompanied by a website targeted at developers and users as well as academics, and to be further accompanied by an academic publication coauthored by an international consortium of 24 academic and industrial contributors), the AIF2 represents an international standard for argument representation which will allow exchange between a wide variety of tools and systems in an increasingly crowded academic and commercial space. The harmonisation developed by the standard aims to be a game changer in facilitating the massive upscaling and reuse of resources and tools. The results also laid the foundation for deploying argument technology with the BBC in 2017, reaching audiences of hundreds of thousands. |
First Year Of Impact | 2012 |
Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Government, Democracy and Justice |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
Description | EPSRC Responsive Mode |
Amount | £680,119 (GBP) |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 12/2019 |
Description | Leverhulme Research Project Grant |
Amount | £188,834 (GBP) |
Funding ID | RPG-2013-076 |
Organisation | The Leverhulme Trust |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2013 |
End | 04/2016 |
Title | Corpora |
Description | Tools for managing corpora |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Employed by many research teams for managing argumentation data |
URL | http://corpora.aifdb.org |
Title | AIFdb |
Description | The world's largest openly available corpus of analysed argumentation in AIFdb. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Being used in research into argumentation mining in labs in the UK, US, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere. |
URL | http://www.aifdb.org |
Description | Dundee-BBC |
Organisation | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Development of prototype debate systems |
Collaborator Contribution | Feedback at various levels (technical, mid-level managament, controller-level management) |
Impact | Multidisciplinary between computational science and journalism |
Start Year | 2007 |
Description | Dundee-IRIT |
Organisation | Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research |
Country | France |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Collaboration on issues in dialogical argument mining: we supply data and theory. |
Collaborator Contribution | Collaboration on issues in dialogical argument mining: IRIT supplies computational expertise. |
Impact | Budzynska, K., Janier, M., Kang, J., Reed, C.A., Saint-Dizier, P., Stede, M. & Yaskorska, O. (2015) "Automatically identifying transitions between locutions in dialogue" in Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Argumentation (ECA 2015), College Publications, Lisbon. Budzynksa, K., Janier, M., Kang, J., Reed, C., Saint Dizier, P., Stede, M. & Yaskorska, O. (2014) "Towards Argument Mining from Dialogue" in Parsons, S., Oren, N., Reed, C. & Cerutti, F. (eds) Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA 2014), IOS Press, Pitlochry, pp185-196. Budzynska, K., Janier, M., Reed, C. Saint-Dizier, P., Stede, M. & Yaskorska, O. (2014) "A Model for Processing Illocutionary Structures and Argumentation in Debates" in Calzolari, N. et al. (eds) Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'14), ELRA, Rejkavik. Budzynska, K., Janier, M., Reed, C.A. & Saint-Dizier, P. (2013) "Towards extraction of dialogical arguments" in Working Notes of the 13th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA 2013), Rome. Budzynska, K., Janier, M., Reed, C.A. & Saint-Dizier, P. (2013) "Theoretical foundations for illocutionary structure parsing" in Working Notes of the 13th Workshop on Computational Models of Natural Argument (CMNA 2013), Rome. |
Start Year | 2010 |
Title | Argublogging |
Description | Components for facilitating the capture of argumentative relations between blog posts. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Impact | Modest uptake, with around 4,000 unique users. |
URL | http://argublogging.com |
Title | Argugrader |
Description | Automatically grades student assignments in argument analysis and gives detailed feedback. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Impact | Piloted at City University New York in 2016 and 2017. |
URL | http://argugrader.com |
Title | BBC Moral Maze Argument Analytics |
Description | Infographic visualisation of analysis of argument and debate from BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze. Updates were live-tweeted during broadcast. The initiative was trailled on the Today programme and PM, the two most-listened to radio programmes in the UK. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | James Purnell (formerly the Culture Secretary and at the time of the broadcast, BBC Head of Radio & Education) funded the initiative directly and was sufficiently impressed to release further funding. There was so much positive feedback that it was included on the slate for Radio 4's Feedback -- we were interviewed by Roger Bolton, but editorial priorities meant that the interviews were not broadcast. |
URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05jp46h/p05jp46x |
Title | BBC Taster / Test Your Argument |
Description | Test Your Argument -- an application deployed on the BBC Taster platform. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Impact | This was the most tried and the most highly rated application on the BBC for two weeks. It was tied in to BBC programming around the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act. From the BBC's perspective they were very excited that the demographics emphasised engagement from a younger audience with primarily Radio 4 content, and we were all thrilled that in feedback on the app, over 65% of users indicated that using the app had made them think about the issue differently. Confirmed audience views in the first six weeks: 28,000. |
URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/projects/moral-maze |
Title | DGDL |
Description | Dialogue Game Description Language, a domain specific language for describing a large class of dialogue games |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2010 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Used in several other projects working with dialogical data |
URL | http://www.arg-tech.org |
Title | OVA |
Description | Tool for analysis of reasoning structures, Online Visualisation of Argument. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Impact | Used in undergraduate courses at universities in the US and EU. |
URL | http://ova.arg-tech.org |
Description | BBC 8 Ways |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | An article authored by Reed for BBC Radio 4 that made the BBC homepage on 12 Oct 2017 and had 46,000 confirmed hits in its first 24 hours. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/251N2YBLLwmPJnVvDn94GQR/moral-maze-eight-ways-to-win-an-arg... |
Description | Media appearances |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Various media appearances connected to our large scale debate analysis, including BBC Radio Scotland 'Good Morning Scotland' (15 Dec 2012, live, audience: 150k); BBC World Service 'Click' (16 Oct 2012, live, audience: 23m), plus smaller audiences with STV news, local radio, local newspapers, Science Omega magazine, New Electronics magazine. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
URL | http://arg.tech |