Publication

Two new papers at SemDial 2024 — TrentoLogue

The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, September 11th – 12th, 2024

On gesture semantics:

Andy Lücking, Alexander Mehler and Alexander Henlein. 2024. The Linguistic Interpretation of Non-emblematic Gestures Must be agreed in Dialogue: Combining Perceptual Classifiers and Grounding/Clarification Mechanisms. Proceedings of the 28th Workshop on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Luecking:Mehler:Henlein:2024-classifier,
  title     = {The Linguistic Interpretation of Non-emblematic Gestures Must
               be agreed in Dialogue: Combining Perceptual Classifiers and Grounding/Clarification
               Mechanisms},
  author    = {Lücking, Andy and Mehler, Alexander and Henlein, Alexander},
  year      = {2024},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th Workshop on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue},
  series    = {SemDial'24 -- TrentoLogue},
  location  = {Università di Trento, Palazzo Piomarta, Rovereto}
}

On brain-based semantics:

Jonathan Ginzburg, Chris Eliasmith and Andy Lücking. 2024. Swann's name: Towards a Dialogical Brain Semantics. Proceedings of the 28th Workshop on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Ginzburg:Eliasmith:Luecking:2024-swann,
  title     = {Swann's name: {Towards} a Dialogical Brain Semantics},
  author    = {Ginzburg, Jonathan and Eliasmith, Chris and Lücking, Andy},
  year      = {2024},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th Workshop on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue},
  series    = {SemDial'24 -- TrentoLogue},
  location  = {Università di Trento, Palazzo Piomarta, Rovereto}
}

New Publication Accepted for the 2nd Workshop on Legal Information Retrieval meets AI (LIRAI24)

Our paper, “Finding Needles in Emb(a)dding Haystacks: Legal Document Retrieval via Bagging and SVR Ensembles,” has been accepted to the 2nd Workshop on Legal Information Retrieval Meets AI. In this work, we present an approach that leverages embedding spaces, bootstrap aggregation, and SVR ensembles to retrieve legal passages efficiently, demonstrating improved recall compared to baseline methods (0.849 > 0.803 | 0.829):

Kevin Bönisch and Alexander Mehler. 2024. Finding Needles in Emb(a)dding Haystacks: Legal Document Retrieval via Bagging and SVR Ensembles. Proceedings of the 2nd Legal Information Retrieval meets Artificial Intelligence Workshop LIRAI 2024. accepted.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Boenisch:Mehler:2024,
  title     = {Finding Needles in Emb(a)dding Haystacks: Legal Document Retrieval
               via Bagging and SVR Ensembles},
  author    = {B\"{o}nisch, Kevin and Mehler, Alexander},
  year      = {2024},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd Legal Information Retrieval meets Artificial
               Intelligence Workshop LIRAI 2024},
  location  = {Poznan, Poland},
  publisher = {CEUR-WS.org},
  address   = {Aachen, Germany},
  series    = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},
  note      = {accepted},
  abstract  = {We introduce a retrieval approach leveraging Support Vector Regression
               (SVR) ensembles, bootstrap aggregation (bagging), and embedding
               spaces on the German Dataset for Legal Information Retrieval (GerDaLIR).
               By conceptualizing the retrieval task in terms of multiple binary
               needle-in-a-haystack subtasks, we show improved recall over the
               baselines (0.849 > 0.803 | 0.829) using our voting ensemble, suggesting
               promising initial results, without training or fine-tuning any
               deep learning models. Our approach holds potential for further
               enhancement, particularly through refining the encoding models
               and optimizing hyperparameters.},
  keywords  = {legal information retrieval, support vector regression, word embeddings, bagging ensemble}
}

New publications accepted for the special issue New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia

The following publications have been accepted for the special issue New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia:

Viki LibraRy: Collaborative Hypertext Browsing and Navigation in Virtual Reality

Kevin Bönisch, Alexander Mehler, Shaduan Babbili, Yannick Heinrich, Philipp Stephan and Giuseppe Abrami. 2024. Viki LibraRy: Collaborative Hypertext Browsing and Navigation in Virtual Reality. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia. accepted.
BibTeX
@article{Boenisch:et:al:2024:b,
  author    = {B\"{o}nisch, Kevin and Mehler, Alexander and Babbili, Shaduan
               and Heinrich, Yannick and Stephan, Philipp and Abrami, Giuseppe},
  abstract  = {We present Viki LibraRy, a dynamically built library in virtual
               reality (VR) designed to visualize hypertext systems, with an
               emphasis on collaborative interaction and spatial immersion. Viki
               LibraRy goes beyond traditional methods of text distribution by
               providing a platform where users can share, process, and engage
               with textual information. It operates at the interface of VR,
               collaborative learning and spatial data processing to make reading
               tangible and memorable in a spatially mediated way. The article
               describes the building blocks of Viki LibraRy, its underlying
               architecture, and several use cases. It evaluates Viki LibraRy
               in comparison to a conventional web interface for text retrieval
               and reading. The article shows that Viki LibraRy provides users
               with spatial references for structuring their recall, so that
               they can better remember consulted texts and their meta-information
               (e.g. in terms of subject areas and content categories)},
  title     = {{Viki LibraRy: Collaborative Hypertext Browsing and Navigation
               in Virtual Reality}},
  year      = {2024},
  journal   = {New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia},
  numpages  = {29},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
  note      = {accepted}
}

Geo-spatial Hypertext in Virtual Reality: Mapping and Navigating Global News Event Spaces

Patrick Schrottenbacher, Alexander Mehler, Theresa Berg, Jasper Hustedt, Julian Gagel, Timo Lüttig and Giuseppe Abrami. 2024. Geo-spatial hypertext in virtual reality: mapping and navigating global news event spaces. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 0(0):1–30.
BibTeX
@article{Schrottenbacher:et:al:2024,
  author    = {Schrottenbacher, Patrick and Mehler, Alexander and Berg, Theresa
               and Hustedt, Jasper and Gagel, Julian and Lüttig, Timo and Abrami, Giuseppe},
  title     = {Geo-spatial hypertext in virtual reality: mapping and navigating
               global news event spaces},
  journal   = {New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia},
  volume    = {0},
  number    = {0},
  pages     = {1--30},
  year      = {2024},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
  doi       = {10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  eprint    = {https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2024.2383601},
  abstract  = {Every day, a myriad of events take place that are documented and
               shared online through news articles from a variety of sources.
               As a result, as users navigate the Web, the volume of data can
               lead to information overload, making it difficult to find specific
               details about an event. We present News in Time and Space (NiTS)
               to address this issue: NiTS is a fully immersive system integrated
               into Va.Si.Li-Lab that organises textual information in a geospatial
               hypertext system in virtual reality. With NiTS, users can visualise,
               filter and interact with information currently based on GDELT
               on a virtual globe providing document networks to analyse global
               events and trends. The article describes NiTS, its event semantics
               and architecture. It evaluates NiTS in comparison to a classic
               search engine website, extended by NiTSs information filtering
               capabilities to make it comparable. Our comparison with this website
               technology, which is directly linked to the user's usage habits,
               shows that NiTS enables comparable information exploration even
               if the users have little or no experience with VR. That is, we
               observe an equivalent search result behaviour, but with the advantage
               that VR allows users to get their results with a higher level
               of usability without distracting them from their tasks. Through
               its integration with Va.Si.Li-Lab, a simulation-based learning
               environment, NiTS can be used in simulations of learning processes
               aimed at studying critical online reasoning, where Va.Si.Li-Lab
               guarantees that this can be done in relation to individual or
               groups of learners.}
}

New publications accepted at Hypertext 2024

The following publications have been accepted at the Hypertext in Poznan, Poland.

Measuring Group Creativity of Dialogic Interaction Systems by Means of Remote Entailment Analysis

Daniel Baumartz, Maxim Konca, Alexander Mehler, Patrick Schrottenbacher and Dominik Braunheim. 2024. Measuring Group Creativity of Dialogic Interaction Systems by Means of Remote Entailment Analysis. Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 153––166.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Baumartz:et:al:2024,
  author    = {Baumartz, Daniel and Konca, Maxim and Mehler, Alexander and Schrottenbacher, Patrick
               and Braunheim, Dominik},
  title     = {Measuring Group Creativity of Dialogic Interaction Systems by
               Means of Remote Entailment Analysis},
  year      = {2024},
  isbn      = {9798400705953},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3675140},
  doi       = {10.1145/3648188.3675140},
  abstract  = {We present a procedure for assessing group creativity that allows
               us to compare the contributions of human interlocutors and chatbots
               based on generative AI such as ChatGPT. We focus on everyday creativity
               in terms of dialogic communication and test four hypotheses about
               the difference between human and artificial communication. Our
               procedure is based on a test that requires interlocutors to cooperatively
               interpret a sequence of sentences for which we control for coherence
               gaps with reference to the notion of entailment. Using NLP methods,
               we automatically evaluate the spoken or written contributions
               of interlocutors (human or otherwise). The paper develops a routine
               for automatic transcription based on Whisper, for sampling texts
               based on their entailment relations, for analyzing dialogic contributions
               along their semantic embeddings, and for classifying interlocutors
               and interaction systems based on them. In this way, we highlight
               differences between human and artificial conversations under conditions
               that approximate free dialogic communication. We show that despite
               their obvious classificatory differences, it is difficult to see
               clear differences even in the domain of dialogic communication
               given the current instruments of NLP.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media},
  pages     = {153–-166},
  numpages  = {14},
  keywords  = {Creative AI, Creativity, Generative AI, Hermeneutics, NLP},
  location  = {Poznan, Poland},
  series    = {HT '24}
}

Towards dynamic event handling, environment modification and user feedback in VR-Simulations with the help of Va.Si.Li-Lab

Giuseppe Abrami, Dominik Alexander Wontke, Gurpreet Singh and Alexander Mehler. 2024. Va.Si.Li-ES: VR-based Dynamic Event Processing, Environment Change and User Feedback in Va.Si.Li-Lab. Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 357––368.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Abrami:et:al:2024:b,
  author    = {Abrami, Giuseppe and Wontke, Dominik Alexander and Singh, Gurpreet
               and Mehler, Alexander},
  title     = {Va.Si.Li-ES: VR-based Dynamic Event Processing, Environment Change
               and User Feedback in Va.Si.Li-Lab},
  year      = {2024},
  isbn      = {9798400705953},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3675154},
  doi       = {10.1145/3648188.3675154},
  abstract  = {Flexibility, adaptability, modularity, and extensibility in the
               context of a collaborative system are critical features for multi-user
               hypertext systems. In addition to facilitating acceptance and
               increasing reusability, these features simplify development cycles
               and enable a larger range of application areas. However, especially
               in virtual 3D hypertext systems, many of the features are only
               partially available or not available at all. To fill this gap,
               we present an approach to virtual hypertext systems for the realization
               of dynamic event systems. Such an event system can be created
               and serialized simultaneously at run time regarding the modification
               of situational, environmental parameters. This includes informing
               users and allowing them to participate in the environmental dynamics
               of the system. We present Va.Si.Li-ES as a module of Va.Si.Li-Lab,
               describe several environmental scenarios that can be adapted,
               and provide use cases in the context of 3D hypertext systems.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media},
  pages     = {357–-368},
  numpages  = {12},
  keywords  = {Collaborative Simulation, Environmental Event System, Hypertext, Ubiq, Va.Si.Li-Lab, Virtual Reality},
  location  = {Poznan, Poland},
  series    = {HT '24}
}

HyperCausal: Visualizing Causal Inference in 3D Hypertext

Kevin Bönisch, Manuel Stoeckel and Alexander Mehler. 2024. HyperCausal: Visualizing Causal Inference in 3D Hypertext. Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 330––336.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Boenisch:et:al:2024,
  author    = {B\"{o}nisch, Kevin and Stoeckel, Manuel and Mehler, Alexander},
  title     = {HyperCausal: Visualizing Causal Inference in 3D Hypertext},
  year      = {2024},
  isbn      = {9798400705953},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3648188.3677049},
  doi       = {10.1145/3648188.3677049},
  abstract  = {We present HyperCausal, a 3D hypertext visualization framework
               for exploring causal inference in generative Large Language Models
               (LLMs). HyperCausal maps the generative processes of LLMs into
               spatial hypertexts, where tokens are represented as nodes connected
               by probability-weighted edges. The edges are weighted by the prediction
               scores of next tokens, depending on the underlying language model.
               HyperCausal facilitates navigation through the causal space of
               the underlying LLM, allowing users to explore predicted word sequences
               and their branching. Through comparative analysis of LLM parameters
               such as token probabilities and search algorithms, HyperCausal
               provides insight into model behavior and performance. Implemented
               using the Hugging Face transformers library and Three.js, HyperCausal
               ensures cross-platform accessibility to advance research in natural
               language processing using concepts from hypertext research. We
               demonstrate several use cases of HyperCausal and highlight the
               potential for detecting hallucinations generated by LLMs using
               this framework. The connection with hypertext research arises
               from the fact that HyperCausal relies on user interaction to unfold
               graphs with hierarchically appearing branching alternatives in
               3D space. This approach refers to spatial hypertexts and early
               concepts of hierarchical hypertext structures. A third connection
               concerns hypertext fiction, since the branching alternatives mediated
               by HyperCausal manifest non-linearly organized reading threads
               along artificially generated texts that the user decides to follow
               optionally depending on the reading context.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media},
  pages     = {330–-336},
  numpages  = {7},
  keywords  = {3D hypertext, large language models, visualization},
  location  = {Poznan, Poland},
  series    = {HT '24},
  video     = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANHFTupnKhI}
}