ForMoRe Workshop #2

Chairs

• Chiara Bassetti, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Stefano Borgo, Laboratory of Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR

Organizers

• Social Pattern Recognition Lab (SPaRe Lab), Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Hans Schadee Methods Center (HSC), Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Laboratory of Applied Ontology, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council (LOA, ISTC-CNR)

Description

ForMoRe is an interdisciplinary workshop on the methods and techniques of formalization, modellization, and representation of micro-sociological theories and analyses for a varied set of scientific and technological applications.
Qualitative social research —particularly interactionist and ethnomethodological approaches (e.g., conversation analysis and video-based field studies)— generates rich data and offers detailed, in-depth analysis, yet it often fails in formalising them (e.g. via ontological analysis), in providing a synthetic model, in making datasets statistically inspectable and/or computable (e.g. for social signal processing, or robot architectures). This reduces the potential impact, circulation, and exploitation —across disciplinary communities— of those analyses.

The communication, understanding, and use of these knowledge basis and its empirical analytical potential is however crucial. Whereas social research, and qualitative methods in particular, are by now recognised, studied and used in Human-Computer Interaction, other areas within the computer and information sciences still remain partially unaware of the potentialities of micro-sociological theories, analyses and findings. Too often, both cognition and (social) behaviour —not to mention culture— are conceptualized as individual-based phenomena (to which, e.g., a social robot should adapt, as in personalization), thereby missing the inter-actionist layer of human life as much as of human-machine cooperation.

The ForMoRe workshop aims at creating an interdisciplinary space of mutual exchange and collaboration among those who are interested in developing and pushing the boundaries of what we mean by:

• social pattern recognition
• social signal processing
• social robotics
• trustworthy AI
• industry 5.0
• experimental ethnography and ethnomethodological experiments
• mixed symbolic and data-driven models and machine learning
• any combination thereof
• … (we are pushing boundaries, please feel free to contribute your own border-to-be-(re)moved).

This second edition of the ForMoRe Workshop focuses on the following topics:

Interaction, capabilities and context

This topic is about understanding and modeling (several kinds of) interaction. The term interaction has been extensively used in our meeting in June in connection with (a) capabilities of the agents involved, including humans and non-humans, and (b) contexts/scenarios (e.g., when and where the interaction happens; how it is conceived/motivated; how it unfolds in time). Several dimensions to study interaction were presented, among which: space sharing, object sharing, goal sharing, focus sharing, activity performing, and so on. What kinds of interaction are there, and characterized by the sharing of what?

Social agents: small groups, organisations, collectives...

This topic is about identifying, understanding and modeling the different kinds of agents that populate social contexts. The talks in our meeting in June listed several types of social agents/situations. Think of a gathering, an informal group, a collective, an organization, a board of directors, a community, a project consortium, etc. Are all these different entities and why? How do we understand them? How can we conceptualize them? Can one entity evolve into another and how/when? What are the social and interactional expectations attached to each? 

A few examples of what we tried to do towards this direction

• Bassetti, C., Blanzieri, E., Borgo, S., Marangon, S. (2023), ‘Towards socially-competent and culturally-adaptive artificial agents. Expressive order, interactional disruptions and recovery strategies’, Interaction Studies, Special Issue on Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems.
• Setti, F., D. Conigliaro, P. Rota, C. Bassetti, N. Conci, N. Sebe, M. Cristani (2017), ‘The S-HOCK Dataset: A new benchmark for spectator crowd analysis’, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 159, pp. 47-58.
• Setti, F., C. Russel, C. Bassetti, M. Cristani (2015), ‘F-formation Detection: Individuating Free-standing Conversational Groups in Images’, PLOS One, 10, 5, e0123783.
• Bassetti, C. (2017), ‘Social interaction in temporary gatherings. A sociological taxonomy of groups and crowds for computer vision practitioners’, in M. Cristani, V. Murino, S. Savarese, S. Shah (eds.), Group and Crowd Behavior for Computer Vision, Elsevier, pp. 15-28. 

10.30 Welcome, coffee and introduction (Chiara Bassetti, Stefano Borgo)

11.00 Presentations

Emanuele Bottazzi & Roberta Ferrario (LOA, ISTC-CNR),  Lions we think we understand. A Wittgensteinian critique of Large Language Models

DISCUSSANT: Helena Haxvig (University of Trento)

Mattia Fumagalli (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), Towards Teleological Explanation for AI

DISCUSSANT: Claudio Masolo  (LOA, ISTC-CNR)

Federico Cunico (University of Verona), SCENE-pathy: Capturing the Visual Selective Attention of People Towards Scene Elements

DISCUSSANT: Enrico Blanzieri (University of Trento)

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Presentations

Daniela Veronesi (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), Participation in instructional settings

DISCUSSANT: Stefano Borgo (LOA, ISTC-CNR)

Chiara Bassetti (University of Trento),  Participation frameworks in performative learning settings

DISCUSSANT: Emanuele Bottazzi (LOA, ISTC-CNR)

Giulia Guadagnoli (University of Firenze), Spatial semantics in the representation of intermediary spaces: the case of the porticoes of Bologna

DISCUSSANT: Martina Cvajner (University of Trento) 

16.00 Coffee break

16.30 Presentation

Ludger Jansen (Universität Rostock), Ontological Insecurity in the Social Domain. A Taxonomy

DISCUSSANT: Mattia Fumagalli (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)

17.10 Group-work session and discussion

• Fabiana Ballarin - Department of Humanities, University of Trento
• Chiara Bassetti - Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Enrico Blanzieri - Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento
• Stefano Borgo - Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Emanuele Bottazzi - Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Martina Cvajner - Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento
• Andrea Cossu - Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
• Federico Cunico - Department of Computer Science, University of Verona
• Roberta Ferrario - Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Mattia Fumagalli - Faculty of Engineering, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Giulia Guadagnoli - Department of Architecture, University of Firenze
• Helena Haxvig - Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento
• Ludger Jansen - Institut für Philosophie, Universität Rostock
• Claudio Masolo - Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Iuris Mocchiutti - University of Padova & Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Guendalina RIghetti - Faculty of Engineering, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Emilio Sanfilippo - Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR
• Daniela Veronesi - Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

18.30 End/Goodbye