Connectionists: CALL FOR PAPERS - The Distributed Ghost - Workshop at ALIFE 2023 - Submission Deadline: June 1st

[Mario Pavone]

*Workshop: *The Distributed Ghost ? Cellular Automata, Distributed
Dynamical Systems, and Their Applications to Intelligence*

*Venue: ALIFE 2023, Sapporo, Japan

*Date: July 24-28, 2023

Website: https://www.nichele.eu/ALIFE-DistributedGhost


This workshop is an initiative of the IEEE CIS Task Force on Artificial
Life and Complex Adaptive Systems
<https://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~sayama/IEEE-ALIFE-TF.html>.


*Important dates*

Submission: June 1st, 2023
Notification: June 15th, 2023


*Scope of the workshop*

Distributed dynamical systems such as Cellular Automata and Random Boolean
Networks (and everything in between), have long been used as models to
understand computation and self-replication in biology, morphogenesis, gene
regulation, life-as-it-could-be, and the universe.

Such complex systems models have been extensively studied mathematically
and experimentally in all their different variations, such as synchronous
and asynchronous updates, dynamic automata networks that can grow and
change their structure including components and interconnection topology,
as well as their robustness.

In [1], A. Wuensche investigates the basins of attraction of cellular
automata (CA) and random Boolean networks (RBN), and even suggests that
they are The Ghost in the Machine.

Recent advances of such models, including continuous CA such as Lenia and
neural-based CA, have been proposed as substrates to study the emergence of
a more general intelligence [2, 3], thanks to their propensity to support
properties such as self-organization, emergence, and open-endedness.

- What can we learn from Cellular Automata and Distributed Dynamical
System models about intelligence?
- How can Cellular Automata and Distributed Dynamical System models be
used to study the emergence of intelligence?

This workshop aims at bridging the gap between the ALife community working
with CA and distributed dynamical systems, and the broader AI community
interested in exploring concepts from complex
systems/self-organization/artificial life for AI research and machine
learning, including modular robotics such as voxel-based robots.

[1] Wuensche, A. (1994). The Ghost in the Machine: Basins of Attraction of
Random Boolean Networks
<http://www.ddlab.org/downloads/papers/ghost_in_machine.pdf>. Artificial
Life III: SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, vol. VII.
Addison-Wesley.

[2] Hamon, G., Etcheverry, M., Chan, B. W. C., Moulin-Frier, C., & Oudeyer,
P. Y. (2022). Learning sensorimotor agency in cellular automata
<https://developmentalsystems.org/sensorimotor-lenia/>.

[3] Gregor, K., & Besse, F. (2021). Self-organizing intelligent matter: A
blueprint for an AI generating algorithm <https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.07627>.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.07627.


*Submission instructions*

Submissions for contributed talks are in the form of extended abstracts
(maximum 2 pages, not including references).
The workshop accepts both published and novel works. In case your work has
been published earlier, please specify this during the submission process.
Accepted abstracts will be published in a booklet hosted on the workshop
website.

We plan to prepare a special issue in NEJCS
<https://orb.binghamton.edu/nejcs/> (free of charge) with extended versions
(full papers) of the novel contributions from the workshop.
Submission via EasyChair at this link
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=distributedghost2023>.



*Workshop organizers*

- Stefano Nichele <http://www.nichele.eu/>*, Østfold University
College, Norway

- Hiroki Sayama <https://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~sayama/>*,
Binghamton University, USA

- Chrystopher Nehaniv
<https://uwaterloo.ca/systems-design-engineering/profile/cnehaniv>*,
University of Waterloo, Canada

- Eric Medvet <https://medvet.inginf.units.it/>*, University of
Trieste, Italy

- Mario Pavone <https://www.dmi.unict.it/mpavone/>*, University of
Catania, Italy


-- 
Mario F. Pavone, PhD
Associate Professor
Dept of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Catania
V.le A. Doria 6 - 95125 Catania, Italy
---------------------------------------------
tel: +39 095 7383034
mobile: +39 3384342147
Email: mpavone at dmi.unict.it
http://www.dmi.unict.it/mpavone/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/mfpavone
Skype: mpavone
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OLA 2023 - Int. Conf. on Optimization and Learning
3-5 May 2023, Malaga, Spain
http://ola2023.sciencesconf.org/
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