Objective One of the main goals of artificial intelligence is to build artificial agents that can interact with humans using natural language. To fully master language, an agent needs to know how to use it to accomplish a goal; to interact with another speaker; and to refer to objects in the external reality. My research project aims at equipping an artificial agent with all these skills in one single learning framework.Communication helps humans accomplish things in the world and cooperate with each other, resulting in continuous and incremental updating of the speakers’ knowledge state. However, traditional machine learning methods used to model language are based on static and passive regimes, and are typically not grounded in external reality. I propose a radically different research programme, based on recent advancements in training neural networks using reinforcement learning, that will enable the move from a static, fully supervised to a dynamic, interactive learning where the agents need to use language to accomplish a task in the visual world. This will dramatically accelerate the development of machines that can talk with humans.Even though I am an established researcher in computational linguistics, with substantial contributions to the integration of language and vision, I still need to fully develop my own line of research to become a leading, independent researcher in Europe. Carrying out the present proposal at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research will be a fundamental step towards achieving my goal, since my hosts are leaders in computational linguistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in general, and specifically in the methods needed for the present proposal. Conversely, my unique profile, bridging computational linguistics and computer vision with machine learning methods, will widen the scope and outreach of the research conducted at both groups. Fields of science humanitieslanguages and literaturelinguisticsnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputer visionnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learningreinforcement learningnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputational intelligence Keywords Computational Dialogue Modelling End-to-end Dialogue Systems Multi Agent Language Grounding Language and Vision Interactive Learning Reinforcement Learning Language Generation Deep Neural Networks Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2017 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF) Coordinator UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA Net EU contribution € 158 121,60 Address PLACA DE LA MERCE, 10-12 08002 Barcelona Spain See on map Region Este Cataluña Barcelona Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 158 121,60
