Ideas for Annual Computational Cognition Competition

Do you have an idea for an annual competition that can bring artificial intelligence and cognitive modeling together?  There is a rich history of interaction between these disciplines, but in recent years the tendency has been toward increasing fractionation and sub-specialization, with decreasing cross-fertilization and integration. The purpose of this Challenge is to stimulate a reversal of this trend by soliciting proposals focused on the creation of a recurring annual competition in computational cognitive systems that will motivate these diverse groups to bring their respective strengths together to create compelling new capabilities that are achievable only through multi-disciplinary, integrative cognitive science and technology.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

The objective of this Ideation Challenge is to stimulate innovative, integrative, scientific, and technological advances at the intersection of cognitive modeling and artificial intelligence.  There is a rich history of interaction between these disciplines, but in recent years the tendency has been toward increasing fractionation and sub-specialization, with decreasing methodological, scientific, and technological cross-fertilization and integration. The intent is to stimulate a reversal of this trend. We are casting a wide net across the global community of solvers, soliciting proposals focused on the creation of a recurring annual competition in computational cognitive systems that will motivate these diverse groups to bring their respective strengths together to create compelling new capabilities that are achievable only through multi-disciplinary, integrative cognitive science and technology.

This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following features:

• There is a guaranteed award.  The awards will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $8,500, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $1,000.
• In addition to the monetary awards, winning Solvers may be invited, at the Seeker’s discretion, to participate (present their idea and engage the audience in a question and answer session) in a conference session at CogSci2014, to be held July 23-26 in Quebec City, Canada.  Travel expenses associated with attending and presenting at the conference will be covered by the Seeker up to a maximum of $3,000 per submission.

• Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker.  Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solver grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in the proposal.

• All submitted ideas may be made publicly available (at the Seeker’s discretion) in their entirety, to foster open discussion and evaluation of the content generated by the Challenge.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on 15-Apr-2014.  Late submissions will not be considered.

After the Challenge deadline, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers that submitted a proposal will be notified on the status of their submissions; however, no detailed evaluation of individual submissions will be provided.

Eligibility:  Employees of the Seeker organizations (U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, U. S. Army Research Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Office of Naval Research) may participate in the Challenge and receive Honorable Mention in the CogSci2014 conference session but are ineligible to receive award money or travel funds to CogSci14.