Request for proposals: Towards human-AI cooperation through natural language

About

Meta AI is pleased to invite the community to respond to this call for proposals on research in the area of human-AI cooperation through natural language using Diplomacy as the foundational environment.

Diplomacy requires players to master the art of understanding other people’s motivations and perspectives; make complex plans and adjust strategies; and then use natural language to reach agreements with other people, convince them to form partnerships and alliances, and more. All of this happens in a competitive environment in which players are not bound to follow through on their agreements.

The emergence of goal-oriented dialogue systems in a game that involves both cooperation and competition raises important social and technical challenges in aligning AI with human intentions, objectives, and values. Diplomacy provides a particularly interesting environment for studying such alignment because playing the game requires wrestling with conflicting objectives and translating those complex goals into natural language. While we’ve made significant headway in this work, both the ability to robustly align language models with specific intentions and the technical (and normative) challenge of deciding on those intentions remain open and important problems. We hope Diplomacy can serve as a safe sandbox to advance research in human-AI interaction.

An accepted submission to this proposal will grant access to a large dataset of over 40,000 games of natural language Diplomacy, involving nearly 13 million messages, played on the online platform webdiplomacy.net.

Application Dates

Launch date: November 15, 2022 6:30am PST
Deadline: February 24, 2023 11:59pm PST
Est. notification date: March 10, 2023

Areas of Interest

To advance research in human-AI interaction, Meta AI is soliciting proposals on a wide range of related topics, including, but not limited to the following:

Natural language processing and generation
Negotiation
Dialogue and interactive systems
Human-computer interaction
Reinforcement learning, planning, and strategic reasoning
Theory of mind
AI safety and alignment

Requirements

Proposals should include:

A summary of the project (1-2 pages), in English:

Area of Interest
Any relevant prior work
A timeline with milestones and expected outcomes (with 1 year)

Curriculum Vitae for all project participants.
Organization details; this will include tax information and administrative contact details
To submit a proposal apply here.

Eligibility

Organizations must be an accredited academic institution or a non-governmental organization with recognized legal status in their respective country (equal to 501(c)(3) status under the United States Internal Revenue Code).
Meta cannot consider proposals submitted, prepared or to be carried out by individuals residing in, or affiliated with an academic institution located in, a country or territory subject to comprehensive U.S. trade sanctions.
Applicants must be the Principal Investigator (PI) on any resulting award. All funding will be directed to the PI’s institution.
Applicants may submit one proposal per solicitation (current) Applicants may submit individually or in teams, however, each applicant may only submit one proposal per solicitation.
Awards must comply with applicable U.S. and international laws, regulations and policies.
Meta will not provide access to any Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp data for awarded projects. Any data collected by research teams must comply with Meta’s terms and policies and the institution’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Please be aware that Meta does not allow the automated scraping of public information from its platforms.
Government officials (excluding faculty and staff of public universities, to the extent they may be considered government officials), political figures, and politically affiliated businesses (all as determined by Meta in its sole discretion) are not eligible.

Terms and Conditions

Meta’s decisions will be final in all matters relating to this solicitation, including interpretation of these Terms and awards at any time. Awards will be subject to additional Terms and Conditions for awardees which will be communicated to recipients after selection. All items apply unless otherwise stated in each RFP. Please Read These Terms Carefully Before Proceeding.

By submitting this proposal, you are authorizing Meta to evaluate the proposal for a potential award, and you agree to the terms herein.
You agree that Meta will not be required to treat any part of the proposal as confidential or protected by copyright, and may use, edit, modify, copy, reproduce and distribute all or a portion of your proposal in any manner for the sole purposes of administering the website and evaluating the contents of the proposal.
You agree and acknowledge that personal data submitted with the proposal, including name, mailing address, phone number, and email address of you and other named researchers in the proposal may be collected, processed, stored and otherwise used by Meta for the purposes of administering the website and evaluating the contents of the proposal.
You acknowledge that neither party is obligated to enter into any business transaction as a result of the proposal submission, Meta is under no obligation to review or consider the proposal, and neither party acquires any intellectual property rights as a result of submitting the proposal.
Any feedback you provide to Meta in the proposal regarding its products or services will not be treated as confidential or protected by copyright, and Meta is free to use such feedback on an unrestricted basis with no compensation to you.
Applicants represent and warrant that they have authority to submit a proposal in connection with this RFP and grant the rights set forth herein on behalf of their organization.

To apply

Please submit proposal materials using this form.

Deadline for submissions are on Feb 24, 2023 11:59pm PST.

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