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[Module 0] [Module 1] [Module 2] [Module 3] [Module 4] [Module 5] [Module 6]

Module 0: Introduction to IF and Automated Story Generation

Thursday, January 13, 2022 to Monday, January 17, 2022

Welcome to the class! In this introductory module, you will become acquainted with interactive fiction (since you’re probably too young to know what it is) and learn about the field of automated story generation (since it’s a small subfield of AI and you probably haven’t heard of it). You’ll even get a chance to make your own mini interactive fiction game the old-school way!

Homework

Lesson 1: Intro to the class, Interactive Fiction, and Automated Story Generation [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

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Module 1: Neural Language Models

Tuesday, January 18, 2022 to Monday, January 31, 2022

With neural language models becoming more popular within Natural Language Processing/Generation (NLP/NLG), automated story generation researchers realized how much easier it is to generate text. (And this also helped NLP researchers get interested in story generation!) Here, you’ll learn about neural language models, particularly the transformer, how to work with them, and how they are used to generate stories.

Homework

Lesson 1: Neural Language Models + Transformers [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Daphne Ippolito

Academic Papers:

Supplemental Media:

Lesson 2: Transformers, Continued [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Daphne Ippolito

Academic Papers:

Supplemental Media:

Lesson 3: Pretraining/Prompting [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 4: Neural Story Generation + Module 1 Paper Presentations [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

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Module 2: Scripts and Story Structure

Tuesday, February 1, 2022 to Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Scripts can be considered the backbone of storytelling. They help us fill in the gaps of knowledge that we would otherwise be missing from reading a story, and they help us reason about why events happen and what order they happen in. This Module will teach you about scripts, causal chains, and events. We’ll also look at how people have been using these techniques in the age of the neural network.

Homework

Lesson 1: Scripts and Events [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 2: Understanding Procedures [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Harry Li Zhang and Veronica Qing Lyu

Academic Papers:

Lesson 3: Guided Story Generation [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 4: Story Ending Prediction (Story Cloze Test) + Module 2 Paper Presentations [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

None

Module 3: Search and Planning

Tuesday, February 15, 2022 to Monday, February 28, 2022

Homework

Lesson 1: Search [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

None

Supplemental Media:

Lesson 2: Classical Planning [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

None

Supplemental Media:

Lesson 3: Story Planning + Drama Management [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Stephen G. Ware

Academic Papers:

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Lesson 4: Façade Playthrough + Module 3 Paper Presentations [Video]

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Module 4: Commonsense Reasoning + Schemas

Tuesday, March 1, 2022 to Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Homework

Lesson 1: Commonsense Reasoning [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

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Lesson 2: Knowledge Representations + Schemata [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 3: Midsemester Recap + Ontologies [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Susan Brown

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Lesson 4: Module 4 Paper Presentations [Video]

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Module 5: Dialog + Characters

Thursday, March 24, 2022 to Monday, April 4, 2022

Homework

Lesson 1: Intro to Dialogue + Dialogue for Interactive Fiction [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 2: Character-Based Generation [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 3: Module 5 Paper Presentations [Video]

Academic Papers:


Module 6: Bonus Lessons!

Tuesday, April 5, 2022 to Tuesday, April 26, 2022

No homework for this module.

Lesson 1: Reinforcement Learning for Playing Interactive Fiction [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Prithviraj (Raj) Ammanabrolu

Academic Papers:

Lesson 2: Mixed Methods [Slides] [Video]

Academic Papers:

Lesson 3: Theory of Mind and Intent in Procedural Agents [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Jonathan May

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Lesson 4: Story Evaluation + Module 6 Paper Presentations [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Elizabeth Clark

Academic Papers:

Lesson 5: Visual Storytelling [Slides] [Video]

Guest Lecturer: Ting-Hao Kenneth Huang

Academic Papers: