Virtual Agency Digital Original Edition

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. This BIT, excerpted from an influential book by the late Daniel Wegner, offers an innovative view of one aspect of free will. Wegner argues that when people project action to imaginary agents, they create virtual agents, apparent sources of their own volition.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2015, held in Delft, The Netherlands, in August 2015. The 11 full papers, 22 short papers, and 21 demo and poster papers accepted were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. Constructing and studying intelligent virtual agents requires knowledge , theories, methods, and tools from a wide range of fields such as computer science, psychology, cognitive sciences, communication, linguistics, interactive media, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. The papers are organized in topical sections such as adaptive dialogue and user modeling; cognitive, affective and social models; nonverbal behavior and gestures; pedagogical agents in health and training; tools and frameworks; turn-taking; virtual agent perception studies.

Unlock the Secrets to Building a Thriving Digital Agency in the Age of AI Are you a digital agency owner or entrepreneur struggling to keep up with the demands of the modern marketing landscape? Do you dream of scaling your business, delivering exceptional value to clients, and dominating your niche? Look no further than "The Virtual Digital Agency Playbook" by Raissa Gomez. In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover how to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform your agency into a lean, efficient, and highly profitable machine. Gomez, a seasoned digital marketing expert, reveals the proven strategies and tactics she's used to build and scale her own successful virtual agency. Inside, you'll learn how to: Identify and capitalize on profitable niches using AI-powered market research and competitor analysis. Craft irresistible service offerings that attract and retain high-value clients. Automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows to maximize efficiency and productivity. Leverage AI tools and technologies to deliver exceptional results and exceed client expectations. Build and manage a high-performing virtual team of experts from around the globe. Navigate the legal and ethical considerations of AI implementation in your agency. Develop a future-proof strategy for scaling your business and achieving long-term success. Whether you're a seasoned agency owner or just starting out, "The Virtual Digital Agency Playbook" is your roadmap to unlocking the full potential of AI in your business. Don't get left behind in the digital age – embrace the power of AI and transform your agency into a thriving virtual powerhouse.

This volume, containing the proceedings of IVA 2003, held at Kloster Irsee, in Germany, September 15–17, 2003, is testimony to the growing importance of IntelligentVirtualAgents(IVAs) asaresearch?eld.Wereceived67submissions, nearly twice as many as for IVA 2001, not only from European countries, but from China, Japan, and Korea, and both North and South America. As IVA research develops, a growing number of application areas and pl- forms are also being researched. Interface agents are used as part of larger - plications, often on the Web. Education applications draw on virtual actors and virtual drama, while the advent of 3D mobile computing and the convergence of telephones and PDAs produce geographically-aware guides and mobile - tertainment applications. A theme that will be apparent in a number of the papers in this volume is the impact of embodiment on IVA research – a char- teristic di?erentiating it to some extent from the larger ?eld of software agents.

Advances in modern sciences occur thanks to within-fields discoveries as well as confrontation of concepts and methods from separated, sometimes distant, domains of knowledge. For instance, the fields of psychology and psychopathology benefited from accumulated contributions from cognitive neurosciences, which, in turn, received insights from molecular chemistry, cellular biology, physics (neuroimaging), statistics and computer sciences (data processing), etc. From the results of these researches, one can argue that among the numerous cognitive phenomena supposedly involved in the emergence the human intelligence and organized behavior, some of them are specific to the social nature of our phylogenetic order. Scientific reductionism allowed to divide the social cognitive system into several components, i.e. emotion processing and regulation, mental state inference (theory of mind), agency, etc. New paradigms were progressively designed to investigate these processes within highly-controlled laboratory settings. Moreover, the related constructs were successful at better understanding psychopathological conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, with partial relationships with illness outcomes. Here, we would like to outline the parallel development of concepts in social neurosciences and in other domains such as computer science, affective computing, virtual reality development, and even hardware technologies. While several researchers in neurosciences pointed out the necessity to consider naturalistic social cognition (Zaki and Ochsner, Ann N Y Acad Sci 1167, 16-30, 2009), the second person perspective (Schilbach et al., Behav Brain Sci 36(4), 393-414, 2013) and reciprocity (de Bruin et al., Front Hum Neurosci 6, 151, 2012), both computer and software developments allowed more and more realistic real-time models of our environment and of virtual humans capable of some interaction with users. As noted at the very beginning of this editorial, a new convergence between scientific disciplines might occur from which it is tricky to predict the outcomes in terms of new concepts, methods and uses. Although this convergence is motivated by the intuition that it fits well ongoing societal changes (increasing social demands on computer technologies, augmenting funding), it comes with several difficulties for which the current Frontiers in’ topic strives to bring some positive answers, and to provide both theoretical arguments and experimental examples. The first issue is about concepts and vocabulary as the contributions described in the following are authored by neuroscientists, computer scientists, psychopathologists, etc. A special attention was given during the reviewing process to stay as close as possible to the publication standards in psychological and health sciences, and to avoid purely technical descriptions. The second problem concerns methods: more complex computerized interaction models results in unpredictable and poorly controlled experiments. In other words, the assets of naturalistic paradigms may be alleviated by the difficulty to match results between subjects, populations, conditions. Of course, this practical question is extremely important for investigating pathologies that are associated with profoundly divergent behavioral patterns. Some of the contributions of this topic provide description of strategies that allowed to solve these difficulties, at least partially. The last issue is about heterogeneity of the objectives of the researches presented here. While selection criteria focused on the use of innovative technologies to assess or improve social cognition, the fields of application of this approach were quite unexpected. In an attempt to organize the contributions, three directions of research can be identified: 1) how innovation in methods might improve understanding and assessment of social cognition disorders or pathology? 2) within the framework of cognitive behavioral psychotherapies (CBT), how should we consider the use of virtual reality or augmented reality? 3) which are the benefits of these techniques for investigating severe mental disorders (schizophrenia or autism) and performing cognitive training? The first challenging question is insightfully raised in the contribution of Timmermans and Schilbach (2014) giving orientations for investigating alterations of social interaction in psychiatric disorders by the use of dual interactive eye tracking with virtual anthropomorphic avatars. Joyal, Jacob and collaborators (2014) bring concurrent and construct validities of a newly developed set of virtual faces expressing six fundamental emotions. The relevance of virtual reality was exemplified with two contributions focusing on anxiety related phenomena. Jackson et al. (2015) describe a new environment allowing to investigate empathy for dynamic FACS-coded facial expressions including pain. Based on a systematic investigation of the impact of social stimuli modalities (visual, auditory), Ruch and collaborators are able to characterize the specificity of the interpretation of laughter in people with gelotophobia (2014). On the issue of social anxiety, Aymerich-Franch et al. (2014) presented two studies in which public speaking anxiety has been correlated with avatars’ similarity of participants’ self-representations. The second issue focuses on how advances in virtual reality may benefit to cognitive and behavioral therapies in psychiatry. These interventions share a common framework that articulates thoughts, feelings or emotions and behaviors and proposes gradual modification of each of these levels thanks to thought and schema analysis, stress reduction procedures, etc. They were observed to be somehow useful for the treatment of depression, stress disorders, phobias, and are gaining some authority in personality disorders and addictions. The main asset of new technologies is the possibility to control the characteristics of symptom-eliciting stimuli/situations, and more precisely the degree to which immersion is enforced. For example, Baus and Bouchard (2014) provide a review on the extension of virtual reality exposure-based therapy toward recently described augmented reality exposure-based therapy in individuals with phobias. Concerning substance dependence disorders, Hone-Blanchet et collaborators (2014) present another review on how virtual reality can be an asset for both therapy and craving assessment stressing out the possibilities to simulate social interactions associated with drug seeking behaviors and even peers’ pressure to consume. The last issue this Frontiers’ topic deals with encompasses the questions raised by social cognitive training or remediation in severe and chronic mental disorders (autistic disorders, schizophrenia). Here, therapies are based on drill and practice or strategy shaping procedures, and, most of the time, share an errorless learning of repeated cognitive challenges. Computerized methods were early proposed for that they do, effortlessly and with limited costs, repetitive stimulations. While, repetition was incompatible with realism in the social cognitive domain, recent advances provide both immersion and full control over stimuli. Georgescu and al. (2014) exhaustively reviews the use of virtual characters to assess and train non-verbal communication in high-functioning autism (HFA). Grynszpan and Nadel (2015) present an original eye-tracking method to reveal the link between gaze patterns and pragmatic abilities again in HFA. About schizophrenia, Oker and collaborators (2015) discuss and report some insights on how an affective and reactive virtual agents might be useful to assess and remediate several defects of social cognitive disorders. About assessment within virtual avatars on schizophrenia, Park et al., (2014) focused on effect of perceived intimacy on social decision making with schizophrenia patients. Regarding schizophrenia remediation, Peyroux and Franck (2014) presented a new method named RC2S which is a cognitive remediation program to improve social cognition in schizophrenia and related disorders. To conclude briefly, while it is largely acknowledged that social interaction can be studied as a topic of its own, all the contributions demonstrate the added value of expressive virtual agents and affective computing techniques for the experimentation. It also appears that the use of virtual reality is at the very beginning of a new scientific endeavor in cognitive sciences and medicine.

Despite widespread interest in virtual reality, research and development efforts in synthetic environments (SE)--the field encompassing virtual environments, teleoperation, and hybrids--have remained fragmented. Virtual Reality is the first integrated treatment of the topic, presenting current knowledge along with thought-provoking vignettes about a future where SE is commonplace. This volume discusses all aspects of creating a system that will allow human operators to see, hear, smell, taste, move about, give commands, respond to conditions, and manipulate objects effectively in a real or virtual environment. The committee of computer scientists, engineers, and psychologists on the leading edge of SE development explores the potential applications of SE in the areas of manufacturing, medicine, education, training, scientific visualization, and teleoperation in hazardous environments. The committee also offers recommendations for development of improved SE technology, needed studies of human behavior and evaluation of SE systems, and government policy and infrastructure.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2008, held in Tokyo, Japan, in September 2008. The 18 revised full papers and 28 revised short papers presented together 42 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on motion and empathy; narrative and augmented reality; conversation and negotiation; nonverbal behavior; models of culture and personality; markup and representation languages; architectures for robotic agents; cognitive architectures; agents for healthcare and training; and agents in games, museums and virtual worlds.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Digital Economy, ICDEc 2021. The conference was held during July 15-17, 2021. It was initially planned to take place in Tallin, Estonia, but changed to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 18 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Digital strategies; virtual communities; digital assets and blockchain technology; artificial intelligence and data science; online education; digital transformation; and augmented reality and IOT.