National Science Foundation Grants UNO Professor $157,000 to Study Narrative Intelligence

A University of New Orleans (UNO) professor, Stephen G. Ware, has received a $157,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program.

Ware teaches classes at the university on artificial intelligence and game development, including focused studies on interactive narrative, planning and digital games.

The one-year grant will allow Ware and his students to try to address a specific computer storytelling problem through the Narrative Intelligence Lab at UNO.

On Ware’s personal website, he writes, “Narrative pervades the way we think and communicate. By empowering computers to reason about them we can build interactive systems which teach, train, and entertain more effectively.”

UNO revealed that, if successful, the research could improve interaction between computers in humans areas such as smartphone assistants, online games and educational software.

“People tell stories all the time, but computers have a hard time with this task,” Ware said. “This model of character beliefs will eventually be used in an intelligent training simulation that uses interactive stories to teach best practices to people like police officers.”