Challenge Rules

COMMONSENSE PERSONA-GROUNDED DIALOGUE CHALLENGE OFFICIAL RULES

PLEASE READ THESE OFFICIAL RULES CAREFULLY. ENTRY INTO THIS CHALLENGE CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL RULES. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ANY PART OF THESE OFFICIAL RULES, PLEASE DO NOT ENTER THIS CHALLENGE.

NO PURCHASE IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

1. CHALLENGE DESCRIPTION

Commonsense Persona-Grounded Dialogue Challenge 2023 is an opportunity for researchers and machine learning enthusiasts to test their skills on the challenging tasks of Commonsense Dialogue Response Generation (Task1) and Commonsense Persona Knowledge Linking (Task2) for persona-grounded dialogue.

2. SPONSORS

The Challenge is sponsored by the following organizations: Sony Group Corporation , with its principal place of business at 1-7-1 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0075, Japan.

These organizations will be referred to as "Organizers'' collectively from here on.

3. ORGANIZERS ADMINS

"Organizers Admins" are any companies or organizations authorized by Organizers to aid them with the administration or execution of this Challenge including but not limited to AIcrowd SA.

4. CHALLENGE START AND END DATES

The challenge will take place across two tracks and in 3 Rounds which differ in the evaluation dataset used for ranking the systems. The tentative launch dates for each of the Rounds are as follows:

• Warm-up Round : 3rd November, 2023
• Round 1 : 1st December, 2023
• Round 2 : 15th January, 2024
• Challenge End: 15th March, 2024

The datasets used for the evaluations of Round 1 and Round 2 will be split across 3 parts. During Round 1, participants will only see their scores on the first split. During Round 2, participants will only see their scores on the 2nd split. The final leaderboard will be based on the scores on the full hidden test set for the specific leaderboard of the specific track.

The challenge starts on 3rd November 2023 and ends on March 15th 2024.

5. AM I ELIGIBLE TO ENTER THE CHALLENGE?

You are eligible to enter this Challenge if you (and each member of your Team) meet all of the following requirements as of the time and date of entry:

• You are an individual;
• You are 18 years of age or older but in no event less than the age of majority in your place of residence;
• You have Internet Access, an Email Account, and access to a personal computer;

The residents of the following countries or regions are not eligible for cash prizes of the competition:

• The Crimea region of Ukraine
• Cuba
• Iran
• North Korea
• Sudan
• Syria
• Quebec, Canada
• Brazil
• Italy
• Russian Federation

Please note that residents of these countries or regions are still allowed to participate in the challenge and retain their final rank on the leaderboard of the competition. Any cash prizes associated with a leaderboard rank held by a non-eligible team will be passed onto the next eligible team on the leaderboard.

Please Note: it is entirely your responsibility to review and understand your employer's and countries policies about your eligibility to participate in this Challenge. If you participate in violation of your employer's or countries policies, you and your Entry may be disqualified from the Challenge. Organizers disclaim any and all liability or responsibility with respect to disputes arising between an employer and such employer's employee or between a country and its resident in relation to this matter.

6. IS THE ENTRY AN ELIGIBLE ENTRY?

To be eligible to be considered for a prize, as solely determined by the Organizers:

The Entry MUST:

• be compatible with the official submission format;
• be in English;
• be the Team's own original work;
• not have been submitted previously in any promotion of any kind;
• not contain material or content that: is inappropriate, indecent, obscene, offensive, sexually explicit, pornographic, hateful, tortious, defamatory, or slanderous or libelous; or promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age; or promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, or tobacco; or violates or infringes another's rights, including but not limited to rights of privacy, publicity, or their intellectual property rights; or is inconsistent with the message, brand, or image of Organizers, is unlawful; or is in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations of any jurisdiction in which the Entry is created; and

The Team members MUST:

• ensure the Team has obtained any and all consents, approvals, or licenses required for submission of the Entry;
• obtain any consents necessary from all members of the Team with respect to the sharing of such member's personal information as outlined herein;
• obtain the agreement of all members of the Team to these Rules;
• not generate the Entry by any means which violate these Rules, the Organizers Terms of Service or the Organizers Privacy Policy;
• not engage in false, fraudulent, or deceptive acts at any phase during participation in the Challenge; and
• not tamper or abuse any aspect of this Challenge.

7. DISQUALIFICATION

If you, any Team member, or the Entry is found to be ineligible for any reason, including but not limited to conflicts within Teams and noncompliance with Sections 5 and 6 of these Rules, Organizers and Organizers Affiliates reserve the right to disqualify the Entry and/or you and/or your Team members from this Challenge and any other contest or promotional activity sponsored or administered in any way by the Organizers.

A participant is not allowed to create more than one account to participate in the challenge. Violating this will result in disqualification from the challenge.

8. HOW MAY THE ENTRY POTENTIALLY BE USED?

The Entry may be used in a few different ways. Organizers do not claim to own your Team's Entry, however, by submitting the Entry you and each member of your Team:

• hereby grants to Organizers Admins a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, world-wide right and license to review and analyze the Entry in relation to this Challenge;
• hereby grants to Organizers and Organizers Admins a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, world-wide right and license to use the Entry or parts of your Entry in any media for any non-commercial or commercial purpose in connection with the marketing, sale, or promotion of Organizers, Organizers Admins and their respective products and services;
• agrees that each member will execute any necessary paperwork for Organizers and Organizers Admins to use the rights and licenses granted hereunder;
• acknowledges and agrees that the Team will not be compensated and may not be credited (at Organizers's sole discretion) for the use of the Entry as described in these Rules;
• acknowledges that the Organizers or Organizers Admins may have developed or commissioned materials similar to the Entry and waive any claims resulting from any similarities to the Entry;
• understand that the Entry may be posted on a public website or social media channel and that Organizers is not responsible for any unauthorized use of the Entry by visitors to such site; and
• understand and acknowledge that, subject to provision of Prizes, Organizers are not obligated to use the Entry in any way, even if the Entry is selected as a winning Entry.

Personal data you submit in relation to this Challenge will be used by Organizers and Organizer Admins in accordance to Section 15 of these Rules.

The outputs and analytical findings of each model may be disclosed in scholarly publications. Such disclosures shall include:

• The outputs generated by each model.
• The outcomes of evaluations, including both automated and manual assessments, irrespective of their current adoption.
• The submission IDs for each model, along with associated data made available on the AIcrowd website, including, without limitation, the presence or absence of GPU utilisation.
• The findings from statistical analyses conducted on the responses generated by each model.

9. HOW WILL WINNERS BE SELECTED AND NOTIFIED?

Entries will be judged via an algorithm that will generate a score based upon which Entries will be ranked and such ranking will be displayed on the AIcrowd Site's Challenge and Track specific leaderboard ("Leaderboard").

The top Entries in the final leaderboard of Task 1 will be evaluated by human, and the award winning teams will be selected based ONLY on the results of the human evaluation.

TIED ENTRIES

If two or more participating Teams have the same score, a secondary algorithmic metric will be added to the scores. If all scores are identical and prizes are awarded to the teams they will be shared evenly among the Teams.

Potential winners will be contacted via the email associated with AIcrowd.com account through which the Entry was submitted. If a potential winner cannot be contacted, does not respond as directed, refuses the prize, or is found to be ineligible for any reason, such prize may be forfeited and awarded to an alternate winner. Only one alternate winner will be selected per each prize package, after which prizes will remain unawarded.

To be eligible for the prizes, participants will have to release the inference code (and associated weights) to their solutions under an open-source license of their choice with a proper documentation. The submitted code is expected to be reproducible and should produce a similar score as on the leaderboard.

To the extent that there is any dispute as to the identity of the potential winner, the official account holder of the email address associated with the AIcrowd account through which the Entry was first submitted will be deemed the official potential winner by Organizers. The prize distribution will be done in six months.

10. YOUR ODDS OF WINNING

ODDS OF WINNING A PRIZE ARE SUBJECT TO THE TOTAL NUMBER OF ELIGIBLE ENTRIES RECEIVED AND HOW YOUR ENTRY SCORES IN ACCORDANCE TO THE JUDGING CRITERIA.

11. PRIZES

The total prize pool is 35,000 USD, which will be divided as follows.

Task 1: Commonsense Dialogue Response Generation

• 🥇 First place 15,000 USD
• 🥈 Second place 7,000 USD
• 🥉 Third place 3,000 USD

Task 2: Commonsense Persona Knowledge Linking

• 🥇 First place 5,000 USD
• 🥈 Second place 3,000 USD
• 🥉 Third place 2,000 USD

12. WHEN WILL PRIZES BE AWARDED?

The prizes will be awarded within a commercially reasonable time frame. All members of a Team may be required to complete and sign additional documentation, such as non-disclosures, representations and warranties, liability and publicity releases (unless prohibited by applicable law), and tax documents, or other similar documentation in order for the potentially winning team to claim the prize. Organizers will in no way be involved in any dispute with respect to receipt of a prize by any other members of a Team.

Only prizes claimed in accordance to these Rules will be awarded.

13. WINNER LIST

A list of all winners of this Challenge will be posted on AIcrowd Site and may be announced at Organizers' discretion via Organizers' Twitter, Facebook, Blog, or Website, or at an Organizer or Organizer Admins sponsored or hosted event

14. YOUR PERSONAL DATA AND PRIVACY

Organizers may use cookies and/or collect IP addresses for the purpose of implementing or exercising its rights or obligations under the Rules, for information purposes, identifying your location, including without limitation for the purpose of redirecting you to the appropriate geographic website, if applicable, or for any other lawful purpose in accordance with the Privacy Policy.

Organizers may use the personal data you provide via your participation in this Challenge:

• to contact you in relation to the Challenge;
• to confirm the details of your Entry;
• to administer and execute this Challenge, including sharing it with Organizer Admins;
• at Organizers' discretion, to credit you and/or your Team for the Entry, identify you and/or your Team as a Winner, or other similar notice; and
• as otherwise noted in these Rules or as necessary for Organizers to meet their obligations under these Rules or applicable law.

Organizers only require name and email address to be submitted for you to participate in this Challenge for its uses as outlined in this Section 15. Please read the terms and conditions of the AIcrowd Site carefully to understand how your data may be used by AIcrowd SA.

15. DATA USE AGREEMENT

Transparency in Data Use: Participants agree to uphold complete transparency in the use of additional data from external sources. This includes clear documentation of all methods and adherence to ethical standards, particularly in the context of dialogue systems and persona data.

External Dataset Usage: Participants using external datasets must ensure their use is permissible for non-commercial or academic research purposes. Compliance with licensing terms is mandatory. The use of any publicly available datasets, other than those provided as part of the CPD Challenge resources, must be clearly declared and justified.

Use Justification: Participants must provide a rationale for using any declared datasets, ensuring that their use aligns with the objectives of the CPD Challenge and does not violate any dataset-specific terms of use.

Prohibition on Test Data Use for Model Improvement: Participants are strictly prohibited from using test data, accessible during runtime, to enhance, tune, or modify their models. The integrity of the evaluation process depends on assessing the pre-existing capabilities of models without real-time adjustments based on test data insights.

Penalties for Violation: Any violation of these terms, especially the misuse of test data for model improvement, will result in immediate disqualification and potential further actions as determined by the challenge organizers.

By participating in the CPD Challenge, you, the Participant, acknowledge and agree to these terms, confirming your understanding and commitment to maintaining the integrity and fairness of the competition.

16. ADDITIONAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS

If Organizers determine, in their sole discretion, that any portion of this Challenge is compromised by virus, bugs, unauthorized human intervention, or any other causes beyond its control, that in the sole opinion of Organizers corrupts, or impairs the administration, security, fairness or proper participation in/of the Challenge, Organizers reserves the right to (a) cancel the Challenge; (b) pause the Challenge until such time the aforementioned issues may be resolved; or (c) consider only those Entries submitted prior to the when the Challenge was so compromised for the prizes.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that Organizers, Organizer Affiliates, and Organizer Admins, and each of their directors, officers, employees, agents and assigns, will not be liable for personal injuries, death, damages, expenses or costs or losses of any kind resulting from participation or inability to participate in this Challenge or acceptance of or use or inability to use a prize or parts thereof including, without limitation, claims, suits, injuries, losses and damages related to personal injuries, death, damage to or destruction of property, rights of publicity or privacy, defamation or portrayal in a false light (whether intentional or unintentional), whether under a theory of contract, tort (including negligence), warranty or other theory.

Your use of any other products and services required by these Rules, whether required by these Rules or not, are subject to the terms and conditions associated with such products or services, including the AIcrowd site and services.

In the event any clause or provision of these Rules prove unenforceable, void or incomplete, the validity of the other conditions will remain unaffected.