CALL FOR PAPERS Deliberative and Generative AI: Hybrids and Foundations Special Track at FLAIRS-40, the 40th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA, May 24-27, 2027 Track page: https://jessetnroberts.github.io/flairs-special-track/ Conference: https://www.flairs-40.info/ Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=flairs40 (select the "Deliberative and Generative AI: Hybrids and Foundations" track) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CALL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deliberative AI, the classical, symbolic tradition of state-space search, proceeds through recursive generate-and-test cycles: candidates are proposed, evaluated, pruned, and refined toward a goal. Generative AI, epitomized by transformer-based large language models, is instead characterized by a weak or trivial test step, producing outputs by sampling from learned conditional probability distributions. A growing body of work treats these paradigms as complements rather than competitors. Search can structure and constrain LLM generation, and LLMs can serve as flexible components within a broader search process: as generators of successors, as scorers, or as tie-breakers. At the same time, an important question remains largely open: how, if at all, does deliberative, Type 2 behavior emerge from a fundamentally generative, Type 1 system? Following "State-Space Search and Transformer-Based AI Hybridizations" (Fisher, Moore, and Roberts, ACS 2026; available on the track page), this special track invites papers that explore, build, evaluate, or theorize about hybrid architectures combining state-space search and transformer-based generation. It equally invites papers on the foundational question of how Type 1 and Type 2 processing relate to and give rise to one another. We welcome systems papers, empirical studies, and position or theoretical contributions addressing questions such as: - How can LLMs serve as generators or evaluators within classical search algorithms? - How can search principles improve or control LLM decoding? - What is the theoretical relationship between LLM inference and generic state-space search? - By what mechanisms might a generative system come to behave deliberatively? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TOPICS (including, but not limited to) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Proposer-verifier, generate-and-test, and LLM-modulo architectures pairing LLMs with symbolic checkers, solvers, or simulators - LLM-guided search for planning, routing, program synthesis, and mathematical proof - Search-structured decoding: beam search, lookahead, and Monte Carlo-style rollouts applied to LLM generation - Scoring and filtering of generated candidates, including self-assessment, auxiliary discriminative models, and tool-based scoring - Reinforcement learning that folds evaluative, test-like signal back into generative models - Retrieval- and generation-augmented reasoning (RAG/GAR) - Neurosymbolic integration, e.g. concept nets or commonsense graphs paired with generative reasoning - Evidence for latent planning or lookahead in transformer representations - Theoretical and empirical characterizations of Type 1 and Type 2 processing, and of how Type 2 might emerge from Type 1 - Computational cost and efficiency trade-offs in hybrid systems - Applications in mathematics, transportation and robotics planning, scholarly and bibliographic reasoning, and interactive narrative ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES (23:59 Anywhere on Earth) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- January 22, 2027 Abstract registration (required to submit a paper) February 1, 2027 Full and short paper submission March 9, 2027 Paper acceptance notification March 15, 2027 Poster paper submission (2 pages + references) March 22, 2027 Poster notification April 5, 2027 Camera-ready, author registration, early registration May 24-27, 2027 Conference ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Full paper: up to 6 pages + references (up to 7 in proceedings; 20-minute talk) Short paper: up to 4 pages + references (up to 5 in proceedings; 10-minute talk) Poster paper: up to 2 pages + references Papers must use the FLAIRS-40 template, be anonymized for double-blind review, and be submitted as PDF through EasyChair under this track. Submissions must be original and not under review elsewhere during the FLAIRS review period. At least one author per submission must be available to review, and at least one author must present in person. Proceedings are published by Florida Online Journals and indexed in DBLP and Scopus. Full rules: https://www.flairs-40.info/call-for-papers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ORGANIZERS AND CONTACT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesse T. Roberts, Tennessee Tech University jtroberts@tntech.edu Kyle A. Moore, Vanderbilt University kyle.a.moore@vanderbilt.edu Douglas H. Fisher, Vanderbilt University douglas.h.fisher@vanderbilt.edu