Auto-Mates: The Future of No-Code Digital Apprentices

Abstract

No-code digital apprentices are a category of assistants that end-users, who lack programming expertise, can effectively teach, supervise and validate. These assistants are capable of making decisions, taking actions with a certain level of autonomy and identify when they are insufficiently trained and seek guidance from the human supervisor in such cases. They rely on a combination of advanced technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), conversational AI, robotic process automation, digital process automation, and business rules to function effectively. In recent years, AI has made significant strides in various domains, including transformers, large language models, general AI, multi-modal representations, and generative models such as ChatGPT, Codex, HumAIns, Adept, and Auto-GPT. These advancements are poised to transform the field of digital assistants as they are becoming increasingly intelligent, autonomous, and better able to comprehend human work. This workshop aims to unite researchers from different fields, such as programming languages, natural language processing, computer vision, knowledge representation, planning, human-computer interaction, and business process management. The primary objective is to establish a cross-disciplinary research agenda that will direct future work in the field of no-code digital apprentices and the AI-driven revolution in this area. By bringing together experts with diverse backgrounds, this workshop seeks to advance our understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with NCDA and to encourage collaboration and innovation across disciplines. We invite scientists, practitioners, and students from both academia and industry who share a passion for the potential ways in which AI can revolutionize the no-code automation field to participate in and submit their original work to this workshop. We encourage contributions that not only enhance NCDA with AI algorithms but also utilize their combination to address broader AI challenges. Moreover, we aim to attract individuals from research-oriented industrial divisions, such as Microsoft Research, Google Research, IBM Research, Adept.ai, and intelligence automation vendors like UiPath and Automation Anywhere. The workshop seeks to foster an open and collaborative atmosphere for exploring cutting-edge research and discussing innovative ideas in the field.