The next workshop on Philosophy and Informatics, WSPI 2008, will take place on April 1–2, 2008, in Kaiserslautern. It is organised by the special interest group on Philosophy and Informatics and the Department of Philosophy, University of Kaiserslautern.
I am very proud to announce that Luciano Floridi, president of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP), accepted the invitation to give a keynote talk at the workshop.
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Categories: English · Event · Philosophy
[UPDATE] I have been asked by Susan Stuart, E-CAP director, to become member of the E-CAP Steering Committee. Of course, I accepted!
The long second day with lots of talks and the very nice conference dinner last evening wore me down. My concentration this morning was lousy …
As the keynote talk “Empirical databases, networks, and their logic” by Giovanni Boniolo from the Department of Philosophy, Padova / European Scholl of Molecular Medicine, Milano / Firc Institute of Molecular Oncology, Milano, was outside my scope of research work I could not really appreciate it. But according to comments and questions it was quite good 
There is only one other talk I’d like to mention, a talk that got me worked up a bit: “The concept of the Semantic Web and its flaws” by Jean Robillard from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). It was again one of those talks promising the failure of the Semantic Web. I hope I got the point across that the Semantic Web does not exist yet and not (only) in the way he described, and that it is a bit premature to state or predict its failure.
Thinking about his claims afterwards I think the main problem with his talk is the premise that there exists a “concept of the Semantic Web”. As I understand Tim Berners-Lee and Co’s Scientific American article and his keynote talk last year at AAAI-06 in Boston, the Semantic Web is a vision for the future, a vision many people are working towards. There are many interpretations. And the interpretation that Jean Robillard chose is indeed questionable to become reality.
More presentations are to come. Some more business with the E-CAP organisers needs to be done until I can drive home in the evening.
P.S.: I am an IACAP member as of today.
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Categories: English · Event · Philosophy · Semantic Web
And still more from the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 …
The second day of ECAP is quite packed. Since nine o’clock in the morning until after seven in the evening three tracks are firing one presentation after the other on me. Some discussions I can follow …
The morning started with the keynote talk “The unsolved mystery of why evolution is so creative” by Mark A. Bedau from Reed College, Portland / European Center for Living Technology, Venice / ProtoLife SRL, Venice. Mark Bedau presented the arrow of complexity hypothesis: “Evolution inherently creates increasingly complex adaptive organisations”. There is no answer to this hypothesis yet, but by capturing the essence of complex systems in computer models and observing robust regularities we may come up with a model of evolutionary creativity. This talks very much showed how important models and the task of modelling have become.
On the panel on “The future of artificial intelligence”, chaired by Jordi Vallverdú, Paul van der Vet, Anton Nijholt, Susan Stuart, Mark Bedau, and I presented previous and current work, and how we look at the future of AI. My main point: Future AI is coupled to the (Social & Semantic) Web! (see slides)
Now, more presentations to go, and a conference dinner to enjoy!
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Categories: English · Event · Explanation · Philosophy · Research · Semantic Web · Web 2.0
Here is some more from the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007.
The session “Computational and post-computational approaches to the mind” was chaired by Susan Stuart. (I will learn more about Susan tomorrow in our joint panel session on the “Future of Artificial Intelligence”).
From the two talks I found the presentation “Turing test: mindless game? – A reflection on the Loebner prize” by Huma Shah and Kevin Warwick quite enlightening. I have to admit that I did not even know that there is a yearly contest. But the format of the original Turing Test has been altered considerably. Whereas Turing suggested an amount of five minutes for judging if one talks to (i.e., text-messaging with) a machine or human, the Loebner prize format has 20-minutes time-slots. And there are other alterations that change the Turing Test considerably. Let me just point out that the authors still believe that the Turing Test is useful, but the Loebner prize is deemed problematic at least. Positive observations comparing Loebner prizes in 2001 and 2006 are that conversations now can take place at length. But the negative aspects outweigh this because still “no meaning [is] transmitted or understood in conversational transactions”. Still keyword spotting as in Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza is predominant. The answers are still non-contextual.
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I am at the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.
Already yesterday I met by chance next year’s organiser, Jean Sallantin, Research Director at LIRM (Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics). He has some interesting and challenging ideas on Wiki-usage for preparing the next conference. As he thinks already about using XWiki, Stéphane Laurière, my trusted colleague in the Nepomuk project, was the logical connection to make. And there are some other interesting ideas.
The conference started with some introductions and welcome notes. One was given by Luciano Floridi, President of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy IACAP, which is doing quite good on “the market of philosophical thinking”. He provided an overview of the IACAP structure with the three chapters (Asian Pacific) APCAP, (European) ECAP, and (North American) NACAP, each with their own successful conference. Expansion plans are under work for creating a Latin American chapter (LACAP) and for including China, Japan, and India. Going for a non-profit organisation is another important step, a step IACAP needs to take in order to give the association a legal form. Luciano Floridi asked us to advertise IACAP. Well: Become a member, dear reader, and support IACAP.
The conference’s first and very interesting keynote talk was given by Jeroen van der Hoven (Delft University of Technology and Australian National University) on “The ethics of Wideware Engineering”. Wideware (or “cognitive scaffolding”) encompasses more than hardware or software. At least, that is my understanding now. Quoting Clark and Chalmer’s “extended mind hypothesis”, “the mind leaks into the environment. […] Where does the mind stop and where does the rest o the world begin?”. This corresponds quite well to the semantic desktop and its metaphor of a “semantically enlarged supplement to [human] memory”.
Thought-provoking, at least for me, was Jeroen van der Hoven’s analysis of “epistemic enslavement”. For example, a flight operator in his epistemic niche (his technical environment, which provides data on flight paths etc.) needs to believe what is presented to him screen. In his epistemic niche there is no opting-out for the narrowly embedded user of the system. “If I believe that the system provides the output (p) on good grounds, then I myself have good grounds to believe that (p).” This is called epistemic dependence. The user here has no cognitive ability to find non-obvious defeaters! From all that follows epistemic enslavement. “Non-compliance with system output constitutes taking a moral risk the user cannot justify at the moment of non-compliance.” For example, the flight operator cannot think for himself. He needs to rely on the system.
The basic ethical issue, thus, in Wideware Engineering is: “Do we get epistemic enhancement/engineering at the expense of our moral autonomy (”think for yourself“)?” I believe my research on explanation heads exactly into that direction where decision support systems are concerned, in order to provide the user with the information to lessen the moral risk mentioned above. Of course, such real-time systems in flight control are an extreme, but expert or decision support systems in medicine also need to deal with the issue of responsibility.
So much for now …
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Categories: English · Event · Explanation · Nepomuk · Philosophy · Research
On June 1, I was one of the opponents in Anders Kofod-Petersen’s PhD defence at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU in Trondheim. This experience marks the current culmination point of my academic career as this was the first time that I was involved in the “making of a doctor”
I met Anders at my first workshop on Modelling and Retrieval of Context MRC 2004, which I initiated and co-organized together with Stefan Schulz. It was also there that I met Patrick Brézillon who became the other opponent. At that time I did not think about being involved in Anders’ or anyone else’s PhD evaluation process. But I seemed to have made some lasting impression 
The evaluation process started about a year ago (June 19, 2006, to be precise) when Agnar Aamodt asked me if I would like to be an opponent in the PhD evaluation of Anders Kofod-Petersen, which I happily agreed to. As I learned, the evaluation process is somewhat different to the German system (especially wrt the procedure in Kaiserslautern).
In Norway, the PhD candidate needs to give a lecture on a topic selected by the evaluation committee, i.e., Patrick and me. The PhD candidate only has two weeks for preparing the lecture. Certainly something worth adding to the German evaluation process.
Another difference is that the opponents each have about 45 minutes stage time for interviewing the PhD candidate after his defence talk. Not only the PhD candidate is examined here, but also the opponent. At least this is how I feel about it Historically, the first opponent focusses on the content of the thesis while the second opponent gives more emphasis on the structural and presentation-related matters. Being the second opponent I did exactly what I was supposed to do, commenting on structural and presentation-related matters. But there was also more than enough time for talking about content
The last remarkable difference in the Norwegian and German systems is that the supervisor of the thesis, Agnar Aamodt, has no say in the evaluation at all. In Germany, your supervisor (“Doktorvater”) is also your first referee. I think the Norwegian way is a very good way of bringing in another view of some distinguished researcher and removing any possible bias of the supervisor. Of course, it makes the process harder for the PhD candidate, but also more scientific and transparent.
The defence went very well. Anders gave a trial lecture on “Effective Application of Social Theories to Agent Communication”, a title chosen by Patrick and me. Anders’ summary of his thesis “A Case-Based Approach to Realising Ambient Intelligence among Agents” went as well as I expected and he defended his work in the interviews with Patrick and me quite well. It was a pleasure to award him his title. Well done, Herr Doktor!
All in all, my visit in Trondheim was quite an experience (see also my photos on my flickr account), despite some heavy migraine. I had the opportunity to give a talk on “Explanation, Dialogue, and Communication” and to hear one by Patrick about his contextual graph building tool (only in French at the moment, but check it out!). There emerged quite some opportunities to work together with Agnar and Patrick.
Passing on my experience of doing a PhD and actually participating in the formal evaluation and finishing process of a PhD is very rewarding. I am looking forward to repeating this experience in the future. Hopefully many more times!
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