Maria Leikola guest of my research group

Last year I had the pleasure to meet Professor Mari Lundström in Cambridge. Mari took over the research group on hydrometallurgy and corrosion at Aalto University after Prof Olof Forsen retired. Mari and I discussed future collaboration, and I am happy to host Maria Leikola as my latest visiting researcher for the next six months.

Maria started her Ph.D. studies only this February. Her aim is to build on Lotta’s work and build a case-based reasoning application for comparing cyanide-free gold leaching methods.

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Explanation-aware Thinking, Design and Computing

I will be giving a talk at the BCS event Real Artificial Intelligence — A special one-day event showcasing Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence on Friday, 7 October 2016, at the British Computer Society London Office in Covent Garden. You can register online here.

Title: Explanation-aware Thinking, Design and Computing

Abstract: Explanation, trust, and transparency are concepts that are strongly associated with information systems. The ability to explain reasoning processes and results can substantially affect the usability and acceptance of a software system. Within the field of knowledge-based systems, explanations are an important link between humans and machines. There, their main purpose is to increase confidence of the user in the system’s result (persuasion) or the system as a whole (satisfaction), by providing evidence of how the solution was derived (transparency). For example, in recommender systems good explanations can help to inspire user trust and loyalty, and make it quicker and easier (efficiency) for users to find what they want (effectiveness). This talk presents important concepts for analysing and developing software systems with explanation capabilities and illustrates them with example implementations.

Artificial Intelligence: Case-based reasoning for recommender systems

Last year I gave an invited talk at Techsylvania 2015 in Cluj, Romania, on Case-based Reasoning for Recommender Systems. You can find my slides here (including a video recording of my talk) and the video separately on youtube here.

Professor Lars Noelle on „Artificial Intelligence – evil or just not happening?“ #sgaiconf

   
Prof Lars Noelle, Jade University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven, Germany, responds in his talk to recent discussions about the perceived dangers of artificial intelligence as formulated by Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others.

Some books recommended in the talk:

• David A. Mindell (2008) Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Space Flight Hardcove
• Nick Bostrom (2014) Superintelligence: Paths, dangers, strategies.

My PhD student, Vani Aul, on reusing search engine optimisation experience #ukcbr

  
Vani Aul presenting our paper „Towards experience management for Search Engine Optimisation“ 

Professor Susan Craw on recommender systems and case-based recommender systems #ukcbr

   

 Invited talk by Professor Susan Craw, Robert Gordon University, on „Recommender systems: Taking advantage of noisy neighbours“

Reminiscing on 20 years of UKCBR

Today we celebrate 20 years of successfully running the UK workshop series on Case-Based Reaoning (UKCBR). Ian Watson, founder of UKCBR and now Professor in Oakland, New Zealand, skyped in and reminisced about the beginnings of case-based reasoning and supporting research on this topic in the UK. Being part of the CBR community myself since 1998, it was good to reflect on the early days and hear nearly forgotten company names such as Inference, Intelligent Applications, I-Soft, Acknosoft. And the CBR newsletter of Ralph Bergmann. Ian’s AI CBR website. German and French workshop series. To the next 20 years!

SGAI committee meeting report

The Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (SGAI) met in Cambridge, UK, just before the Annual AI conference it organised. It’s great to be able to report on a successful year. Not only do more people come to the conference, we managed to attract more people to attend our Real AI Day in October. Our next event will be the UK workshop on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (UKKDD) at the BCS HQ in London on 21 March 2016. 

Forum for AI Research Students (FAIRS) 2015

FAIRS is an opportunity for students interested in AI to learn about doing a PhD and what an academic career entails. For the third time I had the chance to share my experience and knowledge. This time we had a few undergraduate and postgraduate students among the participants who not only listened but joined in to the discussions. 

Making a difference in people’s lives. That’s why I am in academia. 

You can learn more about FAIRS here. 

Lara Quijano-Sanchez guest of my research group

After Lotta and Eduardo last year, I am happy to have Lara Quijano-Sanchez as a visiting researcher this summer. Lara is a PhD student at the Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Until the end of August, Lara will be working with us on her phd topic.

Lara is researching on such topics as recommender systems, social networks, social factors, decision support systems, and applied intelligent systems. Her research is focused on the analysis and use of group recommender systems where she has developed several algorithms to reflect accurately argumentations between users in decision-making processes. Currently she is also working in the design of explanations that could help users better understand the recommendations proposed to them — topics we are researching in my research group as well.