October 2021

ICT with Industry workshop – Artificial Intelligence for Text Simplification (17-21 January 2022)

2021-10-20

Are you a young scientist with a background in ICT and do you have a creative and inquisitive mind? Do you like to think outside-the-box? Would you like to get into contact with industrial partners such as KB, RTL, Axini, SIG or Philips and solve a case together? Then apply for the “ICT with Industry 2022” Lorentz Workshop.

Every year, the Lorentz Center and NWO together organize an ICT with Industry workshop. During five days a group of about 50 researchers from IT and Computer Science from a wide range of universities (within the Netherlands and Europe) will work together extensively on challenging problems proposed by companies.

This year the KB has also provided a case: ARTificial Intelligence for Simplified Texts (ARTIST). During the ICT with Industry workshop we aim to explore the possibilities to make news articles, books and other publications more accessible to people with low literacy by applying AI techniques to automatically rewrite publications.

Links
– Register
– More info

Important dates:
– application deadline: 22 November 2021
– notification: early December 2021
– workshop: 17-21 January 2022

Background

In the Netherlands, about 2.5 million citizens between 16 and 65 years old find it hard to read. This means they face challenges to fully participate in today’s society. Recently we have seen this problem when people with low-level literacy received invitations for the COVID- 19 vaccines that were too complicated for them. But also understanding the news by reading news articles in the newspaper or websites can be difficult making it hard to understand current issues.

The KB, national library of the Netherlands, aims to make all publications available to all Dutch citizens, including people who have reading disabilities. In this use case we propose to explore the possibilities to make news articles, books and other publications more accessible to people with low literacy by applying AI techniques to automatically rewrite publications. In the Netherlands, several initiatives have been undertaken to manually make books or news articles more accessible. However, this is very labour intensive and only makes a small selection of publications available for illiterates. During the ICT with Industry workshop we aim to explore several methods to automatically rewrite news articles/book, making them available for all Dutch citizens.

DISA Seminar November 1st on Visualization Perspectives in Explainable AI

2021-10-14

When? November 1st, 2021 at 12-13
Where? Online, links will be sent to those registered
Registration via this link

This talk with Professor Andreas Kerren, will overview interactive data visualization research with a focus on the development and use of visualization techniques for explainable artificial intelligence. The field of Information Visualization (InfoVis) uses interactive visualization techniques to help people understand and analyze data. It centers on abstract data without spatial correspondences; that is, usually it is not possible to map this information directly to the physical world. This data is typically inherently discrete. The related field of Visual Analytics (VA) focuses on the analytical reasoning of typically large and complex (often heterogeneous) data sets and combines techniques from interactive visualizations with computational analysis methods. I will show how these two fields belong together and highlight their potential to efficiently analyze data and Machine Learning (ML) models with diverse applications in the context of data-intensive sciences. As ML models are considered as complex and their internal operations are mostly hidden in black boxes, it becomes difficult for model developers but also for analysts to assess and trust their results. Moreover, choosing appropriate ML algorithms or setting hyperparameters are further challenges where the human in the loop is necessary. I will exemplify solutions of some of these challenges with the help of a selection of visualization showcases recently developed by my research groups. These visual analytics examples range from the visual exploration of the most performant and most diverse models for the creation of stacking ensembles (i.e., multiple classifier systems) to ideas of making the black boxes of complex dimensionality reduction techniques more transparent in order to increase the trust into their results.

Did you miss it? If so you can watch it here: https://play.lnu.se/media/t/0_hghpwmkw

Keywords:
information visualization, visual analytics, explainable AI, interaction, machine learning models, trust, explorative analysis, dimensionality reduction, high-dimensional data analysis

Further reading:
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2020.3030352
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14034
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2020.2986996
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14300
https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCS52396.2021.00008
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1473871620904671

Seminar October 18th – Future Position X

2021-10-01

When? Monday October 18th 12-13
Where? Online, link will be sent to those who sign up via this link https://forms.gle/NTo7jnysyLkBWaAm8 no later than October 15th

During the seminar Magnus Engström, CTO at Future Position X (FPX) will talk about two clear cases where FPX with data science has contributed to creating the conditions for a viable city center by collecting and combining data from different sources. More specifically, it will be about how we have applied machine learning to be able to predict movements in the city center and how we with a data-driven approach have created an application that helps the University of Gävle to conduct research on how Gävle residents experience their local environment. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A and discussion about potential collaborations with researchers from Linneaus University

Future Position X is an independent Swedish innovation center that works for growth through better health and well-being in the smart, sustainable and vibrant city. FPX contributes both technology and expertise to develop data-driven community solutions.

By initiating projects, creating relationships and building collaborations, FPX contributes to collaboration between business, academia and the public sector. FPX contributes to knowledge development of new technology by creating meeting places and networks around data-driven innovation such as GIS, AI, Internet of Things and blockchain technology. FPX also provides technical solutions, including the Innovation Platform, a data platform that can be used to digitally model societies. We are an important player in the work of strengthening both society and companies to a more sustainable growth.