The Society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
AISB is media partner with the AI & Big Data Expo, with regular presence at their London event. AI & Big Data Expo North America, a key part of TechEx North America, is the premier event showcasing Generative AI, Enterprise AI, Machine Learning, Security, Ethical AI, Deep Learning, Data Ecosystems, and NLP. Register for your free or gold pass to attend.
Title: Towards Verification of Neural Systems.
Speaker: Alessio Lomuscio, PhD.
Imperial College London.
Safe Intelligence.
21 March, 5pm CET (4pm GMT)
Abstract:
A major challenge in deploying ML-based systems, such as ML-based computer vision, is the inherent difficulty in ensuring their performance in the operational design domain. The standard approach consists in extensively testing models against a wide collection of inputs. However, testing is inherently limited in coverage, and it is expensive in several domains.
Novel verification methods provide guarantees that a neural model meets its specifications in dense neighbourhood of selected inputs. For example, by using verification methods we can establish whether a model is robust with respect to infinitely many re-illumination changes, or particular noise patterns in the vicinity to an input. Verification methods can also be tailored to specifications in the latent space and establish the robustness of models against semantic perturbations not definable in the input space (3D pose changes, background changes, etc). Additionally, verification methods can be paired with learning to obtain robust learning methods capable of generating models inherently more robust than those that may be derived with standard methods.
In this presentation I will succinctly cover the key theoretical results leading to some of the present ML verification technology, illustrate the resulting toolsets and capabilities, and describe some of the use cases developed with our colleagues at Boeing Research, including centerline distance estimation, object detection, and runway detection.
I will argue that verification and robust learning can be used to obtain models that are inherently more robust than present learning and testing approaches, thereby unlocking the deployment of applications in society critical capplications.
Bio:
Alessio Lomuscio is Professor of Safe Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London (UK), where he leads the Safe AI Lab. He is a Distinguished ACM member, a Fellow of the European Association of Artificial Intelligence and currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. He is founding co-director of the UKRI Doctoral Training Centre in Safe and Trusted Artificial Intelligence.
Alessio’s research interests concern the development of verification methods for artificial intelligence. Since 2000 he has pioneered the development of formal methods for the verification of autonomous systems and multi-agent systems, both symbolic and ML-based. He has published over 200 papers in leading AI and formal methods conferences and journals.
He is the founder and CEO of Safe Intelligence, a VC-backed Imperial College London spinout helping users build and assure robust ML systems.
Further information on the preliminary programme will be communicated and published on the conference website: https://iacapconf.org/
For practical information including accommodation please visit here: https://iacapconf.org/pages/practical.html
Please note that there is an exciting free workshop with reception co-organised with, and sponsored by, 4TU.ethics on the Monday before the conference. Places are limited. More information is available on the conference and registration websites.
Conference dates: July 1-3
Conference website: https://iacapconf.org/
Host Organisation Websites:
IACAP.org
AISB.org.uk
Conference location: Enschede, NL.
Conference host: University of Twente
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) is the largest Artificial Intelligence Society in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1964, the society has an international membership from academia and industry, with a serious interest in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and related areas. It is a member of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence.
Our joint 2025 annual meeting will gather philosophers, ethicists, roboticists, and computer scientists and engineers interested topics that include:
Depending on format, submissions may be published in proceedings either as extended abstracts or as full papers.
Tech Show London has announced registration for its 2025 edition is now open. Taking place on 12-13 March 2025 at Excel London, the award-winning event will once again bring together five co-located shows: the refreshed Cloud & AI Infrastructure, DevOps Live, Cloud & Cyber Security Expo, Big Data & AI World, and Data Centre World.
Across two days, Tech Show London will provide a platform for thought leadership, collaboration, and innovation. Attendees can engage with industry experts, discover emerging technologies, and gain valuable insights to future-proof their businesses.
In 2024, the Tech Show London Mainstage featured an impressive lineup of global leaders and innovators including Professor Brian Cox; former investor on Dragons’ Den and Co-founder of Implement AI, Piers Linney; Chief Technologist at NASA, Dr Carolyn Mercer; Dame Stephanie Shirley; Founder of Starling Bank, Anne Boden MBE; Technical Expert Witness for Bates vs Post Office, Jason Coyne; CDIO at the Ministry of Justice, Gina Gill; and Chief Information Technology Officer at the United Nations, Bernardo Mariano Junior.
AISB Chair, Bertie Muller will contribute in two sessions:
12 March 2025 – AI vs. AI: Defending Systems from Intelligent Threats
13 March 2025 – Panel: How Strategic Practices Can Improve Incident Response and Strengthen Organisational Defences
Read the full article at: https://www.techerati.com/news-hub/registration-goes-live-for-tech-show-london-2025/
Bernardo Magnini Fondazione Bruno Kessler
February, 27 – 5:00PM (CEST)
Title: Rethinking NLP Evaluation in the Age of LLMs: Lessons from Benchmarking Italian
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are now at the core of most NLP applications, mainly because of their strong performance and their adaptability to different tasks and languages. However, despite their widespread use, evaluating LLMs is still an active area of research, and a debate about methodologies is ongoing. Several issues are under discussion, including competence-oriented and task-oriented approaches; how to balance prompt naturalness and effectiveness; investigate the role of multiple prompts in evaluation; considering both multiple-choice and generative tasks along with the most appropriate metrics for each; and comparing zero-shot and few-shot settings taking into consideration execution performance. To be more concrete, I will report examples and lessons learned from developing an LLM benchmark for the Italian language.
Bio: Bernardo Magnini is senior researcher at FBK (Trento, Italy), and responsible of the NLP research group. His interests are in the field of Computational Linguistics, particularly lexical semantics and lexical resources, question answering, textual entailment, and conversational agents, areas in which he has published more than 300 scientific papers. He has co-chaired several events, including EVALITA, the evaluation campaign for both NLP and speech tools for the Italian language, CLIC-it 2014 (the first Italian conference on Computational Linguistics), AI*IA 2018 (the 17th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence) and ACL 2022, the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. He has been contract professor at the University of Trento, Bolzano and Pavia, and President of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC) from 2015 to 2022.
Live Stream and recording:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIvRMMw2UQ
The Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with the AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, UK) is pleased to announce the next seminar of its Spotlight Seminars on AI initiative:
January 30 – 5:00 P.M. (CET)
Title: Evaluating Commonsense Reasoning in Large Language Models
Speaker: Anthony Cohn, University of Leeds, UK
Streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/@AixiaIt/streams
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the ability of LLMs to perform commonsense reasoning, particularly with regard to spatial reasoning. Across a wide range of LLMs, although they show abilities rather better than chance, they still struggle with many questions and tasks, for example when reasoning about directions, or topological relations. I will also discuss issues arising from the fact that some of the most powerful language models currently are proprietary systems, accessible only via (typically restrictive) web or software programming interfaces. This is the Language-Models-as-a-Service (LMaaS) paradigm. In contrast with scenarios where full model access is available, as in the case of open-source models, such closed-off language models present specific challenges for evaluating, benchmarking, and testing them.
Bio: Anthony (Tony) Cohn is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School of Computer Science, University of Leeds. His current research interests range from theoretical work on spatial calculi (receiving a KR test-of-time classic paper award in 2020) and spatial ontologies, to cognitive vision, modelling spatial information in the hippocampus, and Decision Support Systems, particularly for the built environment, as well as robotics. He is Foundation Models lead at the Alan Turing Institute where he is conducting research on evaluating the capabilities of large language models, in particular with respect to commonsense reasoning, and is also a co-investigator on a project combining LLMs and probabilistic answer set programming. He is Editor-in-Chief of Spatial Cognition and Computation and was previously Editor-in-chief of the AI journal. He has previously been President of IJCAI, EurAI, KR inc, and AISB. He is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A Simon Cognitive Systems Prize, and is also (uniquely) the recipient of Distinguished Service Awards from the three main international AI societies: IJCAI, AAAI and EurAI, as well as from KR Inc. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Learned Society of Wales, the AI societies AAAI, AISB, EurAI and AAIA, as well as the CORE Academy (International Core Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and the International AI Industry Alliance.
The joint AI*IA/AISB Committee of the Spotlight Seminars on AI,
Giuseppe De Giacomo
Floriana Grasso
Antonio Lieto
Bertie Müller
Luciano Serafini
Further information on this and upcoming talks in the Winter series can be found at https://aixia.it/en/incontri/spotlight-seminars-on-ai-winter-2025/
We are delighted to announce that Royal Bank of Canada have kindly agreed to support the AISB Convention 2025. RBC are a long time supporter of the AISB Convention and we are grateful for their support again this year.
AISB 2025 takes place on 14th – 16th January 2025 at UWE, Bristol. Places are still available for registration online. Full details of the convention and registration options are available here.
We’re proud to be partnering with Big Data & AI World 2025! Join us on 12-13 March at Excel London – Register today!
Big Data & AI World is the UK’s premier event for data and AI. Join industry leaders to explore transformative innovations, ethical AI, and emerging trends. Discover solutions to today’s challenges and unlock the future of data-driven opportunities.
Register here: https://www.bigdataworld.com/QuatroHive
It is with great pride and pleasure that we can announce the recipient of the EurAI Distinguished Service Award 2024 is AISB Fellow Anthony (Tony) G. Cohn, Professor of Automated Reasoning at the University of Leeds.Tony has served the European and international AI communities in numerous roles since the 1980s, including as president of both AISB and ECCAI/EurAI, as PC chair of ECAI-1994, and as editor-in-chief of the AI journal. Tony was presented with this award during the 50th Anniversary Session on the History of AI in Europe.
25 October 2024, 4pm (BST)
The AI*IA, in collaboration with the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), UK, is pleased to announce the first of the Winter 2024 seminars.
The seminar will be held by Melanie Mitchell and will be available for streaming on the YouTube channel of AIxIA at https://www.youtube.com/c/AIxIAit.
I will survey a debate in the artificial intelligence (AI) research community on the extent to which current AI systems can be said to “understand” language and the physical and social situations language encodes. I will describe arguments that have been made for and against such understanding, hypothesize about what humanlike understanding entails, and discuss what methods can be used to fairly evaluate understanding and intelligence in AI systems.
Melanie Mitchell is Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction and analogy-making in artificial intelligence systems. Melanie is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her 2009 book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award, and her 2019 book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) was shortlisted for the 2023 Cosmos Prize for Scientific Writing.
The aim of the seminars is to illustrate, explore and discuss current scientific challenges, trends, and possibilities in all branches of our articulated research field. The seminars will be held virtually (https://www.youtube.com/c/AIxIAit), on a monthly basis, by leading Italian researchers as well as by top international scientists. The seminars are mainly aimed at a broad audience interested in AI research, and they are also included in the Italian PhD programme in Artificial Intelligence; indeed, AIxIA warmly encourages the attendance of young scientists and PhD students.