The 27th AIAI Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science(AICS) is hosted by NUI Galway on behalf of AIAI, the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland, on the 5th and 6th of December 2019. AICS 2019 features 23 presentations, 24 posters, and 2 keynote presentations. Papers cover topics including: Deep Learning and AI techniques for Sustainable Agricultural Practices, Human Activity Recognition, Traffic Management, Skin Cancer Classification, Quantification of Knee Osteoarthritis Severity, Epidemic Spread, Music Scores, and AI Social and Ethical Considerations.
progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and building the
necessary institutional capacities to scale AI deployments. To guide these
developments, guidelines for ethical deployment of AI have been published this year
by the European Union [
Despite these positive developments for AI, several challenges remain. The
AICS 2019 conference takes place at a critical time in the development of research
and innovation policy for AI within Ireland and Europe. In Ireland, these
challenges are being addressed through mechanisms such as the National Strategy on
AI being developed and the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund designed to
foster academia-industry collaboration. At the European-level, Industry and the
European Commission are developing a proposal for an AI, Data, and Robotics
Public-Private Partnership [
The AICS 2019 programme 23 presentations and 24 posters with submissions from all Universities on the Island of Ireland, Institutes of Technology, Industry (i.e., UTRC, Jaguar Land Rover), and State Agencies (i.e., Teagasc). The topics of the presentations and posters reflect the wide range of world leading artificial intelligence and cognitive science research undertaken in Ireland. Papers cover topics including: Deep Learning and AI techniques for Sustainable Agricultural Practices, Human Activity Recognition, Traffic Management, Skin Cancer Classification, Quantification of Knee Osteoarthritis Severity, Control of Epidemic Spread, and Identifying Sub-genres in Music Scores. AI Social and Ethical Considerations are also discussed. 2
We are particularly delighted to have two keynote speakers, namely Heiko Paulheim (University of Mannheim, Germany) and Barak Pearlmutter (Maynooth University, Ireland). Heiko Paulheim’s keynote addresses techniques for the extraction of knowledge graphs from Wikipedia and other Wikis. Barak Pearlmutter’s talk explores how we can make complex systems adaptive using differentiable programming.
The primary themes that emerged from the successful submissions to this year’s conference include AI and Cognitive Science research on Numerical Reasoning and Algorithms, Big Data and Machine Learning, Deep Learning, AI and Reasoning, Understanding Data, and Speech, Video and Language processing. These themes are reflected in the conference thematic sessions.
Papers in the thematic session on Numerical Reasoning and Algorithms include multi-class classification using Kalman filters by Pakrashi & Mac Namee, as well as papers on a new software tool to automatically build dynamic bayesian ii networks by Ajmal et al., and on the validity of Bayesian Neural Networks by Mitros & Mac Namee. The paper by McDermott offers a novel view of the real meaning of No Free Lunch Theorem.
The Big Data and Machine Learning theme focuses on AI developments in dealing with data that include identifying sub-genres in music scores by Shingte and d’Aquin, ethical issues around the development of conversational agents are considered by Ruane et al., while stochasticity in biological ODE models are discussed by Ajmal et al.
Papers on the theme of Deep Learning include human activity recognition, sustainable agricultural practices and advanced methodologies for skin cancer classification by Browne et al., Pereira et al., and Farooq et al. An approach to autonomous road segmentation using deconvolutional pixel layers are discussed by Wahid and Ali.
Papers on Reasoning Applications include AI applications to control epidemics via Reinforcement Learning by Yanez et al., Affective Computing by Furey & Blue, and a study on the memorability of deep features extracted from the embedding models by Keany and McDermott.
Further developments in Understanding Data are described in papers on time series analysis of cryptocurrency commodities, topic-based corpus comparison technique and comparative modelling based on data and images by Barry & Crane, Lu et al., and Abedin et al. The performance of word and sentence embedding models are discussed by Queiroz et al.
The Speech, Video, and Language processing session includes papers on text classification methods and machine translation by Le et al., and Masoud et al. The effect of audio-visual mismatch on the sensory integration in a VR context are discussed by Siddig et al. A statistical analysis of authors’ roles in contributions sections, and a way to extract this information from sections are considered in a paper by Tkaczyk et al. 3
We received 58 submissions describing new research for AICS 2019 from a large number of Irish universities, institutes of technology, and companies as well as international institutions. The list of Irish institutions includes:
National College of Ireland (NCI) National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) Teagasc Technological University Dublin (TUD)
Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Ulster University (UU) University College Cork (UCC) University College Dublin (UCD) University of Limerick (UL) United Technologies Research Centre (UTRC) Jaguar Land Rover
4.1
The 27th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science is grateful for the support received by its sponsors NUI Galway, Data Science Institute, and the BDVe H2020 project. We are further grateful for the help of Rob Brennan (TU Dublin) and Brian Mac Namee (UCD, AIAI). 4.2
General Chair
Edward Curry (NUI Galway) Cognitive Science Chair
Mark Keane (University College Dublin) Publicity Chair
Cécile Robin (NUI Galway) Publications Chair
Abegboyega Ojo (NUI Galway) Assistant Chair
Dhaval Salwala (NUI Galway) Local Arrangements Team
Claire Browne (NUI Galway) Donal Carroll (NUI Galway) Gerard Conneely (NUI Galway) Hilda Fitzpatrick (NUI Galway) Christiane Leahy-Coen (NUI Galway) Niki Pavlopoulou (NUI Galway)
Michelle Treacy (NUI Galway) 4.3
Ali Azzam Naeem (UTRC) Norma Bargary (University of Limerick) Enda Barrett (NUI Galway) Joeran Beel (Trinity College Dublin) Rob Brennan (Dublin City University) Derek Bridge (University College Cork) Caroline Brophy (Maynooth University) Ken Brown (University College Cork) Paul Buitelaar (NUI Galway) Siobhan Clarke (Trinity College Dublin) Fintan Costello (University College Dublin) Fred Cummins (University College Dublin) Edward Curry (NUI Galway) Mathieu d’Aquin (NUI Galway) Sarah-Jane Delany (TU Dublin) Deirdre Desmond (Maynooth University) Pierpaolo Dondio (TU Dublin) Ken Duffy (Maynooth University) James Duggan (NUI Galway) Ivana Dusparic (Trinity College Dublin) Suzanne Egan (University of Limerick) Aidan Feeney (Queens University Belfast) Jennifer Foster (Dublin City University) Nial Friel (University College Dublin) Eoghan Furey (Letterkenny Institute of Technology) Claire Gillan (Trinity College Dublin) Frank Glavin (NUI Galway) Derek Greene (University College Dublin) Souleiman Hasan (Maynooth University) Conor Hayes (NUI Galway) Enda Howley (NUI Galway)
Gareth Jones (Dublin City University) Mark Keane (University College Dublin) Tahar Kechadi (University College Dublin) Aonghus Lawlor (University College Dublin) Suzanne Little (Dublin City University) Luca Longo (Technological University Dublin) Brian MacNamee (University College Dublin) Michael Madden (NUI Galway) Tiziana Margaria (University of Limerick) John McCrae (NUI Galway ) James McDermott (NUI Galway) Lorraine McGinty (University College Dublin) Susan McKeever (Technological University Dublin) Paul McKevitt (Ulster University) Fiona Newell (Trinity College Dublin) Matthias Nickles (NUI Galway) Noel O’Connor (Dublin City University) Diarmuid O’Donoghue (Maynooth University) Michael O’Mahony (University College Dublin) Colm O’Riordan (NUI Galway) Barry O’Sullivan (University College Cork) Declan O’Sullivan (Trinity College Dublin) Adeboyega Ojo (NUI Galway) Mary Parkinson (University College Dublin) Dirk Pesch (University College Cork) Robert Ross (TU Dublin) Bianca Schoen-Phelan (TU Dublin) Michael Schukat (NUI Galway) Cathal Seoighe (NUI Galway) Alan Smeaton (Dublin City University) Barry Smyth (University College Dublin) Tony Veale (University College Dublin)
Carl Vogel (Trinity College Dublin)