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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2563/preface.pdf
Preface: The 27th AIAI Irish Conference on Artificial
Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2019)
Edward Curry1 , Mark Keane2 , Adegboyega Ojo1 , and Dhaval Salwala1
1
Data Science Institute, NUI Galway, Ireland
edward.curry@nuigalway.ie
adegboyega.ojo@insight-centre.org
dhavalvinodbhai.salwala@nuigalway.ie
2
University College Dublin, Ireland
mark.keane@ucd.ie
Abstract. 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 De-
cember 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, Quantifi-
cation of Knee Osteoarthritis Severity, Epidemic Spread, Music Scores,
and AI Social and Ethical Considerations.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Ire-
land, Conference, AICS
1 Introduction
In 2019 the 27th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Sci-
ence1is is hosted by the NUI Galway Data Science Institute and the School
of Computer Science. AICS will take place at the Institute for Lifecourse and
Society (ILAS) on the NUIG Campus, from 5-6th December 2019. While once
a niche area, the fields of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, which
encompass Data Analytics, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning, are
now at the forefront of Irish computing research and industry. The theme of this
year’s conference is "AI and Cognitive Science Applications for Sustainability."
AI-driven solutions to tackling the climate crisis require us to bring together
the researchers from multiple disciplines and to engages citizens and industry in
collective solutions.
We have witnessed significant progress in the mainstreaming of AI over the
last twelve months. For instance, the United Nations (UN) through its AI for
Good platform is building a global coalition for harnessing AI in accelerating
progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and building the
necessary institutional capacities to scale AI deployments. To guide these devel-
opments, guidelines for ethical deployment of AI have been published this year
by the European Union [1] and China.
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 chal-
lenges 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 [2] to boost European industrial competitiveness and
lead the world in developing and deploying value-driven trustworthy AI based
on fundamental European rights, principles, and values. Members of the Irish
AI community are actively leading and contributing to these critical challenges,
and the discussions over the next two days will move the AI agenda forward at
both National and European levels.
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 Clas-
sification, Quantification of Knee Osteoarthritis Severity, Control of Epidemic
Spread, and Identifying Sub-genres in Music Scores. AI Social and Ethical Con-
siderations are also discussed.
2 The Main Themes of AICS 2019
We are particularly delighted to have two keynote speakers, namely Heiko Paul-
heim (University of Mannheim, Germany) and Barak Pearlmutter (Maynooth
University, Ireland). Heiko Paulheim’s keynote addresses techniques for the ex-
traction of knowledge graphs from Wikipedia and other Wikis. Barak Pearlmut-
ter’s talk explores how we can make complex systems adaptive using differen-
tiable programming.
The primary themes that emerged from the successful submissions to this
year’s conference include AI and Cognitive Science research on Numerical Rea-
soning 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 in-
clude 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 epi-
demics 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 compar-
ison 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 contribu-
tions sections, and a way to extract this information from sections are considered
in a paper by Tkaczyk et al.
3 AICS 2019 in Numbers
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:
• Cork Institute of Technology (CIT)
• Dublin City University (DCU)
• Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT)
• Maynooth University
• National College of Ireland (NCI)
• National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG)
• Queen’s University Belfast (QUB)
• Teagasc
• Technological University Dublin (TUD)
iii
• TopQuadrant
• 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 Acknowledgements
4.1 Sponsors & Supporters
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 Organising Committee
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)
iv
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 Program Committee & Reviewers
• Mihael Arcan (NUI Galway)
• 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)
v
• Georgiana Ifrim (University College Dublin)
• 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)
References
1. High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence: Ethics guidelines for trustworthy
AI. European Commission (2019)
2. Zillner, S., Bisset, D., García Robles, A., Hahn, T., Lafrenz, R., Liepert,
B., Curry, E.: Strategic Research, Innovation and Deployment Agenda
for an AI PPP: A focal point for collaboration on Artificial Intelli-
gence, Data and Robotics (2019), http://www.bdva.eu/sites/default/files/
AIPPPSRIDA-ConsultationVersion-June2019-Onlineversion.pdf
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