The 29th AIAI Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Arjun Pakrashi1,3,5[0000−0002−9605−6839] , Ellen Rushe1,2[0000−0001−5869−5333] , Mehran Hossein Zadeh Bazargani1,3[0000−0002−1504−380X] , and Brian Mac Namee1,3,4,5[0000−0003−2518−0274] 1 School of Computer Science, University College Dublin arjun.pakrashi@ucd.ie, ellen.rushe@ucd.ie, mehran.hosseinzadehbazargani@ucd.ie, brian.macnamee@ucd.ie https://www.ucd.ie/ 2 Lero: Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software https://lero.ie/ 3 The Insight Centre for Data Analytics https://www.insight-centre.org/ 4 SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning https://www.ml-labs.ie 5 VistaMilk: SFI Research Centre on Agri-Food and information communications technology (ICT) https://www.vistamilk.ie This year marked the second year that the AIAI Irish Conference on Artifi- cial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS)1 was held virtually because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Once again, these extraordinary times did not prevent the submission of a high number of innovative contributions. Out of 44 submissions, we had 26 accepted papers this year. Over the course of the two-day conference, 17 full track, seven student track, and two nectar track papers were presented at the conference. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the commitment of our Program Committee of which there were 55 members. Amongst them were senior academics, postdoctoral researchers, and senior doc- toral candidates. The hard work of the committee meant that all papers received at least two reviews. A striking aspect of this years’ conference was the sheer diversity of topics presented. In machine learning, we saw contributions from time series forecasting and classification, natural language processing, image segmentation and classi- fication, and reinforcement learning; along with a wide array of applications in domains including medicine, agriculture, sign language recognition, space sci- ence, and cyber security. In cognitive science, we saw contributions in computer- assisted language learning, sentiment analysis, abstract reasoning, and cognitive robotics. Of all topics, the themes that came to the fore, in particular, were data augmentation and the use of synthetic data in machine learning. There were two keynote talks by Prof. Karl Friston and Prof. Sophia Anani- adou. On the first day of proceedings, Prof. Friston gave a talk entitled “Deep Inference” discussing the mechanisms underlying behaviour and decision making in the brain, and how these relate to existing models of learning such as Bayesian and reinforcement learning strategies. Prof. Ananiadou opened the second day with a talk entitled “Neural Information Extraction Methods and Applications” 1 https://aics2021.ucd.ie/ 2 Pakrashi et al. which covered recent research in named entity recognition, relation extraction, and event extraction along with applications in these areas. AICS continues to be the leading venue for discussion of artificial intelligence research in Ireland, dedicated to high quality and novel research. We are very grateful to the authors for their innovative contributions to this year’s confer- ence. We are equally grateful to the program committee for their thoughtful and considered feedback to the authors. We would also like to thank the attendees for their insightful questions and discussions following each presentation. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to University College Dublin and the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland for their support in organising the conference. Acknowledgments We are thankful for the support of the conference programme committee and our sponsors. The Programme Commitee – Elham Alghamdi (University College Dublin) – Antonio Bevilacqua (University College Dublin) – Bojan Božić (Technological University Dublin) – Rob Brennan (Dublin City University) – Derek Bridge (University College Cork) – Ken Brown (University College Cork) – Paul Buitelaar (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Fintan Costello (University College Dublin) – Fred Cummins (University College Dublin) – Padraig Cunningham (University College Dublin) – Mathieu D’Aquin (National University of Ireland Galway) – Sarah Jane Delany (Technological University Dublin) – Deirdre Desmond (Maynooth University) – Ruihai Dong (University College Dublin) – Ken Duffy (Hamilton Institute, Maynooth University) – Ivana Dusparic (Trinity College Dublin) – Cathy Ennis (Technological University Dublin) – Claire Gillan (Trinity College Dublin) – Frank Glavin (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Derek Greene (University College Dublin) – Severin Gsponer (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland) – Elizabeth Hunter (Technological University Dublin) – Georgiana Ifrim (University College Dublin) – Gareth Jones (Dublin City University) – Mark Keane (University College Dublin) AICS 2021 3 – Tahar Kechadi (University College Dublin) – Luca Longo (Technological University Dublin) – Jinghui Lu (University College Dublin) – Brian Mac Namee (University College Dublin) – Tiziana Margaria (Lero) – John P. McCrae (National University of Ireland, Galway) – James McDermott (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Susan Mckeever (Dublin Institute of Technology) – Paul Mc Kevitt (Ulster University) – Catherine Mooney (University College Dublin) – Brendan Murphy (University College Dublin) – Matthias Nickles (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Diarmuid O’Donoghue (Maynooth University) – Ruairi O’Reilly (Munster Technological University) – Colm O’Riordan (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Barry O’Sullivan (University College Cork) – Molly Quinn (University College Dublin) – Muhammad Atif Qureshi (Technological University Dublin) – Lucas Rizzo (Technological University Dublin) – Mohamed Saadeldin (University College Dublin) – Bianca Schoen-Phelan (Dublin Institute of Technology) – Michael Schukat (National University of Ireland, Galway) – Niladri Sett (University College Dublin) – Alan Smeaton (Technological University Dublin) – Wenyi Sun (University College Dublin) – Duncan Wallace (University College Dublin) – Shen Wang (University College Dublin) – Greta Warren (University College Dublin) Sponsors We would like to thank University College Dublin and the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland for supporting this year’s conference. Conference Chairs Thanks Dr. Arjun Pakrashi (University College Dublin) Dr. Ellen Rushe (University College Dublin) Dr. Mehran Hossein Zadeh Bazargani (University College Dublin) Dr. Brian Mac Namee (University College Dublin)