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  • The Irish language is an important part of Ireland's culture, but it is a minority language and like many ‘at risk’ languages around the world, Irish needs to be protected.

    Today we're talking about how AI can help to boost the Irish language and the importance of diverse data collection in building robust translation systems. We also hear how researchers are using natural language processing and other tools to help maintain the richness of the language and make it more accessible and available to those who use it.

    Our experts today are passionate about protecting minority languages and are working on technology to improve machine translation of the Irish language with the Adapt Centre. They are postdoctoral researcher, Dr Abigail Walsh and research assistant with eSTÓR, Gráinne Caulfield, both from Dublin City University.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    ● Protecting minority languages with AI
    ● The limitations of data collection and the need for more diversity
    ● Using Natural Language Processing to collect the complexities of a language
    ● AI’s role in encouraging more use of an at risk language
    ● Getting social media platforms on board to make language more accessible

    GUEST DETAILS

    Abigail Walsh is a PhD student at the ADAPT Centre in Dublin City University. Her research focuses on improving NLP for Irish language, focusing on the treatment and automatic processing of Multiword Expressions (MWEs). Abigail’s interests include Irish language technology, MWEs, NLP for low-resource languages, linguistic analysis, data processing, Machine Translation, and Machine Learning.

    Gráinne Caulfield is a recent graduate of Irish & French from Trinity College Dublin, currently working as a Research Assistant on the eSTÓR project. In this role, she executes the project’s outreach activities- carrying out site visits to relevant stakeholders, managing the social media platforms, newsletter writing etc, as well as translation and data processing duties.

    MORE INFORMATION

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    KEYWORDS
    #irish #language #data #translation #machinetranslation #technology #ai

  • The pace of change in AI is beyond rapid and it's an exciting time for research in Ireland.

    Professor John Keller is now leading the way in research as the new director of ADAPT, the SFI Research Center for AI Driven Digital Content Technology.

    Today we hear about John’s ambitions in his new appointment including his thoughts on current developments in AI, how he plans to lead ADAPT and prepare for the future and why supporting multidisciplinary research will be a key focus for the centre.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    ● Keeping up with the pace of AI as it enters the mainstream
    ● SignON: Making AI accessible
    ● ADAPT’s role in mitigating the harms of AI
    ● Integrating multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research
    ● Mentoring and resourcing new researchers and culture
    ● Preparing for future challenges across different industries

    GUEST DETAILS

    Prof John D. Kelleher is the newly appointed director of the ADAPT Centre and Chair of Artificial Intelligence at Trinity College, Dublin. John’s core research expertise is in the areas machine/deep learning and natural language processing. Previously, he was the TU Dublin lead in the ADAPT centre and the scientific lead for the Digital Content Transformation Strand.

    Within the ADAPT Centre he leads research projects on language modelling, lexical semantics, machine translation, novelty detection, image captioning, dialog systems, and making AI more environmentally sustainable.

    John has been the academic lead on numerous industry projects across a range of topics and domains, including: anomaly detection, transfer learning, customer segmentation and propensity modelling, dialog systems and chat bots, and information retrieval and natural language processing.

    MORE INFORMATION

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    QUOTES

    The impact and penetration of AI into people's lives means that there's so much interest from industry in artificial intelligence, and that's really driving the pace. - John Kelleher

    When these types of technologies are prevalent throughout society it's important that the people in that society understand what they are and how they work. - John Kelleher

    The most important aspect, or the foundations we need to build in order for interdisciplinary research to flourish, is that we can communicate across disciplines. So we need to spend time with each other as researchers, understanding each other's language. And at the core of that is a willingness to listen. - John Kelleher

    Exciting things often happen at the margins, between disciplines, for people to come together in a complementary team, where they have complementary expertise. And so once you can build a bridge across the discipline, then you can do really exciting work. - John Kelleher

    Fluency in and of itself isn't the sign of intelligence that we thought it was before. And that's why maybe we need more emphasis on creativity and critical thinking within education. - John Kelleher

    KEYWORDS
    #ai #adapt #research #technology #artificialintelligence #culture #languagemodels #accessibility

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  • In the age of data our private information is currency and we digital trails behind us everywhere we go online. As AI grows in popularity, some fear it may be a threat to our privacy. It’s important we consider how we can best protect ourselves from our valuable information ending up in the wrong hands.

    Today, in light of Data Privacy Week, we're diving into the week’s theme, ‘Take Control of Your Data’, to ask how we can do that, who the responsibility of protection and regulation lies with and the ways generative AI can be a game changer for data privacy.

    Our expert is passionate about data protection at an organisational level and is Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals, Caitlin Fennessey.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    ● How the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is approaching AI
    ● Generative AI and protecting data privacy
    ● Data Privacy Week: Taking control of your data
    ● Encouraging organisations to embrace AI, rather than ban it
    ● Global streamlining of data privacy regulation
    ● Individual responsibility and creating change in organisations

    GUEST DETAILS

    Caitlin Fennessy is Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer at the International Association of Privacy Professionals, where she guides the strategic development of IAPP research, publications, communications, programming and external affairs.

    Caitlin is a recognized privacy expert, serving as an inaugural member of the UK International Data Transfers Expert Council, on the German Marshall Global Task Force to Promote Trusted Sharing of Data and on the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board. She speaks and leads frequent public discussions on the practical impacts of privacy developments around the world.

    Prior to joining the IAPP, Caitlin was the Privacy Shield Director at the U.S. International Trade Administration, where she spent ten years working on international privacy and cross-border data flow policy issues.

    International Association of Privacy Professionals: https://iapp.org/about/person/0011a00000DlNmBAAV/

    MORE INFORMATION

    This episode is in association with Empower, which is coordinated by Maynooth University.

    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre

    KEYWORDS
    #privacy #data #ai #governance #privacyissues #artificialintelligence

  • One of the most visible areas AI has been in use in the area of translation. Large language models are getting better and better at learning the subtleties and nuances of human speech and becoming more accessible. Do human translators need to be worried?

    Today we hear a talk on the intricacies of AI translation technology, where it is succeeding and where there is downfall, and why we’re maybe overestimating the impact it will have.
    Our expert is Professor at Dublin City University and deputy director of the ADAPT Centre, Andy Way, who is a machine translation expert for over 35 years and has been instrumental in shaping the field of machine translation worldwide.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
    01:12 Why neural machine translation is better than SMT
    04:16 Data limitations in NMT
    09:44 Hype around ChatGPT and AI
    14:27 The European Language Equality Project
    21:34 Inherent dangers in AI
    28:42 What is ChatGPT actually being used for?
    33:50 Humans are clever, not the systems
    40:45 Q+A

    GUEST DETAILS
    Prof. Andy Way has been in DCU since 1991, except for a period of sabbatical leave working in the translation and localisation industry in the UK between 2011-14. From 2014, he has been back in DCU full-time as Professor in the School of Computing at Dublin City University. In 2014, he became Deputy Director of the CNGL Centre for Intelligent Content at DCU. This programme was replaced by the ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology in 2015, where he remains Deputy Director.

    Prof. Way was Editor for the journal Machine Translation from 2007-21. He was President of the International Association for Machine Translation from 2011-13, and President of the European Association for Machine Translation from 2009-15. In 2015, he received the President's Research Award for the Sciences and Engineering faculties at DCU, and the IAMT Award of Honour in 2019 for services to the MT community.

    He has over 400 peer-reviewed conference papers and journals to date, and has brought in over €60 million in external research funding.

    MORE INFORMATION
    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    QUOTES
    In neural machine translation, we actually do have a model of the entire source string, and because of that, that, to me, is the biggest reason why neural machine translation output is better than a statistical machine translation output. - Andy Way

    The obvious implication is that for those languages where high class machine translation systems cannot be built, human translators will still be needed. - Andy Way

    AI and ChatGPT is being used not only for good, but for nefarious purposes as well. - Andy Way

    Large language models or multilingual large language models can produce high quality output and so, I think people who are system developers who rely on old neural technology better change to using multilingual large language models fairly quickly if their systems are not to become redundant. - Andy Way

    I think there'll be increasing demand for spoken language translation or multimodal translation in general. But again, you know, if there is a lack of data for many languages, or many use cases, for text data, you can imagine how hard this is going to be for spoken language data and multimodal data. - Andy Way

    I believe that you can't do machine translation wholly without input from linguists, or translators. - Andy Way

    Maybe the honeymoon period is over, people have started to push back against tools like ChatGPT, saying that they're not as good as people are claiming them to be and that we need legislation to make sure what use cases are being used for good rather than for evil. We need to not overhype this technology because then people are disappointed when they come to use the tools, and responsible, Explainable AI is the future. - Andy Way

    KEYWORDS
    #machinetranslation #translators #ai #chatgbt #largelanguagemodels

  • In the 21st century, we do democracy differently. The internet has opened up new channels of information, meaning that citizens can access and contribute to discussions about policies and governance.

    Today we find out how AI and big data support democracy in a digital age and what elections might look like in the future.

    Our experts are designer, artist and strategist and senior design lead with Democratic Society, Max Stearns and Associate Professor of Digital Humanities and investigator with the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College, Dr. Jennifer Edmonds.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    00:15 How digital technologies affect democracy
    04:27 The KT4D project (Knowledge Technologies for Democracy)
    07:50 The Digital Democracy Lab
    10:01 A cultural lens on technology and democracy
    13:07 Meaningful inefficiencies in democracy
    14:55 Technology in collective spaces
    16:39 Social protections for consumers
    18:24 Using technology to encourage informed decision making
    22:13 Diffusing polarization
    24:36 Trust in tools and information
    30:50 Opportunities for designers to reevaluate
    33:44 How AI will impact elections

    GUEST DETAILS

    Max Stearns is a design-minded researcher, strategist, and creative lead with proven experience crafting participatory systems change. He is a Senior Design Lead at Democratic Society, an organization that works with governments, civil society, and citizens to create opportunities for participation, dialogue, and action. His role is to research, design, and co-create systems and solutions that address social, ecological, and economic challenges across sectors and contexts, such as climate action, democratic innovation, and civic engagement.
    Max’s work has been showcased at NYCxDesign: Design Week, the Paris Design Summit, Feedback Summit, and the Allied Media Conference, as well as featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, BloombergCities, and Common in Design. Max holds a BA in political science and economics from Ohio State University and an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design.

    Jennifer Edmond is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin where she is co-director of the Trinity Centre for Digital Humanities, Director of the MPhil in Digital Humanities and Culture and a funded Investigator of the SFI ADAPT Centre. Over the course of the past 10 years, Jennifer has coordinated a large number of significant funded research projects, including her most recent project on AI, big data and democracy, KT4D. She has served in leadership roles in a number of European-level policy and infrastructure organisations, including six years as a Director and President of DARIAH-EU, four on the European Commission’s Open Science Policy Platform, and her current role as a member of the Governing Board of the European Association of Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH). Her research explores interdisciplinarity, humanistic and hybrid research processes, and the emergence of critical digital humanities as a contributor to both research and technology development.

    MORE INFORMATION

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    KEYWORDS

    #democracy #designtechnologies #ai #democraticprocess #elections

  • These days it's hard to know what to believe. Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new but AI and social media seem to be driving false information to new levels.
    Today we hear how experts are working hard to keep up with AI, and how education and awareness are vital to protecting people from harmful information online
    Our experts today are Associate Professor at Dublin City University, Professor Jane Suiter and Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies in University College Dublin, Dr Brendan Spillane.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
    00:20 The difference between misinformation and disinformation
    05:14 How AI contributes to harmful information
    08:03 The VIGILANT Project
    11:44 Detecting media manipulation
    17:07 How we can increase our own awareness
    23:54 The financial motivations behind disinformation

    GUEST DETAILS
    Dr Jane Suiter is Associate Professor at Dublin City University. with a focus on the public sphere and in particular on scaling up deliberation and disinformation. Jane is PI on H2020 ICT28 Provenance, a multimillion interdisciplinary project to combat disinformation and PI on JOLT a Marie Curie ITN on harnessing digital technologies in communication. She is also leading a new project on countering COVID-19 disinformation and the potential role of deliberation.
    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/jane-suiter/
    Brendan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies in University College Dublin (UCD) and a Funded Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland ADAPT Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology. His PhD investigated the impact of the visual presentation of news on the perception of bias in news articles. After completing his PhD, he held three concurrent positions as a Postdoctoral researcher on the H2020 Provenance project developing tools to detect and warn users of disinformation, a two-year Government of Ireland IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship conducting a Systematic Literature Review and Meta Analysis of credibility research to inform the design of new tools and theory to analysis disinformation, and a Research Fellowship in the Proactive Experiences and Agency challenge in the Digitally Enhanced Engagement Strand (PEA@DEE), in the ADAPT Centre. He is the PI of a new Horizon Europe Innovation Action project called VIGILANT. It is a 3-year, €4m project with 18 partners that will equip European Police Authorities with advanced technologies from academia to detect and analyse disinformation campaigns that lead to criminal activities.
    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/brendan-spillane/

    MORE INFORMATION
    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    KEYWORDS
    #disinformation #misinformation #socialmedia #medialiteracy #ADAPT

  • AI systems are developing at such a rapid pace and have sparked questions about how we can control their use and prevent them destroying society.

    With the AI Act due later this year, we hear from two experts on how regulation, cyber hygiene and digital literacy are key to using AI for its fantastic benefits, while protecting us from the potential dangers it can expose us to.

    Our guests today have extensive experience working with technology and safety, founder of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, David J. Hickton and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Discipline at Trinity College Dublin’s School of Computer Science and Statistics, and interim director of the ADAPT Centre, Professor Dave Lewis.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    00:00 AI the next frontier of efficiency
    02:08 Risks versus benefits of AI
    04:06 The EU AI Act
    07:11 Classification of AI products
    09:07 How the US is regulating AI
    10:34 Regulations pushback from companies
    14:58 Keeping up with the rapid development of AI
    17:38 Expected timeframe for implementation of regulations
    19:59 How regulations will impact consumers
    26:40 Ireland’s opportunity to lead the world
    30:03 The next steps for the US

    GUEST DETAILS
    David J. Hickton founded the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security in 2017. Hickton also has faculty appointments as professor in the School of Law, the School of Computing and Information, and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

    Prior to this, Hickton served as United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He was nominated by former President Barack Obama and was sworn in as the District's 57th U.S. Attorney in August 2010 and served through November 2016.

    https://www.cyber.pitt.edu/people/david-j-hickton-jd

    Professor Dave Lewis is Head of the Artificial Intelligence Discipline at Trinity College Dublin’s School of Computer Science and Statistics, and he is the the interim director of the ADAPT Centre.

    He leads ADAPT’s programme of industry collaborative research and its multidisciplinary research theme on Data Governance. His research focuses on the use of open semantic models to manage the Data Protection and Data Ethics issues associated with digital content processing. He has led the development of international standards in AI-based linguistic processing of digital content at the W3C and OASIS and is currently active in international standardisation of Trustworthy AI at ISO/IEC JTC1/SC42.

    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/dave-lewis/

    MORE INFORMATION
    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/

    KEYWORDS
    #ai #regulation #europe #technology #cyber

  • Conversations about AI are often future focused, but these emerging technologies can also help us bring the past to life.

    Today we find out how AI has been used in Beyond 2022, a flagship research project led by Trinity College Dublin which will digitally recreate seven centuries of historical records of the Public Record Office of Ireland destroyed by fire at Dublin’s Four Courts at the beginning of the Irish Civil War.

    Joining us on ADAPT Radio to tell us more are Senior Researcher at the Virtual Treasury of Ireland of Trinity College Dublin, Dr. David Brown and Managing Director of Transkribus developer Read-Coop, Andy Stauder.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    01:08 What is Beyond 2022?
    02:55 How the technology of Transkribus works
    05:33 Processing data for historians
    07:40 How AI can decipher handwriting
    11:42 Recovering and digitising lost records and documents
    15:35 Transkribus In Use
    17:34 Using Chat GPT and other large language models to reverse cultural loss
    20:27 Preventing bias in AI processing
    24:17 Other potential applications of this technology
    26:54 Futureproofing data accessibility

    GUEST DETAILS

    Dr David Brown is Senior Researcher at the Virtual Treasury of Ireland, a project based at Trinity College Dublin that aims to recreate a digital model of the Public Record Office of Ireland with its contents, destroyed in 1922. Starting in 2018, the Virtual Treasury of Ireland has developed a suite of deep-learning ‘models’, perfectly curated transcriptions, to train an AI system to read digital images of historical sources relating to Ireland and convert these into searchable text files. The automatic conversion of handwritten historical documents into searchable text is the latest major step in the digitisation of our written cultural heritage.

    Website: https://virtualtreasury.ie/

    Andy Stauder studied Translation Studies (German, Ital., Engl., Russ.; two Bachelor's, one Master's and one PhD degree) in Innsbruck, as well as Linguistics (Master's), Philosophy (Bachelor's) and Computer Science (not completed). His dissertation topic and research focus was the measurement of translation quality with combined machine- and human-based methods. In addition to his studies, he worked as a translator, IT manager and project collaborator in academic and EU-funded research projects and took over the technical management of the University of Innsbruck's subsidiary, innsbruck university innovations, in 2012, its management in 2016 and became managing director of READ-COOP SCE, the provider of the software Transkribus, in 2019.

    Website: www.transkribus.org
    Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-stauder-22a2b191/

    MORE INFORMATION

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie

    QUOTES

    I think it shows how far you can go with AI because we can't read it. So we're looking at this and going well, maybe we can verify the text and check any mistakes and so on. Actually, we can't read the stuff at all. So the AI is actually doing an amazing job. - David Brown

    You can search for, say, your family name, and you'll see your family name coming up on an old handwritten document from 500 years ago. People find this really, really interesting and engaging and an awful lot of fun. - David Brown

    Everybody knows Chat GPT at this point, the GPT model that's at the base of this is also transformer based. What the language models can do now is interact in a more natural way with the user. So you can ask the document itself what it contains. They are some new avenues that we are pursuing, currently. - Andy Stauder

    KEYWORDS
    #ai #handwriting #language #Transkribus #history

  • Since ChatGPT burst into the mainstream late last year, these conversational AI interfaces have been prompting huge discussion about how AI will shape our futures.

    Today we’re learning how these AI chat bots work and where they can be used to the human advantage. Plus, we hear how they’re redefining intelligence, but not enough to overtake the human mind just yet.

    Joining us to talk about this today on ADAPT Radio are Professor Vinny Wade, who holds the Professorial Chair of Computer Science and a Personal Chair in Artificial Intelligence at Trinity College Dublin and Professor John Kelleher, who is Professor of Computer Science at Maynooth University.

    THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

    01:18 What is a language model?
    03:49 The quality of language being generated by AI
    7:35 Different uses of generative chat models
    13:11 A new learning experience for students and educators
    20:09 Existential threat and current concerns
    25:57 Redefining intelligence
    28:01 Data sets and GDPR
    34:30 Exciting prospects in research

    GUEST DETAILS

    Professor Vincent Wade is co-founder of the ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology and holds the Professorial Chair of Computer Science (Est. 1990) in School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin as well as a Personal Chair in Artificial Intelligence. He is also co-director of the DREAL Centre for Research Training. His research focuses on intelligent systems, AI and Personalisation. He was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College for his contribution to research and has published over three hundred and fifty scientific papers in peer reviewed international journals and conferences. In 2018, he was awarded the Provost Innovation Award, the highest accolade the university can bestow for international research impact. As Director of ADAPT, Vincent heads a world leading research centre in digital media technology (text, video, speech, image, VR/AR) and AI.

    ----

    Professor John Kelleher is a Hamilton Institute Professor of Computer Science at Maynooth University. John’s core research expertise is in the areas of machine/deep learning and natural language processing. He is the TU Dublin lead in the ADAPT centre and the scientific lead for the Digital Content Transformation Strand. Within the ADAPT centre he leads research projects on language modelling, lexical semantics, machine translation, novelty detection, image captioning, dialog systems, and making AI more environmentally sustainable. John has been the academic lead on numerous industry projects across a range of topics and domains, including: anomaly detection, transfer learning, customer segmentation and propensity modelling, dialog systems and chat bots, and information retrieval and natural language processing.

    MORE INFORMATION

    Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre
    For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie

    KEYWORDS

    #ai #language #data #artificialintelligence #adapt

  • We are in a world where our every move and thought is documented and databases.

    With that data, future search agents and AI will be able to deliver us deliver hyper-personalised results which are based on everything we have done in the past. It could even use this information to act on our behalf.

    Joining us to discuss this future are two people who are living it now. Dr Cathal Guerin is an expert on personal data. For 15 years he has logged his life through wearing a personal camera and other data collection points. He is joined by Professor Gareth Jones who explores way to enhance search engines through conversational interactions and various media formats such as speech, video, and music.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    02:14 Their approach to life logging
    03:14 What it’s like to wear a camera 24/7
    07:54 Limitations of speech recognition
    13:15 The problem of protecting privacy
    19:05 Thoughts on Chat GPT & AI
    23:46 AI Search agents and your hyper personal life log
    27:56 How do we make the future safe?

    GUEST DETAILS
    Dr Cathal Gurrin is an Associate Professor at the DCU School of Computing and a co-investigator at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics and the Adapt Centre. He leads a group of researchers dedicated to developing assistive technologies using wearable sensors and data analytics. The highly interdisciplinary approach advanced by his group, "lifelogging", integrates computer science, cognitive science and data-driven healthcare analytics to generate next-generation digital records of the individual. Cathal is also co-author of ‘Lifelogging, Personal Big Data’, 2014.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgurrin/
    @cathal on Twitter

    Professor Gareth Jones is a Principal Investigator with the ADAPT Centre at DCU. His research focuses on topics related to information retrieval and search technologies. His work encompasses a broad range of areas including speech and multimedia search, multilingual search, personalisation in search, search for personal information archives, legal and patent search, and more generally information retrieval models and evaluation. He is currently collaborating with Spotify on a benchmark evaluation task on Podcast Search at TREC.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-j-f-jones-8337a3ab/

  • With more people living even faster lives, our cities need to be smarter, more sustainable and easier to live in.

    Dublin City Council are running an experiment in D8, using technology to measure everything from traffic movements to rainfall and even how full the bins get. They are using this data to create a ‘digital twin’ of the area and virtualise how changes will improve the quality of life. For example, they’re talking about a virtual cycle path which you can test with a VR cycle ride.

    However, this smart city program raises questions about citizen data and how to best involve residents.

    Our guests, Jamie Cudden from Dublin City Council and Aphra Kerr from the Adapt Centre are both working directly on the project and share details of their progress.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    01:05 The invisible technology behind the scenes which use data to make decisions and deliver services more smartly

    04:00 Good practice around data governance as ADAPT works with Dublin City Council on Smart Dublin projects

    07:26 How they are engaging citizens in new and creative ways and getting their input

    12:35 The importance of protecting privacy

    18:51 Who is responsible for implementing the technology in smart cities?

    23:30 How the smart city approach has been evolving from an emphasis on connectivity to pilots on health and wellness initiatives

    32:39 Why pilot projects offer the flexibility to experiment and learn before scaling up

    38:08 The benefits of when data gathering, engagement and impact all fall into place seamlessly


    GUEST DETAILS

    Jamie Cudden is the Smart City Programme Manager at Dublin City Council. He established the regional Smart Dublin program in 2015. He has a track record of bringing together partners from industry, start-ups, academia and public agencies to accelerate deployment of new ideas using the ‘city as a testbed’. He was acknowledged as ‘Civic Innovator of the Year Award in 2021 by Harvard’s Technology and Entrepreneurship Centre. This was for his role in scaling up the Smart Dublin programme. He was also recognised by Trinity College Dublin as Innovation Partner of the ear for his pioneering work on Smart Docklands.

    https://ie.linkedin.com/in/jcudden
    Twitter - @jcudden

    Professor Aphra Kerr is a Professor in Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. She is a funded PI and science lead within the Transparent Digital Governance strand at the Science Foundation Ireland funded ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology. She is also Principal Investigator on two projects collaborating with Dublin City Council and Smart Dublin and on the YouGamSI project which examines gambling marketing. Her current research focuses on the governance and social impacts of AI across media and everyday smart technologies.

    MU Website - https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/faculty-social-sciences/our-people/aphra-kerr
    Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3Uop6uoAAAAJ
    Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-aphra-kerr-74b630/
    Twitter - @aphrak

  • Our everyday lives are surrounded with everyday objects which have the ability to monitor, track and record everything we do. But what are the roles that AI, machine learning and government play in this gathering of surveillance data.

    Sharing his considerable knowledge in the area is Professor David Lyon, who presented a fascinating seminar on this topic at the Adapt Centre.

    TOPICS HE DISCUSSED INCLUDE
    Smartphone Tracking
    IT and Society
    Todays Surveillance Landscape
    Emergence of Surveillance Studies
    Surges in surveillance after 911 and Covid 19
    Surveillance and Democracy
    Why Surveillance is Important
    Automated and other kinds of automated surveillance

    GUEST DETAILS
    Prof David Lyon has been studying surveillance since the mid-1980s.
    A pioneer in the field of Surveillance Studies, he has produced a steady stream of books and articles, starting with The Electronic Eye (1994). The latest is Pandemic Surveillance (2022).

    He has led several large collaborative research projects on surveillance, with research funding totalling almost $8 million.
    His work has been recognised in Canada, Switzerland, the USA and the UK with a number of fellowships, prizes, awards and an honorary doctorate.

    CONTACT

    Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lyon-4bb8b714/
    Website: https://www.surveillance-studies.ca/

  • Our health is one of our greatest assets, and it has many interconnected parts, including our mental health and the environment in which we live. How can artificial intelligence enable us to engage more with our mental health and environment, and help researchers better understand how to protect both?

    Helping us discover the answers is Claire Gillan, whose lab is developing new approaches to studying brain health, and Marcus Collier (TCD) whose research explores the complex interface between social and ecological systems in informal wild spaces in cities.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    (01.08) How technology such as mobile apps can encourage a broader diversity of people to take part in psychology research in their ‘real lives’, not just in the lab

    (05.03) Many plants grow wild in cities, but we probably don’t pay much attention to them or the spaces in which they grow

    (10.04) If you want people to use technology to contribute their data to science, you need to think carefully about how to engage with and protect them

    (12.51) Artificial intelligence is helping psychology research to better predict what treatments would work best for people

    (17.25) Artificial intelligence can help more people tell researchers what they think about the environment, so we hear more voices and perspectives

    (23.28) AI might be part of the solution to help people with mental health issues – at the moment there just are not enough human therapists, so might a ‘chat bot’ style of interaction help?

    (26.14) Our guests Marcus and Claire make plans to discuss working together.

    GUEST DETAILS

    Professor Claire Gillan is an Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin, where her lab is interested in developing new approaches to studying brain health in psychiatric and ageing populations – a key goal is to develop objective tests that can be used to diagnose individuals and predict who will respond to which treatment. Her longitudinal, smartphone-based research (www.neureka.ie) in dementia and mental health is supported by funding from the Global Brain Health Institute, and Science Foundation Ireland, and she was awarded an ERC starting grant for €1.5M in 2020 to address gaps in our current understanding of how we make and break habits.

    http://www.gillanlab.com/
    Twitter: @clairegillanTCD

    Professor Marcus Collier is an Associate Professor of Sustainability Science in the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin and a Principal Investigator with ADAPT. His research explores the complex interface between social and ecological systems in informal wild spaces in cities, and the potential of nature-based solutions in an urbanising world. He was the lead investigator of the EU-funded projects Connecting Nature from 2017 to 2022 and the TURAS project from 2011 to 2016, for which he received a Champions of European Research Award. In 2020, Marcus was awarded a prestigious European Research Council Consolidator grant for NovelEco, a citizen science project.

    https://naturalscience.tcd.ie/people/COLLIEMA
    https://noveleco.eu/team-member/dr-marcus-collier/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-collier-12a0417/
    Twitter: @marcus_collier

  • How do smart speakers, phones and connected devices understand what we're saying?

    This month we look at how the interaction between machines and our voices works now and how can we build even more intelligent systems for complex interaction in the future.

    With the answers, we have Dr Giovanni di Liberto, who researches human perception and Dr Andrea Patane, whose work is on what happens when machine learning fails, and what we can learn from that.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    01:08 How computers and intelligent systems ‘perceive’ what humans are saying

    05:37 The processes at work in living brains and artificial machine learning models are each ‘black boxes’ that we need to understand better

    08:45 How our understanding of human learning is helping to influence machine learning models?

    12:11 How can intelligent systems ‘learn’ or adapt to nuances, such as different accents in speech?

    16:40 If intelligent systems ‘misunderstand’ something, it could have disastrous effects in some situations. What ethics and safety issues come into play?

    26:39 How can research into machine learning and perception help to improve technology that can help us support senses such as hearing?

    30:00 As machine learning drives forward, we need to be mindful of the assumptions on which it is based?

    GUEST DETAILS

    Dr Giovanni Di Liberto is with TCD School of Computer Science and Statistics. Giovanni's scientific interests centre on understanding the brain mechanisms underlying speech comprehension. In his work, he develops data analysis methods and applies them to brain data to identify the neural processes responsible for the transformation of a sensory stimulus into its abstract meaning. Brain electrical data is measured with either non-invasive (e.g., electroencephalography - EEG) or invasive (e.g., electrocorticography - ECoG) technologies. The first aspect of his research is methodological and has produced novel experimental and analysis frameworks to investigate cortical auditory processing. The second aspect of his research is to use such novel methods to test theories on auditory perception, such as the hierarchical processing of speech and predictive processing theories (e.g. predictive coding). Finally, the third part of his work is translational and involves the identification of solutions to utilise his novel methods in applied settings, for example as tools to develop brain-computer interfaces (COCOHA project) or as objective measures for the monitoring of language development and healthy ageing.

    https://diliberg.net
    https://cnspworkshop.net/
    https://www.scss.tcd.ie/personnel/gdiliber
    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/giovanni-di-liberto/
    Twitter @diliberg

    Dr Andrea Patane has been an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin since May 2022. His main area of research is safety and robustness, with a focus on providing formal guarantees for machine learning models learnt from data, possibly with probabilistic components and/or operating in uncertain and adversarial environments. The development of such guarantees able to deal with uncertainty is of paramount importance if intelligent systems are to be deployed in scenarios where the safety of individuals is of concern, such as biomedical applications and autonomous driving.

  • Chat GPT has taken the AI world by storm as a bot that can generate text in conversational human style.

    So does this spell the end of students spending hours on homework or college assignments? What does the future hold for this type of generative AI?

    Dr Robert Ross (School of Computing at TUD) and Dr. Benjamin Cowan (Associate Professor UCD) explain the pro’s and con’s of the AI and what the future holds.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    (01.10) What chat GPT is, and how it is different to chat systems that have gone before

    (03.54) ChatGPT comes across as confident, but its facts aren’t always correct

    (09.38) ChatGPT shows how technology could blur the boundaries between human and machine, and this poses challenges

    (12.52) As conversational interfaces become more convenient for people to use, it poses ethical and social questions - who controls access to information, who might push particular narratives and could it deepen echo chambers? We need to be transparent about such systems and their accuracy

    (18.40) ChatGPT is already having an impact in education, how can educators manage it for the benefit of students?

    (23.28) Generative AI - can it support human creativity?

    (30.53) ChatGPT and generative AI has the potential to disrupt, it’s exciting, but we need to reflect and think critically about the journey we are on with it.

    GUEST DETAILS

    Dr Robert Ross is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science in TU Dublin and a Funded Investigator within the Adapt Centre. Dr. Ross’s interests lie primarily in the application of machine learning methods to Human Robot Interaction, with specific projects across natural language processing, dialogue management, behavioural analysis, and user state estimation. Robert also works extensively with industry and has led industry related projects across topics such as conversational systems, behaviour estimation, and predictive analytics.
    https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/faculties-and-schools/computing-digital-data/computer-science/people/academic-staff/robertross.html
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjohnross/

    Dr Benjamin Cowan is an Associate Professor in UCD's School of Information & Communication Studies, where he is co-founder and co-director of the HCI@UCD group. His research lies at the juncture between psychology, human computer interaction and communication systems. In ADAPT, as Research Challenge Lead and NENC Lead within the Digitally Enhanced Engagment research Strand and he co-leads the Future Dialogues Working Group.
    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/benjamin-cowan/

  • From wearable devices to digital hospitals, modelling disease patterns to training medical professionals - AI is having a transformative impact on healthcare. But the challenge remains to develop and deploy innovative and agile solutions that can unlock the data needed for precision medicine. Where exactly are we with this technology? What is its potential and what dangers do we need to safeguard against?

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE
    ● How AI can provide decision-making support, disease treatment and precision medicine delivery.
    ● How AI can be used to improve hospital efficiency
    ● The potential for AI to increase the speed and scale of screening
    ● How algorithms can now predict the 3D structure of nearly every protein
    ● Limitation issues including transferability and data governance
    ● Robotics in healthcare including conversational agents
    ● The burgeoning area of designing new AI-based therapies

    GUEST DETAILS
    Prof. Mark Little, Professor of Nephrology at Trinity College Dublin, Consultant Nephrologist at Tallaght University Hospital and Principal Investigator at SFI ADAPT Research Centre. He is a clinician scientist with an interest in translational immunology as applied to autoimmune diseases.

    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/mark-little/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-little-79bb4b9/

    Dr Lucy Hederman is an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, a member of the SFI-funded ADAPT Centre, and the Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, at Trinity College Dublin. Her main research interests are in clinical decision support systems and health research data integration.

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhederman/
    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/lucy-hederman/

  • From crypto-currencies to challenger banks, and mortgage lending to managing risk, AI has profoundly changed finance and how we interact with money.

    With disruptors and innovators constantly raising the bar, what does the future hold and how can we mitigate against the risks posed by such rapidly evolving technology? And quite apart from the tech giants, how can ordinary people utilise AI in a way that benefits their businesses and personal finances?


    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE
    • How AI can have a transformative effect on lending decisions, by democratising the availability of credit.
    • Reducing inequality by making credit decisions more accountable.
    • The need for explainable AI.
    • How conversational technology is interacting with business and finance.
    • Crypto-currency
    • How AI can detect bubbles in financial markets
    • Models developed at The Adapt Centre which can detect elder financial abuse.
    • The Adapt Centre’s work to apply NLP technology into business’ workflows.
    • The potential dangers AI could precipitate in FinTech.


    GUEST DETAILS
    Dr. Cal Muckley is Professor of Operational Risk in Banking and Finance at the UCD College of Business and a Fellow at the UCD Geary Institute. His research is in areas of financial misconduct, mitigating financial fraud and the information content of corporate dividends. He has been a Visiting Scholar at universities including NYU’s Stern School of Business and Yale.

    Dr. Robert Ross is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science in TU Dublin and a Funded Investigator within the Adapt Centre. Dr. Ross’s interests lie primarily in the application of machine learning methods to Human Robot Interaction, with specific projects across natural language processing, dialogue management, behavioural analysis, and user state estimation.


    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/cal-muckley/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/cal-muckley-2758613/

    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/robert-ross/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjohnross/

  • The movies we’ve grown up watching have made quite the impression on our lives and how we think about AI.

    From the exciting prospect of flying cars in Back to the Future, to the grim post-apocalyptic landscape of Mad Max. What’s closer to the truth in our near future? For instance, we’ve recently seen ABBA launch a ‘hologram’ tour and Mark Zuckerberg enter the metaverse.

    What else can we expect from the coming decade and how might these technologies evolve to become seamless in our lives?

    TOPICS WE DISCUSS INCLUDE
    ● How movies like ‘The Matrix’ and Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ were incredibly prescient when considering our future interactions with machines.
    ● How TV shows like ‘Black Mirror’ identify potential negative and positive aspects of AI, sounding a warning before the technology is actually made.
    ● How the Adapt Centre is involved in Digitally Enhanced Engagement that’s bringing about a revolution in AI.
    ● The work at the Adapt Centre aimed at improving user experiences by focusing on human centric AI.
    ● How personalising proactive agents to model users appropriately could allow them to represent us in real life.
    ● The need for designers to be discerning consumers of the data they gather to create AI.

    GUEST DETAILS
    Owen Conlan is a full Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics. He is an internationally recognised researcher and thought leader in the field of Personalised Visualisation.

    Prof Conlan has authored 180+ peer-reviewed and high impact publications and has a h-index of 27. His most significant research contributions are the multi-model, metadata driven approach to personalisation, the non-invasive approach to personalisation, and the automated construction of personalised visualisations (which underpins several industry collaborations).

    Ben Cowan is Associate Professor at UCD’s School of Information and Communication Studies; and Funded Investigator within the Adapt Centre. He specialises in voice UX and Conversational User Interfaces. He has published over 70 academic research papers on topics related to voice user interfaces, communication and cognitive psychology.

    His research lies at the juncture between psychology, human-computer interaction and communication systems in investigating how design impacts aspects of user behaviour in social, collaborative and communicative technology interactions.

    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/owen-conlan/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-conlan-49a82b13/

    https://www.adaptcentre.ie/experts/benjamin-cowan/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-cowan-ba098515/

  • As AI becomes more embedded in our lives, how do we ensure that we trust it? How can we be confident that safety has been built into the systems we use every day, like Facial Recognition Technology?

    Professor Vincent Wade, CEO of the SFI Adapt Centre at Trinity College Dublin, discusses his research focusing on privacy-enabling AI and empowering personalisation.

    The Adapt Centre is at the forefront of designing AI solutions which are shaped by these concerns, rather than simply building for technology’s sake. The work brings together expertise from the legal, sociological and psychological fields.

    Prof Wade also explains how his work on the personalisation of simulation-based learning has been proven to improve satisfaction, effectiveness and efficiency.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE

    ● Privacy preserving AI; how we can do more with less data.
    ● Building accountability, responsibility and risk management into the design of AI systems.
    ● How personalisation can serve the user on a one-to-one basis.
    ● How giving control to the human can have a powerful effect on engagement.
    ● Beyond 2022: the virtual reconstruction of Ireland’s destroyed Public Record Office.

    GUEST DETAILS

    Professor Vincent Wade is CEO of the ADAPT Centre and holds the Professorial Chair of Computer Science in School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin. He is also a Personal Chair in Artificial Intelligence and his research focuses on intelligent systems, AI and Personalisation.

    Vincent has published over three hundred and fifty scientific papers in peer reviewed international journals and conferences. In 2018, he was awarded the Provost Innovation Award, the highest accolade the university can bestow for international research impact.

    He played a pivotal role in the Beyond 2022 project; a virtual reconstruction of the Public Record Office in Ireland in which centuries of documents were destroyed during the civil war. This innovative project goes beyond a virtual reality experience that is usually only accessible through custom headsets.

    CONTACT

    https://www.tcd.ie/research/profiles/?profile=vwade
    [email protected]
    www.linkedin.com/in/vincentwade/

    YOUR HOST

    Our host, Aideen Finnegan, is an IMRO award-winning broadcast journalist with almost 18 years experience, including ten years across two national newsrooms. She regularly presents shows on Newstalk, including their flagship current affairs programme, Newstalk Breakfast. Find her on Twitter @AideenFinnegan or on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aideenfinnegan/

  • Speech technology is life-changing. It can literally give voice to someone who has lost theirs through illness. Or it can be misused for malign purposes like the creation of ‘deep fakes.’

    The ADAPT Centre is at the forefront of designing mathematical algorithms to enhance speech communication between humans and technology. Professor Naomi Harte’s work is underpinned by signal processing and machine learning, but it is her multimodal speech analysis which is driving advances in the technology. Her work to fuse audio and visual cues may soon be applied in settings as varied as the kitchen, the boardroom and the aeroplane cockpit.

    From developing systems to help college lecturers engage with remote learners, to facilitating more seamless interactions with our smart speakers, Professor Naomi Harte shares fascinating insights from her work.

    TOPICS WE DISCUSSED INCLUDE
    • How deep learning can improve our everyday interactions with smart speakers and assistants.
    • The life-changing impact of speech synthesis, but how its misuse could be a societal harm.
    • Why the analysis of birdsong is being used to improve speech technology.
    • How The Adapt Centre will chair the world-renowned INTERSPEECH conference in Dublin in 2023.

    GUEST DETAILS
    Naomi is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering in Trinity College. She is Co-PI and a founding member of the ADAPT SFI Centre.

    In ADAPT, she has led a major Research Theme centred on Multimodal Interaction involving researchers from Universities across Ireland and was instrumental in developing the future vision for the Centre for 2021-2026. She is also a lead academic of the hugely successful Sigmedia Research Group in the School of Engineering.

    Prior to returning to academia in 2008, she worked in high-tech start-ups in the field of DSP Systems Development, including her own company. She holds tech patents and licences through her collaboration with Google in the USA.

    MORE INFORMATION
    https://www.tcd.ie/research/profiles/?profile=nharte
    https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0GswUfcAAAAJ&hl=en
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/prof-naomi-harte/
    Email:[email protected]

    YOUR HOST
    Aideen Finnegan is an IMRO award-winning broadcast journalist with almost 18 years experience, including ten years across two national newsrooms. Find her on Twitter @AideenFinnegan or on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aideenfinnegan/