From private digital platforms to public data spaces: implications for the digital transformation

Electronic Markets - Technological developments such as Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence continue to drive the digital transformation of business and...     

Understandable Big Data: A survey

This survey presents the concept of Big Data. Firstly, a definition and the features of Big Data are given. Secondly, the different steps for Big Data data processing and the main problems encountered in big data management are described. Next, a general overview of an architecture for handling it is depicted. Then, the problem of merging Big Data architecture in an already existing information system is discussed. Finally this survey tackles semantics (reasoning, coreference resolution, entity linking, information extraction, consolidation, paraphrase resolution, ontology alignment) in the Big Data context.     

Artificial intelligence in educational assessment: ‘Breakthrough? Or buncombe and ballyhoo?’

Artificial Intelligence is at the heart of modern society with computers now capable of making process decisions in many spheres of human activity. In education, there has been intensive growth in systems that make formal and informal learning an anytime, anywhere activity for billions of people through online open educational resources and massive online open courses. Moreover, new developments in Artificial Intelligence-related educational assessment are attracting increasing interest as means of improving assessment efficacy and validity, with much attention focusing on the analysis of the large volumes of process data being captured from digital assessment contexts. In evaluating the state of play of Artificial Intelligence in formative and summative educational assessment, this paper offers a critical perspective on the two core applications: automated essay scoring systems and computerized adaptive tests, along with the Big Data analysis approaches to machine learning that underpin them.     

Online dispute resolution in mediating EHR disputes: a case study on the impact of emotional intelligence

ABSTRACT

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an individual’s record of all health events that enables critical information to be documented and shared electronically amongst health care providers and patients. The introduction of an EHR, particularly a patient-accessible EHR, can be expected to lead to an escalation of enquiries, complaints and ultimately, disputes. Prevailing opinion is that Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) systems can help with the mediation of certain types of disputes electronically, particularly systems which deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) to reduce the need for a human mediator. However, disputes regarding health tend to invoke emotional responses from patients that may conceivably impact ODR efficacy. This raises an interesting question on the influence of emotional intelligence (EI) in the process of mediation. Using a phenomenological research methodology simulating doctor–patient disputes mediated with an AI Smart ODR system in place of a human mediator, we found an association between EI and the propensity for a participant to change their previously asserted claims. Our results indicate participants with lower EI tend to prolong resolution compared to those with higher EI. Future research include trialling larger scale ODR systems for specific cohorts of patients in the area of health related dispute resolution are advanced.     

From Big to Smart Data: Iterative ensemble filter for noise filtering in Big Data classification

The quality of the data is directly related to the quality of the models drawn from that data. For that reason, many research is devoted to improve the quality of the data and to amend errors that it may contain. One of the most common problems is the presence of noise in classification tasks, where noise refers to the incorrect labeling of training instances. This problem is very disruptive, as it changes the decision boundaries of the problem. Big Data problems pose a new challenge in terms of quality data due to the massive and unsupervised accumulation of data. This Big Data scenario also brings new problems to classic data preprocessing algorithms, as they are not prepared for working with such amounts of data, and these algorithms are key to move from Big to Smart Data. In this paper, an iterative ensemble filter for removing noisy instances in Big Data scenarios is proposed. Experiments carried out in six Big Data datasets have shown that our noise filter outperforms the current state-of-the-art noise filter in Big Data domains. It has also proved to be an effective solution for transforming raw Big Data into Smart Data.     

Reasoning about river basins: WaWO+ revisited

This paper characterizes part of an interdisciplinary research effort on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and tools applied to Environmental Decision-Support Systems (EDSS). WaWO+ the ontology we present here, provides a set of concepts that are queried, advertised and used to support reasoning about and the management of urban water resources in complex scenarios as a River Basin. The goal of this research is to increase efficiency in Data and Knowledge interoperability and data integration among heterogeneous environmental data sources (e.g., software agents) using an explicit, machine understandable ontology to facilitate urban water resources management within a River Basin.     

Introduction to the special issue

Artificial intelligence is a productive research paradigm for a variety of problems that arise in the world of investments This article provides an introduction to this special issue of Applied Artificial Intelligence - Artificial Intelligence Applications on Wall Street - which is devoted to financial AI applications The articles in this volume are derived from papers presented at the Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications on Wall Street held in June 1995 in New York City     

Cooperation of categorical and behavioral learning in a practical solution to the abstraction problem

Real robots should be able to adapt autonomously to various environments in order to go on executing their tasks without breaking down. They achieve this by learning how to abstract only useful information from a huge amount of information in the environment while executing their tasks. This paper proposes a new architecture which performs categorical learning and behavioral learning in parallel with task execution. We call the architectureSituation Transition Network System (STNS). In categorical learning, it makes a flexible state representation and modifies it according to the results of behaviors. Behavioral learning is reinforcement learning on the state representation. Simulation results have shown that this architecture is able to learn efficiently and adapt to unexpected changes of the environment autonomously. Atsushi Ueno, Ph.D.: He is a research associate in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Graduate School of Information Science at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). He received the B.E., the M.E., and the Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Tokyo in 1991, 1993, and 1997 respectively. His research interest is robot learning and autonomous systems. He is a member of Japan Association for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). Hideaki Takeda, Ph.D.: He is an associate professor in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Graduate School of Information Science at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). He received his Ph.D. in precision machinery engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1991. He has conducted research on a theory of intelligent computer-aided design systems, in particular experimental study and logical formalization of engineering design. He is also interested in multiagent architectures and ontologies for knowledge base systems.     

Advancing artificial intelligence research and dissemination through conference series: Benchmark,scientific impact and the MICAI experience

This article presents an overview, analysis and benchmark of the best-known artificial intelligence (AI) conferences, including the Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (MICAI) conference series, and describes how MICAI has contributed to both the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) research in Mexico and the advancement of AI research worldwide. Among the prestigious AI conferences examined are the IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI, IBERAMIA, AAJCAI and PRICAI. Features analyzed include number of papers, acceptance rate and the h index as a measure of the scientific impact. The MICAI has been held in Mexico since 2000, when the National Meeting on AI, held by the Mexican Society for Artificial Intelligence (SMIA) since 1983, and the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (ISAI), organized by Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) since 1988, merged into a single conference. Conference trends and future developments are also explained.     

Semantics,intelligent processing and services for big data

With the continuous increase of data, scaling up to unprecedented amounts, generated by Internet-based systems, Big Data has emerged as a new research field, coined as “Big Data Science”. The core of Big Data Science is the extraction of knowledge from data as a basis for intelligent services and decision making systems, however, it encompasses many research topics and investigates a variety of techniques and theories from different fields, including data mining and machine learning, information retrieval, analytics, and indexing services, massive processing and high performance computing. Altogether the aim is the development of advanced data-aware knowledge based systems.This special issue presents advances in Semantics, Intelligent Processing and Services for Big Data and their applications to a variety of domains including mobile computing, smart cities, forensics and medicine.     

A hybrid integrated architecture for energy consumption prediction

Irresponsible and negligent use of natural resources in the last five decades has made it an important priority to adopt more intelligent ways of managing existing resources, especially the ones related to energy. The main objective of this paper is to explore the opportunities of integrating internal data already stored in Data Warehouses together with external Big Data to improve energy consumption predictions. This paper presents a study in which we propose an architecture that makes use of already stored energy data and external unstructured information to improve knowledge acquisition and allow managers to make better decisions. This external knowledge is represented by a torrent of information that, in many cases, is hidden across heterogeneous and unstructured data sources, which are recuperated by an Information Extraction system. Alternatively, it is present in social networks expressed as user opinions. Furthermore, our approach applies data mining techniques to exploit the already integrated data. Our approach has been applied to a real case study and shows promising results. The experiments carried out in this work are twofold: (i) using and comparing diverse Artificial Intelligence methods, and (ii) validating our approach with data sources integration.     

New and used temporal models: An issue of time

TheSpecial Issue on Applications of Temporal Models raises many issues of time: What are the important properties of time? How can time be best represented? How can one reason about time-dependent properties? What are the important directions of temporal research? This introductory piece very briefly surveys the current wide variety of temporal models, temporal reasoning methods, and applications to time-varying phenomena. Promising areas of investigation such as the verification of concurrent systems, knowledge-base representation methods, and dealing with theFrame Problem pass in fleeting review. Brief introductions to each of the works in the volume close the section.     

深度学习中的无监督学习方法综述

从2006年开始,深度神经网络在图像/语音识别、自动驾驶等大数据处理和人工智能领域中都取得了巨大成功,其中无监督学习方法作为深度神经网络中的预训练方法为深度神经网络的成功起到了非常重要的作用. 为此,对深度学习中的无监督学习方法进行了介绍和分析,主要总结了两类常用的无监督学习方法,即确定型的自编码方法和基于概率型受限玻尔兹曼机的对比散度等学习方法,并介绍了这两类方法在深度学习系统中的应用,最后对无监督学习面临的问题和挑战进行了总结和展望.     

CEPSim: Modelling and simulation of Complex Event Processing systems in cloud environments

The emergence of Big Data has had profound impacts on how data are stored and processed. As technologies created to process continuous streams of data with low latency, Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Stream Processing (SP) have often been related to the Big Data velocity dimension and used in this context. Many modern CEP and SP systems leverage cloud environments to provide the low latency and scalability required by Big Data applications, yet validating these systems at the required scale is a research problem per se. Cloud computing simulators have been used as a tool to facilitate reproducible and repeatable experiments in clouds. Nevertheless, existing simulators are mostly based on simple application and simulation models that are not appropriate for CEP or for SP. This article presents CEPSim, a simulator for CEP and SP systems in cloud environments. CEPSim proposes a query model based on Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and introduces a simulation algorithm based on a novel abstraction called event sets. CEPSim is highly customizable and can be used to analyse the performance and scalability of user-defined queries and to evaluate the effects of various query processing strategies. Experimental results show that CEPSim can simulate existing systems in large Big Data scenarios with accuracy and precision.     

From eager to lazy constrained data acquisition: A general framework

^*1 Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs)¹⁷⁾ are an effective framework for modeling a variety of real life applications and many techniques have been proposed for solving them efficiently. CSPs are based on the assumption that all constrained data (values in variable domains) are available at the beginning of the computation. However, many non-toy problems derive their parameters from an external environment. Data retrieval can be a hard task, because data can come from a third-party system that has to convert information encoded with signals (derived from sensors) into symbolic information (exploitable by a CSP solver). Also, data can be provided by the user or have to be queried to a database. For this purpose, we introduce an extension of the widely used CSP model, called Interactive Constraint Satisfaction Problem (ICSP) model. The variable domain values can be acquired when needed during the resolution process by means of Interactive Constraints, which retrieve (possibly consistent) information. A general framework for constraint propagation algorithms is proposed which is parametric in the number of acquisitions performed at each step. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Some applications which can benefit from the proposed solution are also discussed. This paper is an extended and revised version of the paper presented at IJCAI’99 (Stockholm, August 1999)⁴⁾. Paola Mello, Ph.D.: She received her degree in Electronic Engineering from University of Bologna, Italy, in 1982 and her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1989. Since 1994 she is full Professor. She is enrolled, at present, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bologna where she teaches Artificial Intelligence. Her research activity focuses around: programming languages, with particular reference to logic languages and their extensions towards modular and object-oriented programming; artificial intelligence; knowledge representation; expert systems. Her research has covered implementation, application and theoretical aspects and is presented in several national and international publications. She took part to several national (Progetti Finalizzati e MURST) and international (UE) research projects in the context of computational logic. Michela Milano, Ph.D.: She is a Researcher in the Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems at the University of Bologna. From the same University she obtained her master degree in 1994 and her Ph.D. in 1998. In 1999 she had a post-doc position at the University of Ferrara. Her research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, Constraint Satisfaction and Constraint Programming. In particular, she worked on using and extending the constraint-based paradigm for solving real-life problems such as scheduling, routing, object recognition and planning. She has served on the program committees of several international conferences in the area of Constraint Satisfaction and Programming, and she has served as referee in several related international journals. Marco Gavanelli: He is currently a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Engineering at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He graduated in Computer Science Engineering in 1998 at the University of Bologna, Italy. His research interest include Artificial Intelligence, Constraint Logic Programming, Constraint Satisfaction and visual recognition. He is a member of ALP (the Association for Logic Programming) and AI^*IA (the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence). Evelina Lamma, Ph.D.: She got her degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Bologna in 1985, and her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1990. Her research activity centers on logic programming languages, Artificial Intelligence and software engineering. She was co-organizers of the 3rd International Workshop on Extensions of Logic Programming ELP92, held in Bologna in February 1992, and of the 6th Italian Congress on Artificial Intelligence, held in Bologna in September 1999. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI^*IA). Currently, she is Full Professor at the University of Ferrara, where she teaches Artificial Intelligence and Fondations of Computer Science. Massimo Piccardi, Ph.D.: He graduated in electronic engineering at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1991, where he received a Ph.D. in computer science and computer engineering in 1995. He currently an assistant professor of computer science with the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Ferrara, Italy, where he teaches courses on computer architecture and microprocessor systems. Massimo Piccardi participated in several research projects in the area of computer vision and pattern recognition. His research interests include architectures, algorithms and benchmarks for computer vision and pattern recognition. He is author of more than forty papers on international scientific journals and conference proceedings. Dr. Piccardi is a member of the IEEE, the IEEE Computer Society, and the International Association for Pattern Recognition — Italian Chapter. Rita Cucchiara, Ph.D.: She is an associate professor of computer science at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, where she teaches courses on computer architecture and computer vision. She graduated in electronic engineering at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1989 and she received a Ph.D. in electronic engineering and computer science from the same university in 1993. From 1993 to 1998 she been an assistant professor of computer science with the University of Ferrara, Italy. She participated in many research projects, including a SIMD parallel system for vision in the context of an Italian advanced research program in robotics, funded by CNR (the Italian National Research Council). Her research interests include architecture and algorithms for computer vision and multimedia systems. She is author of several papers on scientific journals and conference proceedings. She is member of the IEEE, the IEEE Computer Society, and the International Association for Pattern Recognition — Italian Chapter.     

Software agents and issues in personalisation: Technology to accommodate individual users

This paper provides a background to the somewhat nebulous field of computing known as software agent technology. It gives both an overview of some of the key issues faced by the field, and illustrates the context for the papers contained in the rest of the special issue. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the field and proceeds to survey existing work, showing where overlaps exist between agent technology research and interrelated fields such as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The paper then alters focus to concentrate on applications to the personalisation of systems and services to individual users, and techniques which offer opportunities in this area. The other papers in the Special Issue then form the basis for a review of the current state of the art in the personalisation of systems using agent technology. The paper concludes by offering some suggestions for future development of the technologies mentioned.     

From Alan Turing to modern AI: practical solutions and an implicit epistemic stance

It has been just over 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing and more than 65 years since he published in Mind his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Turing in Computing machinery and intelligence. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1950). In the Mind paper, Turing asked a number of questions, including whether computers could ever be said to have the power of “thinking” (“I propose to consider the question, Can computers think?” ...Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind, 1950). Turing also set up a number of criteria—including his imitation game—under which a human could judge whether a computer could be said to be “intelligent”. Turing’s paper, as well as his important mathematical and computational insights of the 1930s and 1940s led to his popular acclaim as the “Father of Artificial Intelligence”. In the years since his paper was published, however, no computational system has fully satisfied Turing’s challenge. In this paper we focus on a different question, ignored in, but inspired by Turing’s work: How might the Artificial Intelligence practitioner implement “intelligence” on a computational device? Over the past 60 years, although the AI community has not produced a general-purpose computational intelligence, it has constructed a large number of important artifacts, as well as taken several philosophical stances able to shed light on the nature and implementation of intelligence. This paper contends that the construction of any human artifact includes an implicit epistemic stance. In AI this stance is found in commitments to particular knowledge representations and search strategies that lead to a product’s successes as well as its limitations. Finally, we suggest that computational and human intelligence are two different natural kinds, in the philosophical sense, and elaborate on this point in the conclusion.     

Artificial intelligence and robotics

Since Robotics is the field concerned with the connection of perception to action, Artificial Intelligence must have a central role in Robotics if the connection is to be intelligent. Artificial Intelligence addresses the crucial questions of: what knowledge is required in any aspect of thinking; how should that knowledge be represented; and how should that knowledge be used. Robotics challenges AI by forcing it to deal with real objects in the real world. Techniques and representations developed for purely cognitive problems, often in toy domains, do not necessarily extend to meet the challenge. Robots combine mechanical effectors, sensors, and computers. AI has made significant contributions to each component. We review AI contributions to perception and reasoning about physical objects. Such reasoning concerns space, path-planning, uncertainty, and compliance. We conclude with three examples that illustrate the kinds of reasoning or problem-solving abilities we would like to endow robots with and that we believe are worthy goals of both Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, being within reach of both.     

Ten requirements for a theory of change

In order to focus the discussion on temporal reasoning in Artificial Intelligence, we propose a list of requirements that a rigorous theory of time and change must meet. These requirements refer to the desired expressiveness of the formalism (such as representing continuous change) and to potential pitfalls (such as theinter- andintra-frame problems) that should be avoided. We “benchmark” some of the better known temporal formalisms that have been proposed in Artificial Intelligence by stating which of the requirements are met, in our opinion, by each formalism.     

Intelligent services for Big Data science

Cities are areas where Big Data is having a real impact. Town planners and administration bodies just need the right tools at their fingertips to consume all the data points that a town or city generates and then be able to turn that into actions that improve peoples’ lives. In this case, Big Data is definitely a phenomenon that has a direct impact on the quality of life for those of us that choose to live in a town or city. Smart Cities of tomorrow will rely not only on sensors within the city infrastructure, but also on a large number of devices that will willingly sense and integrate their data into technological platforms used for introspection into the habits and situations of individuals and city-large communities. Predictions say that cities will generate over 4.1 terabytes per day per square kilometer of urbanized land area by 2016. Handling efficiently such amounts of data is already a challenge. In this paper we present our solutions designed to support next-generation Big Data applications. We first present CAPIM, a platform designed to automate the process of collecting and aggregating context information on a large scale. It integrates services designed to collect context data (location, user’s profile and characteristics, as well as the environment). Later on, we present a concrete implementation of an Intelligent Transportation System designed on top of CAPIM. The application is designed to assist users and city officials better understand traffic problems in large cities. Finally, we present a solution to handle efficient storage of context data on a large scale. The combination of these services provides support for intelligent Smart City applications, for actively and autonomously adaptation and smart provision of services and content, using the advantages of contextual information.