MIS4TEL Conference 2022

In this talk, I’ll describe a succession of complex systems modelling within different scientific disciplines, such as financial and banking networks, immunology, chemistry, climatology, with, in all cases, the pleading for object orientation and the resorting to UML diagrams to facilitate the interfacing between the software developers and the researchers in those disciplines. In a second time, I’ll discuss the concept of emergence, its counter-scientific nature, arguing for a better investigation of the necessary ingredients contributing to a necessary de-subjectivation. For instance, in biology, three of those ingredients could allow a collective phenomenon to be labelled as “emergent.” First, the phenomenon, as usual, requires a group of natural objects entering in a non-linear relationship and potentially entailing the existence of various semantic descriptions depending on the human scale of observation. Second, this phenomenon has to be observed by a mechanical observer instead of a human one, which has the natural capacity for temporal or spatial integration, or both. Finally, for this natural observer to detect and select the collective phenomenon, it needs to do so on account of the adaptive advantage this phenomenon is responsible for.

Hugues Bersini is born the 19/1/61 and is living in Brussels. He has an MS degree (1983) and a Ph.D in engineering (1989) both from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). After having been supported as a researcher by a EEC grant from the JRC-CEE in Ispra (1984-1987), he became member of the IRIDIA laboratory (the AI laboratory of ULB). He is now heading this same lab with Marco Dorigo.

Since 1992, he has an assistant professor position at ULB and has now become full professor, teaching computer science, Web technology, business intelligence, programming and AI. Over the last 25 years, he has published about 350 papers on his research work which covers the domains of cognitive sciences, AI for process control, connectionism, fuzzy control, lazy learning for modelling and control, reinforcement learning, biological networks, the use of neural nets for medical applications, frustration in complex systems, chaos, computational chemistry, object-oriented technologies, immune engineering and epistemology. He is quite often asked for giving tutorials covering the use of machine learning, object orientation and the behaviour of complex systems. IRIDIA is a pionneer in the exploitation of biological metaphors (such as the immune system and the ant colony optimisation) for engineering and cognitive sciences. Bersini is the author of fourteen french books covering basic computer sciences that have become important references in the french academic world. He teaches AI, object-oriented programming: C++, java, .Net, UML, Kotlin, Django/Pyton, Design Patterns to university students (Solvay and Polytechnic Schools) and for industries. He is consultant for companies in Object Orientation, Data-Mining technologies and Business Intelligence. These last ten years, seven spin-off have been created out of researchs done in this lab IRIDIA.

Nowdays, many so-called "intelligent" systems are daily used, which are based on large amounts of data and equipped with machine learning algorithms, in order to help us deciding on a multitude of topics, from trivial ones, such as where to dine and which movie to watch, to fundamental ones, e.g., how to take a position on political and social issues. Similar systems are also increasingly used by public and private entities in a variety of domains, including credit, employment, justice, insurance. These systems take, sometimes autonomously, choices that have a significant impact on the lives of individuals and on the society. Therefore, it is important that human beings are able to understand the reasons for such choices and to trust the decision criteria. However, recent events have shown that this is not the case and that systems are sometimes influenced by biases in the data, lack of diversity and partial representations of phenomena. As the diffusion of these technologies and their use increases, there must be a rise in the commitment to ensure their transparency, comprehensibility, fairness, diversity and absence of prejudices. Likewise, it is important to work in the direction of “human-centered” systems, which can support human beings and augment their capabilities rather than replace them.

Tiziana Catarci is full professor in Computer Science and Engineering at Sapienza University of Roma (http://www.diag.uniroma1.it/users/tiziana_catarci) director of the Department of Computer, Control, and Management Engineering “Antonio Ruberti”. Moreover, she is the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality. Tiziana Catarci’s main research interests are in the hci and database areas and in the intersection between the two. She is recently working on AI ethics as a founder of SIpEIA, the Italian Scientific Society for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence. On these topics she has published over 200 papers in international journals, conferences and workshop proceedings, and 20 books (see https://dblp.org/pers/c/Catarci:Tiziana.html for a significant subset). In 2020 she has been included in the list of World's Top 2% Scientists compiled by the Stanford University (https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/2).

In her career she has received many honors, just to cite the last ones: in 2016 she has been included among the “100 Women for Science” project - http://www.100esperte.it/. In 2017 she received the Levi Montalcini Association award for the "diffusion of scientific culture among younger generations". In 2018 she has been included among the “InspiringFifty”, https://italy.inspiringfifty.org/, the most influential women in the tech world. In 2021 she received the Women&Tech international award “Le Tecnovisionarie”.

Finally, she is very active in combating gender disparities and promoting the STEM disciplines among female students by promoting dedicated projects at both school and university level and acting as role-model for “Inspiring Girls”(http://www.inspiring-girls.com/) and other initiatives.

Artificial Intelligence revived in the last decade. The need for progress, the growing processing capacity and the low cost of the Cloud have facilitated the development of new, powerful algorithms. The efficiency of these algorithms in Big Data processing, Deep Learning and Convolutional Networks is transforming the way we work and is opening new horizons. Thanks to them, we can now analyse data and obtain unimaginable solutions to today’s problems. Nevertheless, our success is not entirely based on algorithms, it also comes from our ability to follow our “gut” when choosing the best combination of algorithms for an intelligent artefact. It’s about approaching engineering with a lot of knowledge and tact. This involves the use of both connectionist and symbolic systems, and of having a full understanding of the algorithms used. Moreover, to address today’s problems we must work with both historical and real-time data. We must fully comprehend the problem, its time evolution, as well as the relevance and implications of each piece of data, etc. It is also important to consider development time, costs and the ability to create systems that will interact with their environment, will connect with the objects that surround them and will manage the data they obtain reliably. In this keynote, the evolution of intelligent computer systems will be examined. Moreover, we will analyse the current trend in the use of AI, which is moving towards the elaboration of sophisticated social machines, where humans are part of the decision-making process of AI algorithms.

Juan Manuel Corchado. Full Professor with Chair at the University of Salamanca. He was Vice President for Research from 2013 to 2017 and the Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Chosen twice as the Dean of the Faculty of Science, he holds a PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He is the director of a renowned research group called BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology), which has been created in the year 2000.

J.M Corchado is also the Director of the IOT Digital Innovation Hub and the President of the AIR Institute. He is Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, and has been Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and a Member of the Advisory group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL).

He has also been President of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Spanish Chapter and the academic coordinator of the Institute of Digital Art and Animation at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK).

He currently combines all his activities with the direction of Master's Programmes in: Master in Security, Digital Animation, Multiplatform Mobile Application Development, Digital Intelligence , Financial Technology, Knowledge Transfer and R&D Management, Digital Transformation, ICT, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Printing, Blockchain, Industry 4.0 y Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings​, at the University of Salamanca, and with his work as Editor-in-Chief of Journals like ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section).

J.M. Corchado works on projects in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids, Sentiment Analysis, etc.