Live e-Lecture by Prof. Ioannis Pitas: “Social Impact of AI Science and Engineering: Information Filtering and Disinformation”, Thursday 8th December 2022, 17:00-18:00 CET (8:00-9:00 PST), (10:00-11:00 CST)

December 1st, 2022 Daniela Lopez de Luise

Dear AI enthusiast/scientist/engineer/student,

 

Prof. Ioannis Pitas, a prominent AI researcher internationally (IEEE fellow, IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, EURASIP fellow, chair of the International AI Doctoral Academy), will deliver the e-lecture: 

“Social Impact of AI Science and Engineering: Information Filtering and Disinformation“, Thursday 8th December 2022, 17:00-18:00 CET (8:00-9:00 PST), (10:00-11:00 CST)

 

You can join for free without registration using the zoom link: https://authgr.zoom.us/j/94255772113 Passcode: 867064

 

Attendance is free.

 

Abstract: Our world is increasingly complex, in terms of both its material components (e.g., smart cities, infrastructure) and its social processes (e.g., social media outreach). Both individual humans and entire societies find it difficult to cope with world complexity.   For example, humans that are overexposed to a 24/7 information deluge through their mobile phones tend to develop the so-called Generalized OnLine Affect and Cognition (GOLAC) disorder. Its impact has not been studied sufficiently well. It can be devastating to minors and vulnerable people. It forms a good substate for conspiracy theories and disinformation.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general, and Machine Learning in particular, is our reply to world complexity. It allows us to handle a data flood, analyze data to produce information and use it not only to survive, but also to excel.  AI Science and Engineering enable social engineering, allowing us to devise social processes that change our society.

Information filtering is a prime example of social engineering. It encompasses many social processes: a) web search, b) recommendation systems for online product and service marketing, b) online match-making and c) news editing and broadcasting. Though they can have a very positive societal impact, they can also have adverse effects, if poorly implemented. For example, they can result in massive private data theft and use to fuel corporate profits.

 

Lack of information filtering can look like a heaven for freedom of speech.  Yet the opposite frequently happens in social media environments.  Irrationalism, cult culture, anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism pre-existed social media.  However, social media have unique characteristics (small world phenomenon, rich-get-richer phenomenon, GOLAC disorder) that boost such tendencies and fuel disinformation. Sentimental and conspiratorial speech propagates like wildfire. Why? Social media company policies favor such voices as they ensure user engagement (and their profits through marketing). The end result is that minority voices highjack the web and disinformation flourishes.  AI does provide tools, e.g., for deep fake news creation, that can be misused to fuel disinformation and threaten democratic societies. What is the way forward to defend democracy?

 

This lecture addresses several important questions on the interface between technology and society:

 

  • Why our world becomes ever more complex?
  • Can we cope with world complexity?
  • What is the relation between freedom of speech and information filtering?
  • What is the psychological background of on-line cults and conspiracy theories?
  • Why negative views propagate faster?
  • What is the relation of irrationalism, and anti-elitism, to social media disinformation?
  • How can we valorize our private data?

 

All the above issues are addressed in the new 1050+ page book “Artificial Intelligence Science and Society” consisting of four volumes (parts) debating all technical and social grand challenges of AI Science and Engineering in an understandable and scientifically accurate manner:

  1. “Artificial Intelligence Science and Society Part A: Introduction to AI Science and Information Technology“

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9609156460?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

  1. “Artificial Intelligence Science and Society Part B: AI Science, Mind and Humans“

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9609156479?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

  1. “Artificial Intelligence Science and Society Part C: AI Science and Society“

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9609156487?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

  1. “Artificial Intelligence Science and Society Part D: AI Science and the Environment“

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9609156495?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

 

About the Lecturer: This lecture and book are a result of a two-year effort by Prof. Ioannis. Pitas (IEEE fellow, IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, EURASIP fellow) and was influenced by his being principal investigator of 75+ R&D projects on Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Digital Media and chairing the International AI Doctoral Academy (AIDA). Prof. I. Pitas is Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Information Analysis (AIIA) lab at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece. He was chair and initiator of the IEEE Autonomous Systems Initiative (ASI). He has (co-)authored 15 books, 45 book chapters and over 950 papers in the above topics. He has 34500+ citations to his work and h-index 87+. He is ranked 319 worldwide and first in Greece in the field of Computer Science (2022).

 

This lecture is part of the SIG Icarus “AI days” lectures offered by the AIIA Computer Vision and Machine Learning (AIIA.CVML) R&D group of the  Artificial Intelligence and Information Analysis (AIIA) lab at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece. These lectures are disseminated through multiple channels and email lists (we apologize if you received it through various channels). 

 

Post scriptum: To stay current on CVML matters, you may want to register in the CVML email list, following instructions in: https://lists.auth.gr/sympa/info/cvml

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Free Webinar by Dr. Sébastien Marcel on Face Presentation Attack Detection

November 30th, 2022 Daniela Lopez de Luise

The IEEE Biometrics Council invites participants to the upcoming (free)
webinar by Prof. Sébastien Marcel on “Face Presentation Attack
Detection”. Detail on the webinar are given below:

Title: Face Presentation Attack Detection
Speaker: Prof. Sébastien Marcel, University de Lausanne/IDIAP, Switzerland
When: 7 December 2022, at 10am CET (5 pm CST, 4am ET)
Where: Online (Zoom)
Registration: (free, but required):
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qEuvpABRQt-f15358CeMuA

*** Talk Summary ***
In biometrics, Presentation Attacks (PA also referred to as spoofing)
are performed by falsifying the biometric trait and then presenting this
falsified information to the biometric system, one such example is to
fool a fingerprint system by copying the fingerprint of another person
and creating an artificial or gummy finger which can then be presented
to the biometric system to falsely gain access. This is an issue that
needs to be addressed because it has recently been shown that
conventional biometric techniques are vulnerable to presentation
attacks. One of the main challenges in Presentation Attack Detection
(PAD also referred to as anti-spoofing) is to find a set of features and
models (mostly classifiers) that allows systems to effectively
distinguish signals that were directly emitted by a human from those
reproduced by an attacker. This talk will present an overview of typical
face PAs and PAD techniques.

*** About the Speaker ***
Sébastien Marcel (IEEE Senior member – H-index 63) is Professor at the University de Lausanne (UNIL) at the School of Criminal Justice and lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he is teaching on “Biometrics” and “Fundamentals in Statistical Pattern Recognition” respectively. He serves on the Program Committee of several
scientific journals and international conferences in pattern recognition and computer vision. He is a senior researcher at the Idiap Research Institute (Switzerland), he heads the Biometrics Security and Privacy group and conducts research on face recognition, speaker recognition,
vein recognition, attack detection (presentation attacks, morphing attacks, deepfakes) and template protection. He received his Ph.D. degree in signal processing from Université de Rennes I in France (2000) at CNET, the research center of France Telecom (now Orange Labs). He is also the Director of the Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing, which conducts certifications of biometric products. He is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biometrics and Identity Science. He was Associate Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters,
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, a Co-editor of the “Handbook of Biometric Anti-Spoofing”, a guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security Special Issue on “Biometric Spoofing and Countermeasures”, and
Co-editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Special Issue on “Biometric Security and Privacy”. He is also the lead Editor of the Springer Handbook of Biometrics Anti-Spoofing (Editions 1, 2 and 3).

For more information, visit:
https://ieee-biometrics.org/index.php/activities/webinars

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Call for Tutorial Proposals, ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval 2023, Thessaloniki, Greece, 12 – 15 June 2023

November 30th, 2022 Daniela Lopez de Luise

***************************************************************

Call for Tutorial Proposals

https://icmr2023.org/call-for-tutorial-proposals/

 

ACM International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval 2023

Thessaloniki, Greece, 12 – 15 June 2023

 

Web: https://icmr2023.org/

****************************************************************

 

ACM ICMR 2023 encourage proposals of tutorials by qualified researchers on trendy and innovative topics of multimedia search and retrieval research. Tutorials are expected to have an educational slant rather than being a cursory survey of techniques, suited for graduate students and junior researchers interested in multimedia retrieval. Both half-day and full-day offerings are welcome. Hands-on tutorials are highly encouraged.

 

Topics for tutorial proposals include but are not limited to:

 

– Multimedia content-based search and retrieval

– Large-scale and web-scale multimedia retrieval

– Machine learning, deep learning for effective search

– Zero-shot learning and fine-grained retrieval for multimedia

– Crowdsourcing, community contributions, and social multimedia

– Emotion and sentiment analysis for multimedia search and retrieval

– User intent and human perception in multimedia retrieval

– Interactive recommendation systems

– Privacy-preserving multimedia search and retrieval

– Narrative generation and narrative analysis

– Multimedia browsing, summarization, and visualization

– Applications of multimedia retrieval, e.g., medicine, sports, commerce, lifelogs, travel, security, environment

 

Tutorials will be offered free of charge to ICMR23 registered attendees. Tutorialists will be entitled to a speaker registration fee waiver at the conference

 

_______________

 

IMPORTANT DATES

_______________

 

– Tutorial proposal Due: February 17, 2023

– Notification of acceptance: February 28, 2023

– Tutorial overview abstract (2 pages) Due: TBD

– Tutorials Day: TBD

 

_____________________

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

_____________________

 

Proposals should be submitted by email to the Tutorials Chairs, either in plain-text or PDF format and should include the following information:

 

– Tutorial title;

– Tutorial duration: half- or full-day;

– Tutorial description: topics that will be covered, along with a brief outline and significant details.

– Proposer(s) information: name, title, affiliation, primary contact email, short bio, relevant publications with reference to the Tutorial topics.

– Materials to be distributed to attendees (if any).

– Prerequisites (if any)

 

For each accepted tutorial, a 2 pages tutorial overview abstract should be provided. The abstract is going to be included in the ACM ICMR proceedings. The submission of the abstract should be carried out using the ACM ICMR submission system.

 

_______

 

CONTACT

_______

 

For any questions regarding tutorial submissions, please email the Tutorials Chairs:

 

Alberto Del Bimbo, University of Firenze, Italy (alberto.delbimbo@unifi.it)

Ioannis Pitas, University of Thessaloniki, Greece (pitas@csd.auth.gr)

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CRNS Talk Series (10) – Live Talk by Dr. Dileep George – Google DeepMind – USA

November 30th, 2022 Daniela Lopez de Luise
The Center for Robotics and Neural Systems (CRNS) is pleased to announce the talk of Dr. Dileep George from Google DeepMind – USA on Wednesday, November 30th from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM  (London time) over Zoom. Thank you for forwarding the invitation to any of your colleagues who might be interested.
>> Events: The CRNS talk series will cover a wide range of topics including social and cognitive robotics, computational neuroscience, computational linguistics, cognitive vision, machine learning, AI, and applications to healthcare. More details are available here:
>> Link for the next event (No Registration is Required): 

Join Zoom Meeting
>> Title of the talk:  Reverse engineering cortical microcircuit models of visual perception

Abstract:

Although deep learning has made tremendous strides in visual recognition and generation, a significant gap remains between human and machine perception. In this talk, I will argue that models that use stochastic variables, lateral interactions, and dynamic inference might be required to close this gap. I will then describe a generative model, Recursive Cortical Networks (RCN), that partially meets these requirements and demonstrated excellent performance on some visual task benchmarks.

Using RCN we derive a family of anatomically instantiated and functional cortical circuit models. Efficient inference and generalization guided the representational choices in the original computational model. The cortical circuit model is derived by systematically comparing the computational requirements of this model with known anatomical constraints. The derived model suggests precise functional roles for the feed-forward, feedback, and lateral connections observed in different laminae and columns, assigns a computational role for the path through the thalamus, predicts the interactions between blobs and interblobs, and offers an algorithmic explanation for the innate inter-laminar connectivity between clonal neurons within a cortical column. The model also explains several visual phenomena, including the subjective contour effect, and neon-color spreading effect, with circuit-level precision. Our work paves a new path forward in understanding the logic of cortical and thalamic circuits.

>> If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me, 

Regards

Live e-Lecture by Prof. Dr. Laura Leal-Taixé: “From Handcrafted to EndEnd Learning, and Back: a Journey for Multi-Object Tracking”, December 2nd, 2022 14.15/14.30 -16:00 CET

November 30th, 2022 Daniela Lopez de Luise

Dear AI scientist/engineer/student/enthusiast,

 

Prof. Dr. Laura Leal-Taixé, a prominent AI researcher internationally, will deliver the e-lecture: 

“From Handcrafted to End-to-End Learning, and Back: a Journey for Multi-Object Tracking”, on Tuesday December 2nd, 2022 14.15/14.30 -16:00 CET,

see details in: http://www.i-aida.org/ai-lectures/

 

This lecture is delivered through University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in cooperation with AIDA.

 

You can join for free using the zoom link: link

Attendance is free.

 

The International AI Doctoral Academy (AIDA), a joint initiative of the European R&D projects AI4Media, ELISE, Humane AI Net, TAILOR, VISION, currently in the process of formation,

is very pleased to offer you top quality scientific lectures on several current hot AI topics.

 

Lectures will be offered alternatingly by:

Top highly-cited senior AI scientists internationally or

Young AI scientists with promise of excellence (AI sprint lectures)

 

Other upcoming lecture:

 

Dr. Silvia Zuffi: “3D Computer Vision for Animals”, December 15th, 2022 14.15/14.30 -16:00 CET.

More lecture infos in: https://www.i-aida.org/events/3d-computer-vision-for-animals/

 

These lectures are disseminated through multiple channels and email lists (we apologize if you received it through various channels). 

If you want to stay informed on future lectures, you can register in the email lists AIDA email list and CVML email list.

 

Best regards

Profs. M. Chetouani, P. Flach, B. O’Sullivan, I. Pitas, N. Sebe, J. Stefanowski

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