Webinar on

Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

August 23, 2020

Scientific Program

Keynote Session:

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Mr. Andrew Ernest Ritz photo

Mr. Andrew Ernest Ritz

Lang Tech, Poland

Title: Representing and Reasoning about Viewpoint within the context of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics and Robotics

Biography:

Andrew Ernest Ritz has Masters degrees in Ergonomics (London University) and Signal Processing and Machine intelligence (Surrey University). He has been working on Artificial Intelligence related problems since participating in the UK Alvey program in the 1980s. Recently, he is focusing on making the AI applications he has developed for teaching English, available on the web. These tools were created while working for his own company, Langtech, and funded in part by E NET Production, Katowice, Poland.

 

Abstract:

The concept of Viewpoint Reasoning was proposed a number of years ago within the context of 3D Model Based Vision for representing viewpoint information about a scene and the objects therein. This concept is based on a representation that stores feature visibility in terms of 3D surfaces or solids that encapsulate individual objects or the whole scene, much in the same way as property spheres and the aspect graph. When the visibility of objects and their features are represented in this way, answers to questions about the joint visibility of features from viewpoints within a scene are at hand.

With respect to computer graphics, viewpoint reasoning requires semantics to be routinely associated with 3D objects and the scenes they are placed in. Once this is done a large number of options become available for interacting with a scene and individual objects in a task oriented way and not just in terms of geometry.

Viewpoint Reasoning can be applied within the areas of Computer Graphics and Robotics to problems such as Good Viewpoint Selection, Sensor Placement, Motion Planning and Object Exploration. This talk describes a system, written in the programming language Python, which demonstrates how such tasks can be performed even when complex objects are involved.

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Dr. Gerry Wolff photo

Dr. Gerry Wolff

CognitionResearch.org, UK

Title: The SP Theory of Intelligence and its potential in robotics

Biography:

J Gerard Wolff PhD CEng MIEEE is the Director of Cognition Research.org. He has held academic posts in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Bangor University, the Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, and the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff. He has held a Research Fellowship at IBM, Winchester, UK, and has been a Software Engineer with Praxis Systems plc. He received the Natural Sciences Tripos degree from Cambridge University, Cambridge, and the PhD degree from the University of Wales, Cardiff. He is also a Chartered Engineer and Member of the IEEE.

 

Abstract:

The SP System, meaning the SP Theory of Intelligence and its realisation in the SP Computer Model, is the product of a lengthy programme of research, which now provides solutions or potential solutions to several problems in AI research [1]. There is an extended overview of the SP System in [2], and there is a much more comprehensive description in [3]. This presentation is about how the SP System may prove useful in the development of intelligence in robots. A peer-reviewed, published, paper about this is in [4]. The main theme of this presentation is generality, as described in the following subsections.

Generality needed for AI in robots

Where some degree of autonomy and intelligence are required in robots, it seems fair to say that capabilities that have been developed so far are quite narrowly specialised, such as vacuum cleaning an apartment or a house, navigating a factory floor, walking over rough ground, and so on. It seems fair to say that there is a pressing need to provide robots with human-like generality and adaptability in intelligence.

Generality in the development of the SP System

The overarching goal in the development of the SP System has been to search for a framework that would simplify and integrate observations and concepts across artificial intelligence, mainstream computing, mathematics, and human learning, perception, and cognition. Despite the ambition of this goal, it seems that promising solutions have been found (next). There are of course reasons worry about the development of super-intelligence in robots, but that is outside the scope of this presentation.

 

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Dr. Neda Nividi photo

Dr. Neda Nividi

AI-R AI research manager

Title: Human and Multi-Agent collaboration in a human-AI teaming framework

Biography:

Dr. Neda Navidi is an expert AI researcher with more than fifteen years of experience in designing and developing optimization systems, signal processing, practical AI, and theoretical ML/DL/RL algorithms. Since joining AI Redefined (AI-R) as an AI research manager in 2019, Neda has leveraged her extensive experience to harness the potential of new technologies and implement them across the company’s solutions and services related to human-AI collaboration.  She has also been a guest lecturer at the Quebec University of Montreal. She has more than 30 scientific papers in different journals and conferences. Dr. Neda holds a Ph.D. in AI (autonomous driving field) from École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS), and postdoctoral from HEC Montréal, McGill University, and Polytechnique Montréal.

Abstract:

The main focus of this talk is "human-AI teaming", specifically the mode of "human-AI collaboration" where humans and AIRL-based agents accomplish tasks together in a multi-agent system. Therefore the objective cannot be achieved by just a lone human or agent, and the responsibilities in the environment are partitioned and/or shared between humans and agents. Collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) as a specific category of reinforcement learning (RL) provides effective results with agents learning from their observations, received rewards, and internal interactions between agents. However, centralized learning methods with a joint global policy in a highly dynamic environment present unique challenges in dealing with large amounts of information. This study proposes two innovative solutions to address the complexities of a collaboration between human and multiple RL-based agents (referred to hereafter as “Human-MARL teaming”) where the goals pursued cannot be achieved by a human alone or agents alone. The first innovation is the introduction of a new open-source MARL framework, called COGMENT, to unite humans and agents in real-time complex dynamic systems and efficiently leverage their interactions as a source of learning. The second innovation is our proposal of a new hybrid MARL method, named Dueling Double Deep Q learning MADDPG (D3-MADDPG) to allow agents to train decentralized policies parallelly in a joint centralized policy. This method can solve the overestimation problem in Q-learning methods of value-based MARL. We demonstrate these innovations by using a designed real-time environment with unmanned aerial vehicles driven by RL agents, collaborating with a human to fight fires. The team of RL agent drones autonomously looks for fire seats and the human pilot douses the fires. The results of this study show that the proposed collaborative paradigm and the open-source framework leads to significant reductions in both human effort and exploration costs. Also, the results of the proposed hybrid MARL method shows that it effectively improves the learning process to achieve more reliable Q-values for each action, by decoupling the estimation between state value and advantage value.

Title: AI the single most important tool humanity has conceived

Biography:

Kelvin Ogba Dafiaghor is a chemical engineering graduate from Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu, Nigeria. He also has an MBA on Leadership and Management  from the Accra business school, Accra, Ghana. He is the founder of Ogba Educational Clinic, a dynamic organisation promoting STEM Education in Africa and Artificial Intelligence Hub, a technology organisation that empowers young people with tech skills relevant for future jobs brought by the fourth industrial revolution. Kelvin is an ex Mentor at the Global Stem Alliance, a professional member of New York Academy of Sciences, a member of Afrilab, a Top Fan World Economic Forum and the Chief Promoter of Artificial Intelligence in Africa.

Abstract:

Artificial Intelligence is the development of computer systems to be able to perform task normally requiring human intelligence. Examples are visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages e.t.c. According to techopedia.com Artificial intelligence is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Artificial intelligence is the technology that drive most modern technology from self driving cars to even our snap chart filter.

According to Andrew Ng, an authority in the field of artificial intelligence, he said just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, we have seen so far that AI will transform our industry in the next several years. AI already powers our home i.e. smart homes, our phone cameras, driverless cars like in Tesla cars. Fictional movies are becoming a reality with artificial intelligence. we now see company trying to create neural machine interface to bridge the gap between humans and AI because of the rate of advancement of AI. It is estimated that trade involving AI will hit $13 trillion by the year 2030. An easy way to build the skills necessary for the machine-learning and AI field is continuing education, in addition to formal strong data science programs, there are also many viable, free options.

Importance of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence as the best tool to solve global poverty.
Artificial intelligence can be used to bridge the gap between the have and the have not between the develop and the underdeveloped world
Artificial intelligence can bring same kind of quality education obtainable in Harvard to FUPRE. 

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Mr. Adam Alonzi photo

Mr. Adam Alonzi

Interdisciplinary Analyst at EthicsNet, USA.

Title: The Foundations of Robosociology: Values and The Aggregate Behaviors of Synthetic Intelligences

Biography:

Adam Alonzi is a futurist, writer, biotechnologist, programmer, and documentary maker. He is an interdisciplinary analyst for EthicsNet, a nonprofit building a community with the purpose of co-creating a dataset for machine ethics algorithms. He also serves as the Head of New Media at BioViva Science, as an analyst for the Millennium Project, and as a consultant for a number of technology startups. 

Abstract:

Outcomes on the macro level often cannot be accurately extrapolated from the microbehaviors of individual agents. The interdependence of complex system’s components makes simulation a viable option for exploring cause and effect relationships within it (Miller and Page, 2009). Chaos theory emphasizes the sensitivity of such networks to starting conditions (Boccaletti, 2000), which strongly suggests thought should be put into the architecture of an AGI “society” before it begins to take shape. Protocols for emergency interventions should certainly be in place, but the network itself should be robust enough from the beginning  to handle sudden deviations from basic ethical precepts by one or more of its members.

Outside of its context, and without any information about the parts to which it is connected, a cell or leaf or animal  can be studied, but not understood in a meaningful way (Mitchell, 2009). Creating moral agents in a hyperconnected world will involve modeling their interactions with entities like and unlike themselves in the face of both predictable and unforeseen events. This will be helpful as groups can behave differently than their individual parts (Schelling, 1969) Keeping AI friendly does not end with giving each AI a set of maxims before letting them loose, but satisfactorily explicating upon the emergent phenomena that arise from the interactions of similarly or differently “educated” machines. Because of the near certainty that synthetic intelligences will communicate rapidly and regularly, it is imperative that thought leaders in AI safety begin thinking about how groups of artificially intelligent agents will behave. 

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Mr. Elisha Marandure  photo

Mr. Elisha Marandure

Ebenezer group of colleges, Harare Zimbabwe

Title: Research Based on COVID 19

Biography:

I'm Elisha Marandure a young scientist. I'm still a high school student, and doing my Advanced lever being in form 5 according to our education system

 

Abstract:

In my research I discovered that corona virus it is a virus that was discovered way back. Corona virus has MERS, SARS etc. My main aim for this research is based on covid- 19

COVID- 19

A lot of people around the world have different views and beliefs on the source of the virus. Even up to now the source of the virus is still under debate, thus resulting in less confidence enough for scientists to come up with a better solution to save humanity, as Scientists have been trying to understand the origin of COVID-19 and the virus that course it SARS-cov-2...(Why?).Original scientists believed that the virus may have developed in bats and later pangolins.... (Why bats and why later pangolins if it has been bats?).

Well then genomic comparisons suggest that the SARS cov 2 virus is a result of a recombination between two different viruses, meaning the exact origin of the virus is still unclear. (Unclear? Meaning to be clear enough, bats and pangolins, or group family of such kind of animals may help come up with the clear and that's possible). Let's look at MERS a bit Health officials first reported the disease in Saudi Arabia in September 2012(places to look at Saudi Arabia). Through retrospective (backward-looking) investigations, they later identified that the first known cases of MERS occurred in Jordan in April 2012(first case of MERS in Jordan). All cases of MERS have been linked through travel to, or residence in, countries in and near the Arabian Peninsula. The largest known outbreak of MERS outside the Arabian Peninsula occurred in the Republic of Korea in 2015(MERs could also help us come up with the clear view if we trace back to the places it occurs, if it occured in Saudi Arabia,then let's look at the places like Ethiopia,Somalia, Egypt and Suda as well as some places in Africa which does trade in pangolins and other animals including poachers the type of animals they were interested in hanting as well type of meat hunt they eat during the process of poaching. If we are to look at Korea both both and south on the other hand ,what type of food bat or pangolins or snake related,shipping animals as well the travel through water infected fish and so on,so let's look dip in to areas like Korea, Zibo, Dalian, Qingdao, Yangzho, Nanzhing as well how good the relationship of food supplies and movement of people from other location it was to Wuhan?). The outbreak was associated with a traveler returning from the Arabian Peninsula.People with MERS can spread it to others......

 The other way I personally view and under my search goes like. Under normal circumstances the courses of the virus is usually authenticated of such venom threats apart from the figurative sauces to which the identification is malicious pertaining to other deadly viral diseases that has been figured out as global pandemic in about years back. Currently I may say covid 19 is an acute airborne diseases that affects the body with an immediate air crafted response (physical connection distance). Although I may not refer to any source or book because of its causes due to the current diligence researches

So I vividly consider the research to be part of the animal scientist’s task to take part of the identification so as to approach either soil environmental creature because basically we would have to imagine if it an animal based disease it won’t be possible for us to toss the whole world since we have some animals that are not even found within our locality, like African countries as I heard from one of the medical expert and I argue with them as not true fact of convincing the world,so for us to toss the world will be only due to search of how Corona has been to existence. So I now confident enough that covid 19 it’s a man-made virus that is air crafted with a travelling motivation and reactivate motion that influence our social wellbeing. I know this might sounds crazy but one thing I’m sure about is since we are now chewed with the susceptible society and hypocritical world.

So from the above I may say it's just a few of what I have and due to lack of enough apparatus to use for the whole search I just have to give a written document so my little idea might help scientists help save humanity

So for now in my research I think can be done is to go over and over some experiments

What is a Bat? How do a bat survive? What type of food a bat eat? Looking in to a system of a bat, as well as some type of snakes expected to be the ones to the course, as well as the pangolins.

Herbs like Zumbani, lemons, Tsine, in shona, Baobabarous type of alovera (gavakava), Ginger, garlic supposed some I've mentioned are not yet tested to be use but alovera have 21 nutrient elements which may help human system (specific baobabarous type)

Meetings International -  Conference Keynote Speaker Mr. Shailendra Kumar photo

Mr. Shailendra Kumar

Author: Making Money Out of Data /Keynote Speaker/ Evangelist

Title: Making Money Out of Data

Biography:

Abstract:

Though a lot has been talked about the emerging technologies, there are still a lot of unknowns on the concepts. To bring it to life, Shailendra will take a usecase approach to showcase how large organisations are becoming Intelligent Enterprises to Make Money out of Data. Shailendra will also talk about how data can bring business value to an organisation through data driven analytics strategies for revenue growth, cost reduction, marketing and customer behaviour management to drive business outcomes driving huge return on investment. It will give an opportunity to students to ask direct questions to Shailendra, understanding the basic concepts of Data Science.