ADAPT Radio

AI is developing at such a rapid pace that we can get caught up in its potential capabilities and role in our future. However, there are still a lot of issues to rule out. ADAPT recently hosted the Annual Scientific Conference 2024 in Dublin and today we’re hearing one of the keynote speakers, Abeba Birhane. We learn about the potential dangers of large-scale datasets, such as AI hallucinations and the reinforcement of societal biases and negative stereotypes. She also explored strategies for both incremental improvements and guiding broader structural changes in AI. Our expert guest has been exploring strategies for both incremental improvements and guiding broader structural changes in AI. She is Senior Advisor for AI Accountability at Mozilla, Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin and new ADAPT member, Abebe Birhane. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT ● How rumours of autonomous AI distract from real issues ● Hallucinations creating factually incorrect information ● AI ownership giving power to the hands of the few ● Data issues with collection, copyright and biases ● Creating standards for the safe use and development of AI GUEST DETAILS Abeba Birhane is a cognitive scientist, currently a Senior Advisor in AI Accountability at the Mozilla Foundation and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin (working with Trinity’s Complex Software Lab). She researches human behaviour, social systems, and responsible and ethical artificial intelligence and was recently appointed to the UN’s Advisory Body on AI. Abeba works at the intersection of complex adaptive systems, machine learning, algorithmic bias, and critical race studies. In her present work, Abeba examines the challenges and pitfalls of computational models and datasets from a conceptual, empirical, and critical perspective. Abeba Birhane has a PhD in cognitive science at the School of Computer Science, UCD, and Lero, The Irish Software Research Centre. Her interdisciplinary research focused on the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between ubiquitous technologies, personhood, and society. Specifically, she explored how ubiquitous technologies constitute and shape what it means to be a person through the lenses of embodied cognitive science, complexity science, and critical data studies. Her work with Vinay Prabhu uncovered that large-scale image datasets commonly used to develop AI systems, including ImageNet and 80 Million Tiny Images, carried racist and misogynistic labels and offensive images. She has been recognised by VentureBeat as a top innovator in computer vision. MORE INFORMATION Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/ QUOTES Generative AI has been around for quite some time, but the introduction of DALL-E back in April 2022 can be noted as one of the landmarks where generative AI really exploded into the public space. - Abeba Birhane These hypothetical AI concerns, existential concerns, about the very idea of this attempt to build AGI has neither scientific nor engineering principles. Again, a lot of it is just hype, marketing, and PR, that is just really dominating the entire field. - Abeba Birhane The results are really worrying, over 50% of the output from these models was inaccurate, 40%, harmful, and incomplete - Abeba Birhane There is no such thing as fully autonomous AI, we will always need people, humans, in the loop. - Abeba Birhane KEYWORDS #ai #data #audit #research #chatgpt #ethicalai

How we view the past is very much shaped by the stories we're told about it and AI innovations are helping researchers to enrich our understanding of history. A new project called VOICES is using artificial intelligence to uncover the untold women's experiences of extreme trauma and civil war in early modern Ireland. The project was recently launched at Trinity College Dublin and today we hear from the interdisciplinary team of historians and computer scientists leading the research. Our expert guests are two Trinity researchers, Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History, Jane Ohlmeyer, and Professor in Computer Science in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Declan O'Sullivan. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT ● Challenges in processing data from the 16th and 17th Century ● Utilising knowledge graphs for interpreting phrases, spelling and grammar ● Recovering stories of Ireland’s forgotten women ● Creating processes and digital archives for future researchers ● Crossovers in learning from interdisciplinary approaches GUEST DETAILS Professor Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin and Chair of the Irish Research Council, which funds frontier research across all disciplines. Jane was the founding Head of the School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity’s first Vice-President for Global Relations (2011-14) and Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2015-20). Jane is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published extensively on early modern Irish and British history. She is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books. Jane has been the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI for 25 research and research infrastructure projects with awards totalling c.€22 million from national, European and international funders. Declan O’Sullivan is a Professor in Computer Science at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, and is a co-applicant Principal Investigator in the ADAPT SFI Research Centre. Prof. O’Sullivan and his team’s research in Knowledge Graph Techniques, which extracts, transforms and integrates data, is central to this relationship between data and machine learning. Since joining TCD from industry in 2001, Declan has established himself as an international research leader in his field: authoring 260+ scientific peer-reviewed papers and international Journals; being a member of 3 journal editorial boards and having undertaken 12+ chair roles in IEEE and IFIP conferences over the years. He has won competitive research funding as PI and Co-PI of approximately 7.8M euro. He was elected as a Fellow in Trinity College Dublin in 2019 in recognition for the quality of his contributions. MORE INFORMATION Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/ KEYWORDS #knowledgegraph #ireland #data #history #17thcentury #archives #AI

You cannot move an inch these days without encountering takes on the future of AI and technology, and concerns about how it may impact our lives for better or worse. Today we're talking about new ways to approach the ethics of AI and digital technologies and what research is being done to answer the questions and the dilemmas these new technologies raise. Our experts today are from the ADAPT Centre and are researching alternative methods of ethical and critical thinking in the design of digital technologies and AI. They are Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Communication Studies in University College Dublin (UCD), Dr Marguerite Barry and postdoctoral researcher at the School of Information and Communication Studies at UCD, Dr Paul O’Neill. THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT ● Critical thinking and ethical design in AI ● Incorporating ethics at the research stage ● The importance of public engagement on future uses of digital technologies ● Beta Festival: Using art to encourage engagement and critical thinking ● Interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research GUEST DETAILS Prof Marguerite Barry is Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Communication Studies in University College Dublin (UCD). Her research area is human-computer interaction (HCI) and digital media communication studies with a focus on ethical design and development in policy and practice. She is a funded investigator with ADAPT on the Transparent Data Governance strand where she is working on the Autonomy & Responsibility challenge. This involves interdisciplinary projects to support multi-stakeholder engagement in AI technologies from design to deployment. Dr. Paul O’ Neill is an artist and researcher whose practice and research are concerned with the implications of our collective dependency on networked technologies and infrastructures. Paul is a postdoctoral research fellow at the ADAPT Centre for AI-driven Media Technologies at University College Dublin where he is focusing on the ethics and design of Artificial Intelligence systems. He is also a co-curator of the Dublin Art and Technology Association (D.A.T.A). MORE INFORMATION Adapt Radio is produced by DustPod.io for the Adapt Centre For more information about ADAPT visit www.adaptcentre.ie/ KEYWORDS #technology #ethics #data #research #ai #art

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

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/