A paper by Markus Luczak-Rösch, Ramine Tinati, Kieron O’Hara and Nigel Shadbolt on “Socio-technical Computation:” collaborative problem solving through information sharing. The authors pose the question: Can the accumulated information propagation behaviour on the Web be conceived as a giant machine, and reasoned about accordingly?
Professor Dame Wendy Hall has been named in the Engineering and Technology category of the prestigious Debrett’s top 500 most influential people.
Debrett’s top 500 recognises people of influence and achievement in British society. The list has been compiled annually by independent panels of specialists in each category for over 200 years.
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt in the Guardian on AI (Artificial Intelligence). He discusses the benefits, dangers and ethics of AI. The future and the responsibilities of researchers in the field of AI are also discussed.
A paper by Nigel Shadbolt and Paul Smart (a chapter in the book “Evaluation of Human Work” edited by J. R. Wilson and S. Sharples, 4th edition), discussing knowledge elicitation (techniques for obtaining knowledge from an expert) for knowledge intensive systems.
A paper by Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, Elena Simperl, Max Van Kleek, Nigel Shadbolt and Robert Simpson describing research into 10 “Citizen Science” projects, in which members of the public are involved in scientific research. The study examined the factors that affect user engagement, the discussions between the citizen scientists and the transference of scientific expertise, with over 50 million activities of 250, 000 users being analysed.
The new International Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (iCAIR) will provide advice on robotics and artificial intelligence.
The Council will also draw up a global action plan, create educational materials and run an awards scheme.
It is being set up by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and will be managed by the Prime Minister’s Office of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Professor Dame Wendy Hall discusses the past, present and future of Web Science, data observatories, Open Data and Social Machines in an interview with Aloysius Low of CNET.
Designing and building taxonomies (structures for the identification, classification and description of items) for the Web is time consuming and costly. “Folksonomies”, which are created by the website users themselves, have emerged, however, they can be ambiguous and can have an inconsistent structure. This research paper by Fahad Almoqhim, David E. Millard and Nigel Shadbolt, suggests an improved method (based on the Heymann-Benz algorithm).
The winner will be announced at a special event in London on the 3rd of December.
The Computer Weekly judges and the reader vote will decide the winner, who will be the person that they consider holds the most influence over the future of the UK IT sector in 2014. More details can be found here.
A research paper by Ramine Tinati, Markus Luczak-Roesch, Elena Simperl and Nigel Shadbolt, describing an analysis of the citizen science discussion forum Galaxy Zoo. Citizen
science is a term which describes the enabling of citizens to participate in research using their own personal equipment. The study investigates the characteristics of people who participate in citizen science and the factors that affect participation.