Monthly 216
August 01, 2021
Monthly 216Past Issues - How to submit an announcement
Table of Content
- DEADLINES
- CALLS
- JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS
Deadlines
| MEandE-LP 2021: | Aug 02, 2021 (Paper) |
| MFCS 2021: | Aug 07, 2021 (Early registration deadline) |
| FORMATS 2021: | Aug 20, 2021 (Registration deadline) |
| PM 2021: | Aug 20, 2021 (Registration deadline) |
| ICGI2020: | August 23, 2021 (Start of conference) |
| RW 2021: | Aug 25, 2021 (Registration closes) |
| CCC 2021: | Aug 30, 2021 (Deadline) |
| Tenure track lecturer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel): | Sept 6, 2021 (application deadline) |
| CPP 2022: | Sep 16, 2021 (Abstract Submission Deadline) |
| FLoC 2022: | Sep 27, 2021 (Submission of workshop proposals deadline) |
MEandE-LP 2021: 1st Workshop on Machine Ethics and Explainability-The Role of Logic Programming
CALL FOR PAPERS- INVITED SPEAKERS
- Luis Moniz Pereira, New University of Lisbon, Portugal.
- Francesca Toni, Imperial College of London, UK.
- AIMS AND SCOPE
Machine Ethics, Explainability are two recent topics that have been attracting a lot of attention and concern in the last years. This global concern has manifested in many initiatives at different levels. There is an intrinsic relation between these two topics. It is not enough for an autonomous agent to behave ethically, it should also be able to explain its behavior, i.e. there is a need for both ethical component and explanation component. Furthermore, an explainable behavior is obviously not acceptable if it is not ethical (i.e., does not follow the ethical norms of the society).
In many application domains especially when human lives are involved (and ethical decisions must be made), users need to understand well the system recommendations, to be able to explain the reasons for their decisions to other people. One of the most important ultimate goals of explainable AI systems is the efficient mapping between explainability and causality. Explainability is the system ability to explain itself in natural language to average user by being able to say, "I generated this output because x,y,z". In other words, the ability of the system to state the causes behind its decision is central for explainability.
However, when critical systems (ethical decisions) are concerned, is it enough to explain system's decisions to the human user? Do we need to go beyond the boundaries of the predictive model to be able to observe a cause and effect within the system?
There exists a big corpus of research work on explainability, trying to explain the output of some blackbox model following different approaches. Some of them try to generate logical rules as explanations. However, it is worth noting that most methods for generating post-hoc explanations are themselves based on statistical tools, that are subject to uncertainty or errors. Many of the post-hoc explainability techniques try to approximate deep-learning black-box models with simpler interpretable models that can be inspected to explain the black-box models. However, these approximate models are not provably loyal with respect to the original model, as there are always trade-offs between explainability and fidelity.
On the other side, a good corpus of researchers has used inherently interpretable approaches to design and implement their ethical autonomous agents. Most of them are based on logic programming, from deontic logics to non-monotonic logics and other formalisms.
Logic Programming has a great potential in these two emerging areas of research, as logic rules are easily comprehensible by humans, and favors causality which is crucial for ethical decision making.
Anyway, in spite of the significant amount of interest that machine ethics has received over the last decade mainly from ethicists and artificial intelligence experts, the question "are artificial moral agents possible?" is still roaming around. There have been several attempts for implementing ethical decision making into intelligent autonomous agents using different approaches. But, so far, no fully descriptive and widely acceptable model of moral judgment and decision making exists. None of the developed solutions seem to be fully convincing to provide a trusted moral behavior. The same goes for explainability, in spite of the global concern about the explainability of the autonomous agents' behaviour, existing approaches do not seem to be satisfactory enough. There are many questions that remain open in these two exciting, expanding fields.
This workshop aims to bring together researchers working in all aspects of machine ethics and explainability, including theoretical work, system implementations, and applications. The co-location of this workshop with ICLP is intended also to encourage more collaboration with researchers from different fields of logic programming.This workshop provides a forum to facilitate discussions regarding these topics and a productive exchange of ideas. - TOPICS of interest include (but are not limited to):
- New approaches to programming machine ethics;
- New approaches to explainability of blackbox models;
- Evaluation and comparison of existing approaches;
- Approaches to verification of ethical behavior;
- Logic programming applications in machine ethics;
- Integrating logic programing with methods for machine ethics;
- Integrating logic programing with methods for explainability.
- SUBMISSIONS: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=meandelp2021
The workshop invites two types of submissions:- original papers describing original research.
- non-original paper already published on formal proceedings or journals.
- regular papers must not exceed 14 pages (including references)
- extended abstract must not exceed 4 pages (excluding references)
- IMPORTANT DATES
Paper submission: Aug 02, 2021 Author Notification: Aug 18, 2021 Camera-ready articles due: Aug 25, 2021 - PROCEEDINGS
Authors of all accepted original contributions can opt for to publish their work on formal proceedings. Accepted non-original contributions will be given visibility on the workshop web site including a link to the original publication, if already published.
MFCS 2021: The 46th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION- The MFCS conference series has been organised since 1972. Traditionally, the conference moved between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, while since 2013, the conference travels around Europe. In 2021, it will come to Tallinn, Estonia. MFCS is a high quality venue for original research in all branches of theoretical computer science.
- INVITED SPEAKERS:
- Amina Doumane (ENS Lyon)
- Martin Grohe (RWTH Aachen University)
- Joël Ouaknine (Max Planck Institute for Software Systems)
- Eva Rotenberg (Technical University of Denmark)
- Barna Saha (UC Berkeley)
- The event will be hybrid, both physical and online. Please check the information regarding the programme and the invited speakers at https://compose.ioc.ee/mfcs/
- REGISTRATION
Early registration deadline: Aug 07, 2021
Last minute registration is possible, but more expensive. Registration can be done on the website of the conference: https://compose.ioc.ee/mfcs/registration.php
FORMATS 2021: Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION- FORMATS 2021 is an annual conference aimed at promoting the study of fundamental and practical aspects of timed systems, and bringing together researchers from different disciplines that share interests in modelling, design, and analysis of timed computational systems.
The conference aims to attract researchers interested in real-time issues in hardware design, performance analysis, real-time software, scheduling, semantics and verification of real-timed, hybrid and probabilistic systems. This year's programme includes a special session on control synthesis and motion planning for cyber-physical and control systems, chaired by Morteza Lahijanian. - Invited Speakers at FORMATS 2021:
- Daniele Magazzeni, King's College, London & JP Morgan AI Research, UK
- Jana Tumova, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
- In 2021 FORMATS is co-organized together with CONCUR 2021, FMICS 2021, QEST 2021, and satellite workshops Express/SOS 2021, PM 2021, SNR 2021, TRENDS 2021, under the QONFEST 2021 umbrella conference.
See https://qonfest2021.lacl.fr/ - REGISTRATION
Registration is free but mandatory.
Registration deadline: Aug 20, 2021
https://qonfest2021.lacl.fr/registration.php
Depending on the evolution of the pandemic in the Paris region, we will try to hold some physical event, if you are interested please indicate it in the registration form.
PM 2021: First Workshop on Predictive Maintenance
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION- WORKSHOP
We are happy to invite you to the first workshop in predictive maintenance, co-located with CONCUR @ QONFEST'21. Predictive maintenance is an upcoming field, aiming at optimizing asset maintenance strategies through sensor technology, data analysis, (stochastic) techniques, etc. PM 2021 brings together experts from academia and industry, to share their knowledge and experience on the soaring field of predictive maintenance. This includes:- model checking approaches, e.g. to optimise component replacement policies
- machine learning predictors, to extrapolate load growth and increased repair frequency
- examples of applications in company assets and policies, etc.
- CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
- Kim G. Larsen (Aalborg University, DK)
- Alessandro Abate (University of Oxford, UK)
- Nick Oosterhof (Dutch Railways, NL)
- Alessandro Cimatti (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, IT)
- Roberto Manuel Cibils (INVAP S.E., AR)
- Lisandro Jiménez Roa (University of Twente, NL)
- Jaap van Ekris (Delta Pi, NL)
- Participation is free of charge.
Registration deadline: Aug 20, 2021
https://qonfest2021.lacl.fr/registration.php
ICGI2020: The 15th International Conference on Grammatical Inference
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION- This event will be conducted virtually online and is free with mandatory registration here: https://icgi2020.lis-lab.fr/register/
- It is our pleasure to inform you about ICGI 2020/21, the major forum for presentation and discussion of original research papers on all aspects of grammar learning. ICGI, which has been organized bi-annually since the early nineties, will be held on-line in August 2021 after being postponed due to COVID-19 last year.
The conference events take place from Monday, August 23 to Friday, August 27 beginning at 8:00 EDT/14:00 CEST/21:00 JST and running for 2 to 3 hours each day. The program also includes invited talks and tutorials, which are presented live. The accepted papers will be presented asynchronously via pre-recorded videos with dedicated question and answer periods held live. - See the webpage for invited speakers and programme: https://icgi2020.lis-lab.fr/speakers/ and https://icgi2020.lis-lab.fr/program/
Tenure track lecturer (Research) “Static security guarantees for programming languages”, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
JOB ANNOUNCEMENT- The computer science department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is offering a full-time position as professor to reinforce its programming languages and software engineering branch within the subject area of "Static security guarantees for programming languages".
The position is published under the heading:- Tenure track lecturer (Research) “Static security guarantees for programming languages”
You will be offered a tenure track appointment, for an assignment of 1 FTE, for 5 years, with eligibility for tenure in the rank of associate professor (or higher) by the end of this initial period, with planned starting date 01/02/2022.
The deadline for applying is September 6th, 2021. Applications should reach us through the website. The person to contact for further information is:
Prof. dr. Wolfgang De Meuter at Wolfgang.De.Meuter@vub.be or on +02/2629.34.81. - Please see job listing for position description: https://jobs.vub.be/job/Elsene-Tenure-track-lecturer-%28Research%29-'Static-security-guaranties-for-programming-languages'/687214901/
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