Artificial intelligence in Catalan

17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligencel (CCIA 2014).
17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligencel (CCIA 2014).
Research
(20/10/2014)

From 22 to 24 October, the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Barcelona (UB) hosts the 17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligence (CCIA 2014). Its main objective is to foster discussion around the last works in artificial intelligence which have been developed by the research community of the Catalan Countries, as well as to gather community members.

17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligencel (CCIA 2014).
17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligencel (CCIA 2014).
Research
20/10/2014

From 22 to 24 October, the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Barcelona (UB) hosts the 17th International Conference of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligence (CCIA 2014). Its main objective is to foster discussion around the last works in artificial intelligence which have been developed by the research community of the Catalan Countries, as well as to gather community members.

Most Spanish research groups that study artificial intelligence are in the Mediterranean region. Besides UB, other centres that develop pioneering studies on this field of knowledge are: the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), located at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and some research groups that belong to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the University of Lleida, the University of Girona, the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Universitat Jaume I, among other institutions.

Artificial intelligence is no longer the future, it is the present. Search engines used to surf on Internet, systems used by banks to analyse markets and robotic hands used in surgery are examples of artificial intelligence systems. “Nowadays, artificial intelligence means decision making”, affirms Oriol Pujol, researcher from the Research Group Vision and Computational Learning of the Faculty of Mathematics of UB and director of the organizing committee of the congress.

This field of knowledge aims at answering questions such as: What is intelligence?, How can we create intelligent machines and systems?. Current research areas include artificial perception and knowledge representation, automatic learning, reasoning, problem solving, reality interaction, etc. Artificial intelligence requires knowledge of mathematics, statistics and computer science.

The process of artificial intelligence has different phases: first, data is collected and stored, and then data is processed and modelled to get a result: in short, a decision. Within the process, big data and data science technologies enable to get useful information. The final phase of the process is visualization, for instance a robot, an image, etc. “Artificial intelligence must contribute to make decisions in a more accurate way; its applications are increasing: from medicine to marketing or banking”, concludes Pujol.