Who is calling the shots in Polish AI?

Professor Leszek Rutkowski: Over the last decade AI in Poland has developed faster than any other field of research

Over the last decade artificial intelligence methods have developed in Poland very intensively and more rapidly than other research topics in different scientific domains.

In Poland there has been a conference dedicated to that field of study. It has been organized since 1994. Similarly to previous ones, the 2019 conference scheduled to be held between 16 and 20 June will be called The International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. For many years conference materials have been published within the Springer’s series “Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence” (2018 conference materials can be downloaded from: https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319912523, https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319912615).

In Poland, active research teams dealing with artificial intelligence methods are headed by about a dozen or maybe even several tens of leaders

Over the past 20 years the conference has hosted almost all research teams dealing with artificial intelligence methods. Invited speakers included some of the world’s most renowned scientists, namely professor Lotfi Zadeh, professor Shun-Ichi Amari, professor Ronald Yager and professor Jose Principe. Conference participants have an opportunity to get information about the results of American and Japanese leading universities as well as share their knowledge and compare their research ideas with other scientists.

Leaders and their teams

In Poland, active research teams dealing with artificial intelligence methods are headed by about a dozen or maybe even several tens of leaders, some of which are listed below:

• Włodzisław Duch
• Ryszard Tadeusiewicz
• Józef Korbicz
• Roman Słowiński
• Janusz Kacprzyk
• Krzysztof Cpałka
• Leszek Rutkowski
• Jerzy Stefanowski
• Halina Kwaśnicka
• Przemysław Kazienko
• Bogusław Cyganek
• Grzegorz J. Nalepa
• Jacek Koronacki
• Krzysztof Krawiec
• Michał Woźniak
• Jacek Mańdziuk
• Piotr Jędrzejowicz
• Krzysztof Dembczyński

It is also worth mentioning Polish researchers working abroad on artificial intelligence:

• Jacek Żurada
• Bogdan Wilamowski
• Adam Krzyżak

The activity of research teams in Poland working on artificial intelligence is very well illustrated by the scope of topics tackled by winners of competitions organized by the National Science Center. Basing on the analysis of, for example, OPUS competitions and topics from the field of artificial intelligence four topic areas seem predominant:

• image processing;
• big data sets;
• data analysis and exploration methods;
• medical applications.

A more detailed analysis of research and centers where they were or have been conducted over the past several years would also be interesting:

Image processing

  1. “Methods of detection and tracking objects in real time based on the analysis of 3D maps and unsupervised feature learning”, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow.
  2. “Object recognition in low-quality images combining classification methods and algorithms for visual information reconstruction in real time mode”, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow.
  3. „Development of abnormal event detection methods and algorithms to recognize objects and analyze underwater scenes”, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow.
  4. “Robust methods of mixed noise reduction in color digital images”, Silesian University of Technology.
  5. “Effective methods of scene perception in real time based on the analysis of multimodal data and unsupervised feature learning”, University of Science and Technology in Cracow.
  6. “Constructions of sets of integral images for fast feature extraction and machine learning in detections tasks”, West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin.

Big data sets

  1. “Semantic tensor networks for large data sets analysis”, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Sciences.
  2. „Extraction of low-dimensional latent factors from non-negatively constrained big data”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
  3. “Models, methods and algorithms of computational network science”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
  4. “Strategic analysis of social networks”, University of Warsaw.

Data analysis and exploration methods

  1. “Compositional distributional semantic models for identification, discrimination and disambiguation of senses in Polish texts”, Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences.
  2. “New approaches to effective training of complex intelligence systems”, University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow.
  3. “Fuzzy implications and their impact on various methods used in intelligent systems”, University of Silesia in Katowice.
  4. “Methods of multiclass classification of unbalanced data”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
  5. “Paraconsistent reasoning in autonomous systems situated in informationally-complex environments”, University of Warsaw.
  6. “Analytical and exploratory mining of sequential data: models, algorithms and data structures”, Poznan University of Technology.
  7. “Algorithms and methods for new generation Crowdsourcing platforms”, Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology.
  8. “Theory of incomplete data analysis”, Jagiellonian University.
  9. “Algorithmic and axiomatic analysis of committee scoring systems”, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow.
  10. “Effective methods of unsupervised learning for deep learning applications”, Jagiellonian University.
  11. “Deep support vector machine architectures developed with the use of evolutionary algorithms”, Silesian University of Technology.
  12. “Development of deep learning methods for neural networks”, Czestochowa University of Technology.
  13. “Classification algorithms of unbalanced data streams”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
  14. „Quantitative specifications: learning, algorithms and applications”, University of Wrocław.
  15. “Randomized methods for artificial neural networks learning”, Czestochowa University of Technology.
  16. “Open-set classification in high-dimensional data – with applications in Text Mining”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

Applications in medicine

  1. “Compression and genomic data analysis algorithms”, Silesian University of Technology.
  2. “Bioinformatics tools for automatic identification of tumor areas and tumor heterogeneity based on metabolic profiles generated with spectrometric molecular imaging techniques”, Silesian University of Technology.
  3. “Inclusion of information on genetic diversity to the analysis of DNA sequencing data”, University of Warsaw.
  4. “New algorithms for assessing clonal structures and for modeling heterogeneous evolutions for applications in cancer genomics”, Silesian University of Technology.
  5. “Methods of grammatical inference in classification of amyloid proteins”, Wrocław University of Science and Technology.
  6. „RNApolis – methods and algorithms for modeling and analyzing RNA structure”, Poznan University of Technology.
  7. „Mathematical and morphological models in the problems of analysis and reconstruction of kidney cancer”, Warsaw University of Technology.
  8. “Compression of highly scalable collections of genomic data”, Silesian University of Technology.
  9. “Application of fuzzy classifiers working on uncertain, incomplete and unbalanced data to predict the risk of preterm birth”, Institute of Medical Technology and Equipment.

It is very interesting to compare the above subjects with the projects carried out by the best centers in the world, e.g. laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or laboratories of such companies like Google, Facebook or Microsoft.

To conclude, the subjects tackled at Polish universities are up-to-date and correspond to the scope of interest of world leading laboratories. In Poland less intensive research has been being conducted only in the field of autonomous intelligent robots. We are also lagging behind dynamically growing international centers in terms of neuromorphic computers which work in the same way as the human brain.

This paper is an adaptation of the study by professor Leszek Rutkowski entitled “Development of artificial intelligence in Poland with special reference to institutions and persons focused thereon in Poland; guiding the course of artificial intelligence research and applications in the world” (Częstochowa 2018), prepared for the National Information Processing Institute.