181 research outputs found
New technologies and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – Which step forward rushed by the COVID-19 pandemic?
No full textAmyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a fast-progressive neurodegenerative disease leading to progressive physical immobility with usually normal or mild cognitive and/or behavioural involvement. Many patients are relatively young, instructed, sensitive to new technologies, and professionally active when developing the first symptoms. Older patients usually require more time, encouragement, reinforcement and a closer support but, nevertheless, selecting user-friendly devices, provided earlier in the course of the disease, and engaging motivated carers may overcome many technological barriers. ALS may be considered a model for neurodegenerative diseases to further develop and test new technologies. From multidisciplinary teleconsults to telemonitoring of the respiratory function, telemedicine has the potentiality to embrace other fields, including nutrition, physical mobility, and the interaction with the environment. Brain-computer interfaces and eye tracking expanded the field of augmentative and alternative communication in ALS but their potentialities go beyond communication, to cognition and robotics. Virtual reality and different forms of artificial intelligence present further interesting possibilities that deserve to be investigated. COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity to speed up the development and implementation of new technologies in clinical practice, improving the daily living of both ALS patients and carers. The present work reviews the current technologies for ALS patients already in place or being under evaluation with published publications, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic
Intelligenza Artificiale. Cos’è davvero, come funziona, che effetti avrà
No full textIntelligenza Artificiale è la rivoluzione tecnologica che stiamo vivendo. Non è fantascienza e non ci aspetta certo al varco tra qualche anno sotto forma di un robot umanoide. No, è già qui, e tutti noi - consapevolmente o meno - la stiamo abbondantemente usando ogni giorno. Ogni volta che facciamo una ricerca su Internet, IA sta già operando da remoto, sul nostro smartphone, mostrandoci i risultati che ritiene più adatti a noi, e lo fa con una precisione inquietante. Questo è solo uno degli esempi più ovvi. In realtà IA sta già condizionando le nostre vite in mille altri modi, che spesso neppure immaginiamo. A dispetto del fatto che si tratta di una tecnologia che ormai pervade le nostre vite, pochi di noi sanno effettivamente come funzioni e in cosa consista questa novità tanto dirompente. E questo è un problema, perché, come ogni grande innovazione tecnologica, anche IA ha (e avrà sempre più in futuro) ricadute importanti in ogni settore della società. C’è chi la vede come una promessa salvifica e chi invece la teme come una terribile potenza distruttrice; in mezzo ci sono gli indifferenti, che spesso la usano senza neppure saperlo. Ma si temono (o si osannano) solo le cose che non si conoscono. Per questo motivo, in questo volume sono state riunite le competenze di sei diversi esperti del settore, determinati a spiegare in termini comprensibili cosa sia effettivamente questa nuova tecnologia e che effetti ha (e potrà avere) nei più diversi ambiti delle nostre vite. Dalle questioni più squisitamente tecniche ai nuovi dilemmi etici, dalle inedite incertezze giuridiche agli effetti sul mondo del lavoro, questo volume intende informare il pubblico al di là degli allarmismi hollywoodiani o dei facili entusiasmi futuristici, per contribuire a creare un dibattito ragionato sia sulle promesse sia sulle criticità che le nuove tecnologie informatiche ci impongono di affrontare, se vogliamo essere cittadini consapevoli della nuova società che sta prendendo rapidamente forma sotto i nostri occhi. Testi di Francesco Corea, Claudia Giulia Ferrauto, Fabio Fossa,Andrea Loreggia, Stefano Quintarelli, Salvatore Sapienza. Prefazione di Piero Angela
Promoting data provenance tracking in the archaeological interpretation process
No full textn this paper we propose a model and a set of derivation rules for tracking data provenance during the archaeological interpretation process. The interpretation process is the main task performed by an archaeologist that, starting from ground data about evidences and findings, tries to derive knowledge about an ancient object or event. In particular, in this work we concentrate on the dating process used by archaeologists to assign one or more time intervals to a finding in order to define its lifespan on the temporal axis and we propose a framework to represent such information and infer new knowledge including provenance of data. Archaeological data, and in particular their temporal dimension, are typically vague, since many different interpretations can coexist, thus we will use Fuzzy Logic to assign a degree of confidence to values and Fuzzy Temporal Constraint Networks to model relationships between dating of different finding
IFDAD 2022 INTERNATIONAL FORUM on DIGITAL and DEMOCRACY 2022
No full textThis volume contains the papers presented at the IFDAD 2022 INTERNATIONAL FORUM on DIGITAL and DEMOCRACY 2022, November 17-18, 2022, held as an in person and online event in Rome, Italy. The collection of papers in this proceedings were selected from those submitted by an international Program Committee
An ethical perspective on Artificial Intelligence: Principles, rights and recommendations/Una prospettiva etica sull’intelligenza artificiale: princìpi, diritti e raccomandazioni
No full textAs technologies become more and more pervasive in our everyday life new questions arise, for example, about security, accountability, fairness and ethics. These concerns are about all the realities that are involved or committed in designing, implementing, deploying and using the technology. This document addresses such concerns by presenting a set of practical obligations and recommendations for the development of applications and systems based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. These are derived from a definition of rights resulting from principles and ethical values rooted in the foundational charters of our social organization
A principle-based approach to AI: the case for European Union and Italy
No full textAs Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more and more pervasive in our everyday life, new questions arise about its ethical and social impacts. Such issues concern all stakeholders involved in or committed to the design, implementation, deployment, and use of the technology. The present document addresses these preoccupations by introducing and discussing a set of practical obligations and recommendations for the development of applications and systems based on AI techniques. With this work we hope to contribute to spreading awareness on the many social challenges posed by AI and encouraging the establishment of good practices throughout the relevant social areas. As points of novelty, the paper elaborates on an integrated view that combines both human rights and ethical concepts to reap the benefits of the two approaches. Moreover, it proposes innovative recommendations, such as those on redress and governance, which add further insight to the debate. Finally, it incorporates a specific focus on the Italian Constitution, thus offering an example of how core legislations of Member States might contribute to further specify and enrich the EU normative framework on AI
Recommending New Items to Ephemeral Groups Using Contextual User Influence
No full textGroup recommender systems help groups of users in finding appropriate items to be enjoyed together. Lots of activities, like watching TV or going to the restaurant, are intrinsically
group-based, thus making the group recommendation problem very relevant. In this paper we study ephemeral groups, i.e., groups where the members might be together for the first time. Recent approaches have tackled this issue introducing complex models to be learned offline, making them unable to deal with new items; on the contrary, we propose a group recommender able to manage new items too. In more detail, our technique determines the preference of a group for an item by combining the individual preferences of the group members on the basis of their contextual influence, where the contextual influence represents the ability of an individual, in a given situation, to direct the group’s decision. We conducted an extensive experimental evaluation on a TV dataset containing a log of viewings performed by real groups, showing how our approach outperforms the comparable techniques from the literature
A principle-based approach to AI: the case for European Union and Italy
No full textAs Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more and more pervasive in our everyday life, new questions arise about its ethical and social impacts. Such issues concern all stakeholders involved in or committed to the design, implementation, deployment, and use of the technology. The present document addresses these preoccupations by introducing and discussing a set of practical obligations and recommendations for the development of applications and systems based on AI techniques. With this work we hope to contribute to spreading awareness on the many social challenges posed by AI and encouraging the establishment of good practices throughout the relevant social areas. As points of novelty, the paper elaborates on an integrated view that combines both human rights and ethical concepts to reap the benefits of the two approaches. Moreover, it proposes innovative recommendations, such as those on redress and governance, which add further insight to the debate. Finally, it incorporates a specific focus on the Italian Constitution, thus offering an example of how core legislations of Member States might contribute to further specify and enrich the EU normative framework on AI
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