Lecture Artificial Intelligence Controversies

As part of the lecture series ’Artificial Intelligence’, SASA Corresponding Member Vladan Devedžić will give a lecture titled ’Artificial Intelligence Controversies,’ at the SASA Grand Hall, on Tuesday, 21 November, at 11 a.m.

It has been more than a decade since Artificial Intelligence (AI) became the hot topic of conversations, papers and discussions, more and more beyond professional circles, even among broad audiences. The recent emergence of ChatGPT and the rise in popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) just ‘added fuel to the fire’, bringing the interest in AI to the heights no one could have imagined at the beginning of the AI boom. However, numerous experts believe that this fanfare and development also increase vagueness and controversies surrounding the AI field.

Since the very launch, AI has provoked numerous controversies. One of them is the fact that there does not exist a generally accepted definition of AI. Because of that, for a number of years, the term AI has been used on disparate occasions and in different contexts which can bring about its hyperinflation and devaluation. There is a controversy related to the AI identity. Since AI is inherently a multidisciplinary field, it is frequently the aim of those wishing to claim it to some other separate fields. Sometimes AI becomes a victim of superficial perception of those who just follow trends. Rapid development of some of the related fields, such as applied statistics, i.e. data science, predictive analytics, biometrics etc. provoke the feeling in some people that AI gradually is losing its identity due to these other fields. Another, ever more present AI controversy is linked to the expanding number of people who acquire various types of fear due to AI’s rapid development. And finally, the increasingly intriguing concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the ability of a computer/machine to learn independently to perform any task performed by humans and animals – has become the subject of a great deal of discussion, debate, interviews and media focus across the globe.

This situation has inspired this lecture. It is attempting to shed light on several dominant and disparate views of AI as a research field and field of development. Although it is not possible to draw strict lines between what AI is and what it is not, it is useful if someone has any ideas on what AI used to mean, what it means to shareholders and which criteria are used by various shareholders when labelling systems, products, research, behaviour types and AI labelled phenomena.

Vladan Devedžić is a computer science professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences of the University of Belgrade. He completed his studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Belgrade: he received his BSc in 1982, his MSc in 1988 and PhD in 1993. He also worked at The Vinča Institute for Nuclear Sciences in the period between 1982 and 1985, as well as at The Mihajlo Pupin Institute in Belgrade in the period 1985-1995. He has been a corresponding member of the Department of Technical Sciences of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2021.

He is the founder and leader of a research group which engages in AI whose name is GOOD OLD AI Research Network. He has also founded the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence at this home faculty. He is a recipient of the University of Belgrade Award for the greatest research achievement (2006) and the award for one of the best projects in the field of educational technologies at the Online Educa Berlin conference in 2015. His current interests include programming education, software engineering, intelligent software systems and technology-enhanced learning (TEL).

A live stream is available at LIVE STREAMING

The footage of previously held lectures within the Artificial Intelligence lecture series is available at  https://www.sanu.ac.rs/snimci-predavanja-iz-ciklusa-vestacka-inteligencija/