Invited Speakers

Dr. ir. Thijs Veugen

CWI, TNO, University Twente

thijs.veugen(at)tno.nl

Abstract of the Talk

Secure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. Unlike traditional cryptographic tasks, where cryptography assures security and integrity of communication or storage and the adversary is outside the system of participant, the cryptography in this model protects participants' privacy from each other. Recently, the domain of general purpose protocols has moved to deal with efficiency improvements of the protocols with practical applications in mind. Increasingly efficient protocols for MPC have been proposed, and MPC can be now considered as a practical solution to various real-life problems. In this talk an overview of current applications of secure multi-party computation (MPC) will be given, and the broad potential of this beautiful technology in Internet Community Services will be sketched.

Keywords: Secure multi-party computation

  Short CV

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Dr. h.c. Herwig Unger

Head of Department of Communication Networks, FernUniversität in Hagen

herwig.unger(at)fernuni-hagen.de

Abstract of the Talk

Like no other medium, the World Wide Web became the major information source for many people within the last years, some even call it the brain of mankind. For any arising questions, any facts needed or any multimedia content wanted, a web page providing the respective information seems to exist. Likewise, it seems that sometimes there is nothing what has not been thought, written, painted or expressed in any other form before: most users simply feel overwhelmed from the flood of available information.

Consequently, there is a need for new technologies for the autonomous self-management, more timely information handling, processing and the user’s interaction with such huge amounts of data. Indeed, Einstein’s saying ‘Look deep into the nature, then you will understand everything better’ is a big inspiration and challenge to find the required, new solutions. At this point, a short overview is given on existing organizational and functional principles, which have been derived from nature and in particular the human brain and which could be adapted to realize the desired, new methods for natural language processing. The methods mostly follow the strict natural design principle of locality, i.e.work without overseeing the whole system or full set of data and exhibit a high degree of parallelism.

Last but not least, some new design principles as well for search engines as for recommender systems will be derived and presented.

Keywords: Explainable AI

  Short CV

Darian Meacham

Associate Professor, Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, BISS Institute, Maastricht University

d.meacham (at) maastrichtuniversity.nl

Abstract of the Talk

In the past decade or so the “Future of Work” question has remerged as a major policy concern at national and international level. This is in large part due to opportunities and challenges created by the development of data and AI driven automation technologies, and in the past two years by the Covid pandemic, which has led many employees and employers to rethink the ways in which they work, as individuals and organisations. In the USA, there is now talk of a “great resignation”, as many employees reconsider the value and quality of their working lives. If there is one lesson that we have already learned it is that the “future of work” question resists easy formulations and answers, nor is it primarily a matter of jobs being replaced by automation. As work touches nearly every aspect of our lives the future of work is bound to be a complex question in need to careful investigation. In this talk I won’t offer predictions, but try to unpack the problem, asking not so much what is the future of work, but rather how should we ask good question(s) about it in the first place.

Keywords: Future of work

Short CV