Interviews

Interviews

Conference Participation

Malta, March 17-22, 2024

Fabian Retkowski and Alex Waibel participated in the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) in Malta from March 17-22. As the leading European conference in the field of computational linguistics, the EACL welcomes European and international researchers from a wide range of research areas dealing with computational approaches to natural language.

Retkowski and Waibel presented their paper From Text Segmentation to Smart Chaptering: A Novel Benchmark for Structuring Video Transcriptions. Watch the full presentation here:

Interview for Bildung/Falter Verlag

Bildung, Falter Verlag, October 4, 2023

Anna Echterhölter gave an interview to „Bildung” the education magazine published by Falter Verlag. She gave an insight into the first results of the research project and summarised the opportunities and problems of using AI in different disciplines.

The full interview, entitled “Zukunft der Wissenschaft. Skepsis in den Disziplinen“ can be found in the latest issue of Bildung. Das Magazin für Studium, Weiterbildung und Karriere (PAGE 18-19) from 4 October as a supplement to the 40/23 Falter issue.

TV Interview on AI and Fake News

TV Kanal Vis & nota.mk, August, 2023

Andreas Sudmann was interviewed by a Macedonian broadcaster as part of a journalistic project on fake news, AI, and social media. The aim of the project was to raise awareness of disinformation, and it was supported by the British Embassy.

The contributions were broadcast multiple times on the Macedonian broadcaster TV Kanal Vis and nota.mk in August.

Following you can see one of the videos titled ‚Fighting Disinformation in the Land of Fake News‘:

Interview with Alex Waibel on the Titan accident

Tagesschau, June 22, 2023

In collaboration with researchers from KIT and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Alex Waibel has developed a method that enables video conferencing even under extreme conditions, as transmission is possible over very low bandwidths.

In the summer of 2022, he tested this method during a submarine expedition to the wreck of the Titanic at a depth of around 4,000 meters with the Titan submarine, which is known from the accident in June 2023.

Communication with the mother ship at such depths has so far only been possible via text messages using sonar. These were ideal test conditions for Waibel to try out his method. In the submarine a sound recording was first converted into a text message using automatic speech recognition and then transmitted to the mother ship via sonar. AI was then used to create a synthetic reconstruction of the speaker’s voice and video. Despite complications, such as the failure of one of the two sonar devices, some dialog was transmitted.

During a similar expedition to the wreck of the Titanic, contact with the Titan submarine was lost in mid-June 2023. Despite days of searching, the Titan could not be found and the search was finally abandoned as the survival of the occupants had to be ruled out.

Alex Waibel was often interviewed during these days to report on his experiences in the submarine and to give an assessment of the situation. Below you will find an interview with the German Tagesschau.

Radio interview for Deutschlandfunk Kultur

Deutschlandfunk Kultur, May 4, 2023   

As part of a radio feature on the uses of artificial intelligence in the sciences, Andreas Sudmann gave an interview to German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Among other things, he explained that AI models will soon be capable of identifying problem contexts that humans were previously unaware of. In other words, they will be able to generate new scientific findings themselves.

You can find the full feature under the title „Wissenschaft – KI hilft Forschenden, Theorien zu entwickeln“ („Science – AI helps scientists to develop theories“) online on Deutschlandfunk Kultur’s website or listen to it below:

Conference participation in Dubai

Dubai, February 6-10, 2022

Andreas Sudmann participated in the second international conference on Humanities and the Rise of AI giving a lecture on AI as a quasi-analog information technology. The conference took place in the Luxembourg pavilion at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai, organized by the Faculty of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences at the University of Luxembourg.

Further information about the conference is available on the website of ‚The Ends of the Humanities‘, an international network for the scientific analysis of technological change.

Watch the full lecture on video: