As Sweden is in an election year, the past weeks, I have been I have been repeatedly promoting the message to be careful when prompting AI systems for advice on what to vote for.
First, I featured in the local newspaper, Jönköpingsposten (Swedish only):
https://www.jp.se/kultur-noje/maria-hedblom-ge-inte-bort-din-rost-till-ai/
Then I was interviewed on Live Radio in P4 Jönköping (Swedish only):
https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/risker-med-att-anvanda-ai-for-politiska-valfragor-i-sverige
(𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘸)
📽️ Förra veckan, ville Jenny Tingvall på Folkuniversitetet intervjua mig för en kort reklamvideo för de AI-föreläsningar som vi arrangerar tillsammans.
Att komprimera AI till svar som ryms inom en minut var verkligen inte särskilt lätt! Så korta svar kan aldrig ge en fullständig och korrekt bild. Därför kändes det extra bra att dagarna som följde intervjun fick det starkt komprimerade budskapet i videon mer plats i de AI föreläsningar jag blivit inbjuden att hålla påbiblioteken i Sundbyberg, Värmdö Kulturhus, Nyköping, Järna och Åtvidaberg.
Det är en ära att få bli inbjuden, att människor kommer för att lyssna och att få delta i så intressanta diskussioner med publiken! 🙏 Mer föreläsningar blir det!
Last week, Jenny Tingvall at Folkuniversitetet wanted to interview me for short promo video for the AI lectures we organise together.
Compressing complex concepts like AI into answers that fit into 1 minute-mark was a real challenge! Such short answers can never capture a complete and accurate picture! That made it extra important that in the days that followed, I got the chance to expand on the highly compressed message by holding longer lectures on AI in the libraries in Sundbyberg, Värmdö Kulturhus, Nyköping, Järna and Åtvidaberg.
It’s an honour to be invited and that people come to listen and participate in such interesting discussions! 🙏 There will be more lectures!
Last week I hit another career milestone: I attended my first Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (LZI) seminar. The seminar “Conveying the Essence via Abstraction: from Art to AI” fit my interests to the teeth!
As one of the plenary speakers, I talked about bananas, chairs and my research on how we can abstract not only objects but complex concepts and dynamic events into fundamental components of meaning!
I learned a lot and took many reflections with me. Now I am looking forward to engage in our planned work of taking the abstract discussions into concrete outcomes!
Many thanks to the organisers Zeynep G. Saribatur, Pascal Hitzler and Claus-Christian Carbon for inviting me. It was truly humbling to be included in such an impressive group of people!
Tucked in between the many science deadlines in February and March and the onset of the next teaching period, I had been invited to give a few popular science lectures in the libraries of Gnesta and Sollentuna through the collaboration with Folkuniversitetet.
In Gnesta, I presented “AI: på gott och ont” (AI: for good and evil) and in Sollentuna, I presented “AI: Nobelpris, Fake News och framtidens science fiction” (AI: Nobel prizes, Fake News and the Science Fiction of the Future). Both lectures had large engaged audiences who asked great questions about this new technological developments.
I am really grateful to spread knowledge and to have the opportunity to meet so many new and interesting people while touring around!
Being the AI-representative for the School of Engineering towards media, I have had the privilege to speak on live radio a few times in the past years.
Earlier today, I was invited to partake in “Eftermiddag i P4 Jönköping” (in Swedish only) to talk about AI generated content on social media, AI chatbots who talk to one another and the Dead Internet Theory.
It is always really fun, and a bit nerve-racking to speak to an audience of some 100.000 listeners!! But with only around 3 minutes of talking time, you take your fabricated fame and hope that those that listened learned something valuable!
The position in which I can spread knowledge is the highest honour I’ve been given and so I’m doing my best to deserve the influence it might have.
Yesterday, the first of the year’s planned popular science presentations took place at Habo Library. It felt fantastic to be back on the road spreading information about AI.
Greeting me as I entered the library was a table of books related to the talk! That was an amazing addition to the setup of open lecture to spread information and inspire people to learn more!
All my respect to the important work the libraries do and thanks to Folkuniversitetet who makes this possible!
More talks are coming up, check the 3rd Mission page for more information!
On the 28th, I was invited by Ronnie Dovskog at Senioruniversitetet i Växjö to speak about AI: for good and evil in their technology lecture series!😇👿
To the event, some 100 people showed up to learn how new technology is being used – both for good and for bad, ask questions, and laugh as we were prompting the AI chatbot to write Haiku poetry and make funny pictures – all in the name of “using AI for good”!
Being a true believer of Lifelong learning, Senioruniversitetet is easily one of the coolest and most active organisations I have had the honour to participate in as a speaker! I am genuinely looking forward to the day when I pass the eligibility criteria to join!
🙏🥳 Last week, my 3rd mission talks on AI was FULLY BOOKED!
Or at least, so full we needed to bring more chairs to accommodate everyone who wanted to join!
🤖🏆📰
I am incredibly honoured that so many wanted to listen to my popular science talks on AI: Nobel prizes and “fake news” at the libraries in Eksjö and Gislaved on the 22nd and 23rd of October.
Many thanks to the local librarians (you have one of society’s most important jobs!) and Folkuniversitetet who makes this possible!
While holding an open lecture on AI at the Library in Söderköping, I was interviewed by journalist Tobias Pettersson from the local newspaper Länstidningen Östgötland. If you are curious, you find the article here (in Swedish only):
With approximately 20% acceptance rate, I am happy to announce that the paper we wrote from the master student I supervised, Miranda R. Martínez Rodriguez, got accepted at The 26th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems.
The paper “An LLM and Embeddings-based Multi-Agentic System for Knowledge Graph Construction and Verification” contains the work she did for her master thesis at Volvo where she was supervised by Ali Nouri and Zhennan Fei, and by me at the university.