Impact and news
PAI is a thriving research community engaged in cutting edge research and events. We bring together AI leaders from academia, Government and industry. Our events include workshops, international conferences, showcases and networking opportunities addressing the technology and societal impact of AI.
A Slice of PAI: news from around the Institute
Congratulations to the researchers of PAI and CVSSP on their momentous recent conference and publication achievements
Over the world and over the years, their work is the pillar behind our no. 1 in computer vision ranking since records began – CS Rankings, retrieved 31 October 2024: tinyurl.com/5n8zs5yh
We are immensely proud of their record of publishing impactful papers and presenting at prestigious conferences. Their hard work, dedication, and ground-breaking ideas are inspiring.
These are some of their recent conference achievements that we are celebrating: https://tinyurl.com/33tcuca7
Are corporations above the law? Not quite. New research by PAI Fellow Professor Alex Sarch from the Surrey School of Law, published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Research, sheds light on the limits of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.
Professor Sarch proposes a groundbreaking approach to hold corporations accountable for criminal actions, even when no single individual possesses the full intent. By aggregating the collective knowledge of employees, the "collective knowledge doctrine" could pierce through corporate structures and expose criminal intent.
This innovative solution addresses the complex issue of compartmentalisation within organisations, where senior management often shield themselves from liability.
Read the research here: tinyurl.com/56828fty
Exciting developments for our CDT, in conjunction with StoryFutures, Royal Holloway, University of London. PAI Director Professor Adrian Hilton: “Fantastic to host inspirational keynote talks given by industry pioneers from Disguise and BBC R&D as part of the induction programme for PhD researchers on the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Digital Media Inclusion. The keynote talks teed-off the first CDT challenge week engaging inter-disciplinary research teams to innovate new approaches to media inclusion – the week was highly successful inspiring ground-breaking ideas which have the potential to transform media inclusion for all. Challenge-led research training is an integral part of our CDT programme to engage researchers with AI-enabled solutions to overcome real-world barriers to inclusion “
Jonathan Winfield, Manager of the CDT, added: “Our 11 CDT AI for Digital Media researchers completed their first industry mini-challenge at the end of an intensive 4 week induction programme on Friday 25th October. They celebrated with the CDT staff and a well-earned beer and burger!”
In October, PAI participated in the Surrey Showcase to display some of our amazing current research. The Showcase followed an address by Surrey’s President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Max Lu to staff. Our stand was in the Rik Medlik building, a lovely space that’s flooded with light from its double height ceilings. This Showcase was a colleague event, but next year we plan to open Surrey Showcase to the public once more, when PAI will have much to show and share!
This year, we showed our colleagues some of our current exciting research, including:
AI For Inclusion: The Changing Forest, presented by Dr Davide Berghi
This is an award-winning interactive media experience demonstrating different versions personalised for different audience ages, neuro-diversity, language and accessibility needs (AI4ME). The project aims to make digital experiences more inclusive by tailoring them to individual needs.
AI for creativity: SAIReco Narrator: Real-Time AI Scene Narrator, presented by our PhD researcher, Asmar Nadeem.
This was an interactive demo that instantly detects people, objects, and actions in live video, generating natural language descriptions. These descriptions explain what's happening and why, effectively turning real-time scenes into stories. This research has many intriguing potential applications, like supporting visually impaired people, or creating immersive storytelling experiences.
Beyond these exciting demos, we showed recent news stories, demonstrating the impact our research on the real world; such as NHS diagnostics, helping the Police in tackling knife crime, and working to make travel more accessible for the Deaf community. We were proud to display posters showcasing our distinguished Fellows, whose pan-University work fosters interdisciplinary research and maximises impact across all faculties. Our beautifully designed interactive touch screen showing our six research areas was very popular with visitors.
We are looking forward to announcing more events soon - watch this space!
We're thrilled to have welcomed our incoming cohort of 26 PhD students at the start of this new academic year. Our diverse group will be joining CVSSP, PAI and the brand-new UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Digital Media Inclusion (in conjunction with StoryFutures at Royal Holloway, University of London). We're extremely happy to have all these talented individuals join our research community and become future leaders in their respective fields.
We're excited about the opportunities ahead for our PhD researchers, both new and returning. At our core, we believe in fostering a unified PhD community. We value the unique contributions of every individual, the understanding across different backgrounds and research areas, and the empowerment of our PhD researchers to work together.
We’re looking forward to an enriching year ahead in our vibrant and enriching research environment where everyone feels valued and supported.
Co-founded by PAI director Professor Adrian Hilton, the 21st ACM SIGGRAPH European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP 2024) is again set to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from the creative industries. This year it is chaired by PAI's Dr Armin M., Dr Marco Volino and Dr Violeta Menéndez González, PhD, with Dr Andrew Gilbert and Dr Moira Shooter on the committee.
CVMP offers a unique opportunity to network, learn about the latest advancements, and explore the future of visual media production. Don't miss out on this chance to connect with experts from film, broadcast, games, and academia. Join us at CVMP 2024 - shape the future of visual storytelling.
Read more here: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/artificial-intelligence/latest-events
Register here: https://store.surrey.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/feps-faculty-of-engin…
Professor Wang was given the coveted Judges' Award at the DCASE2024 (Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events) Workshop 23-25 October 2024 in Tokyo. The award was for his work presented in the DCASEChallenge (Task 10): Fine-grained Audio Feature Representation with Pretrained Model and Graph Attention for Traffic Flow Monitoring.
DCASE Challenge is an international challenge, co-founded and first hosted by PAI and CVSSP’s Professor Mark Plumbley in 2013. It attracts wide interest from the audio signal processing, machine learning/AI, and machine listening communities. Task 10 is a new task in DCASE 2024, on “Acoustic-Based Traffic Monitoring”. This task aims to design a solution that utilises acoustic signals to count the number of vehicles, distinguish between vehicle types (such as cars or commercial vehicles), and record their travel direction (left turn or right turn). Professor Plumbley attended DCASE2024 and accepted two distinguished awards on behalf of PAI/CVSSP researchers, including this one. He presented Professor Wang with his award at our Surrey headquarters.
The award is also testament to the valuable connections forged at PAI and CVSSP over the years. The awarded work was jointly created by Professor Wang, and his international collaborators, including Dr Jian Guan (Professor Wang’s former visiting PhD student at CVSSP, now at Harbin Engineering University), his students Mr Shitong Fan and Mr Feiyang Xiao (co-supervised by Professor Wang), and Dr Qiaoxi Zhu (former visiting PhD student at CVSSP, now at the University of Technology Sydney).
Prof Wang commented: “I am thrilled by this international recognition. Our work highlights the significant potential of acoustic sensors for predicting traffic flow and monitoring road conditions. Compared to other sensor types, such as vibration sensors, radar, cameras, infrared, and drones, acoustic sensors bring distinct advantages, including low cost and energy efficiency. We foresee broad impacts and increased adoption of our research across academic and industry communities, marking a meaningful step forward in creating smarter cities through acoustic technology. This work also showcases the vital role of international collaboration in driving scientific and technological progress.”
Congratulations Dr Davide Berghi and Professor Philip Jackson on their Judges' Award at the DCASE2024 (Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events) Workshop 23-25 October 2024 in Tokyo. The award was for their work presented in the DCASEChallenge (Task 3). Dr Berghi’s research work is part of the AI4ME project, led by PAI in collaboration with the BBC, EPSRC and Lancaster University – a flagship partnership which aims to develop the future of personalisation and transform the UK's media industry at scale using AI and Object-Based Media OBM.
PAI and CVSSP’s Professor Mark Plumbley (right in picture) co-founded the DCASE community and hosted the first DCASE challenge in the UK in 2013. He attended DCASE2024 and accepted two awards on behalf of colleagues – more to follow on the second award! Professor Plumbley presented Dr Berghi and Professor Jackson with their award at our Surrey headquarters.
Dr Davide Berghi commented: “This year’s DCASE Challenge on sound event localisation and detection (Task 3) introduced a new element: estimating the source distance. In response, we developed an audio-visual system that leverages reverberation-based acoustic features with visual depth maps to improve accuracy.”
PAI Director Dr Andrew Rogoyski recently gave a talk to the U3A on Understanding AI and its Repercussions for Society, Now and in the Future. This was during a study day at beautiful The Menuhin Hall, led by members of U3A's "AI for Everyone Team" with support from PAI. It explored what AI is and how it works, with case studies of its application, discussion of issues and challenges, and demonstrations of AI tools that are available to all U3A members.
Dr Rogoyski’s talk is at 3:34:22: https://www.youtube.com/live/rDyUe-pRjB8
At this month’s Labour Party Conference, PAI, with other partners, presented a Cultural and Creative Industries Pavilion, coordinated by Creative UK.
On Tuesday 24 September, 1-2pm, PAI’s Dr Andrew Rogoyski spoke on aligning the AI opportunity with policy which equally values human creativity and development and application of artificial intelligence.
During the conference, the Pavilion hosted events run by more than 40 partners across the arts and culture sector. The PAI team enjoyed stimulating discussions and debates around the creative and cultural industries, with a special focus on AI. Follow us on LinkedIn or X for live updates.
