Computing word-of-mouth trust relationships in social networks from Semantic Web and Web 2.0 data sources

Social networks can serve as both a rich source of new information and as a filter to identify the information most relevant to our specific needs. In this paper we present a methodology and algorithms that, by exploiting existing Semantic Web and Web2.0 data sources, help individuals identify who in their social network knows what, and who is the most trustworthy source of information on that topic. Our approach improves upon previous work in a number of ways, such as incorporating topic-specific rather than global trust metrics. This is achieved by generating topic experience profiles for each network member, based on data from Revyu and del.icio.us, to indicate who knows what. Identification of the most trustworthy sources is enabled by a rich trust model of information and recommendation seeking in social networks. Reviews and ratings created on Revyu provide source data for algorithms that generate topic expertise and person to person affinity metrics. Combining these metrics, we are implementing a user-oriented application for searching and automated ranking of information sources within social networks

Addressing the Challenges of Semantic Citizen-Sensing

Preprin

Removing the Digital Divide for Senior Web Users

It is hard for the elderly to use the internet to find the resource they want. Usually help is needed for them to complete the task on the technology things. The main reason for this project is to research ideas on encourage senior people to make use of the web to locate helps they want, such as finding volunteers and professional helps. The scope of this project is to develop a new way of web access and content presentation methodologies that let senior people getting help from volunteers and various service providers more easily that incorporates social networking technology e.g. Facebook. By incorporating the social network web site like Facebook into the web application, senior people will be able to find volunteering help or other related service providers through social networking. Volunteers will show up in Google map in search results for senior to easily locate helps. Senior people can also search for self help videos tutorials through the web application search engine. A mobile version of the senior user application will also be developed for easy access on the road. Other features that benefit senior users includes voice input, control / content posting and collaborative social networking where a sponsors would sponsor a help task volunteer undertake

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Semantics-Empowered Big Data Processing with Applications

We discuss the nature of Big Data and address the role of semantics in analyzing and processing Big Data that arises in the context of Physical-Cyber-Social Systems. We organize our research around the Five Vs of Big Data, where four of the Vs are harnessed to produce the fifth V - value. To handle the challenge of Volume, we advocate semantic perception that can convert low-level observational data to higher-level abstractions more suitable for decision-making. To handle the challenge of Variety, we resort to the use of semantic models and annotations of data so that much of the intelligent processing can be done at a level independent of heterogeneity of data formats and media. To handle the challenge of Velocity, we seek to use continuous semantics capability to dynamically create event or situation specific models and recognize relevant new concepts, entities and facts. To handle Veracity, we explore the formalization of trust models and approaches to glean trustworthiness. The above four Vs of Big Data are harnessed by the semantics-empowered analytics to derive value for supporting practical applications transcending physical-cyber-social continuum

Trust, Accountability, and Autonomy in Knowledge Graph-based AI for Self-determination

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) have emerged as fundamental platforms for powering intelligent decision-making and a wide range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) services across major corporations such as Google, Walmart, and AirBnb. KGs complement Machine Learning (ML) algorithms by providing data context and semantics, thereby enabling further inference and question-answering capabilities. The integration of KGs with neuronal learning (e.g., Large Language Models (LLMs)) is currently a topic of active research, commonly named neuro-symbolic AI. Despite the numerous benefits that can be accomplished with KG-based AI, its growing ubiquity within online services may result in the loss of self-determination for citizens as a fundamental societal issue. The more we rely on these technologies, which are often centralised, the less citizens will be able to determine their own destinies. To counter this threat, AI regulation, such as the European Union (EU) AI Act, is being proposed in certain regions. The regulation sets what technologists need to do, leading to questions concerning: How can the output of AI systems be trusted? What is needed to ensure that the data fuelling and the inner workings of these artefacts are transparent? How can AI be made accountable for its decision-making? This paper conceptualises the foundational topics and research pillars to support KG-based AI for self-determination. Drawing upon this conceptual framework, challenges and opportunities for citizen self-determination are illustrated and analysed in a real-world scenario. As a result, we propose a research agenda aimed at accomplishing the recommended objectives

User modeling for exploratory search on the Social Web. Exploiting social bookmarking systems for user model extraction, evaluation and integration

Exploratory search is an information seeking strategy that extends be- yond the query-and-response paradigm of traditional Information Retrieval models. Users browse through information to discover novel content and to learn more about the newly discovered things. Social bookmarking systems integrate well with exploratory search, because they allow one to search, browse, and filter social bookmarks. Our contribution is an exploratory tag search engine that merges social bookmarking with exploratory search. For this purpose, we have applied collaborative filtering to recommend tags to users. User models are an im- portant prerequisite for recommender systems. We have produced a method to algorithmically extract user models from folksonomies, and an evaluation method to measure the viability of these user models for exploratory search. According to our evaluation web-scale user modeling, which integrates user models from various services across the Social Web, can improve exploratory search. Within this thesis we also provide a method for user model integra- tion. Our exploratory tag search engine implements the findings of our user model extraction, evaluation, and integration methods. It facilitates ex- ploratory search on social bookmarks from Delicious and Connotea and pub- lishes extracted user models as Linked Data