Researcher and lecturer at the University of Évora, Paulo Quaresma, shares potential applications of artificial intelligence technologies in Unity services FCCN.
The aim of this article is to reflect on how the application of artificial intelligence methodologies could enhance and increase the services provided to the scientific community by FCCN, a unit of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology.
These reflections are based, on the one hand, on my knowledge of FCCN, as I was its director during 2021 and, on the other hand, on my 25 years as a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence.
Let's start by describing the areas in which FCCN operates. To this end, a look at its website(http://www.fccn.pt) allows us to identify a wide range of services provided to the scientific community. While some of these services already incorporate artificial intelligence components, it is expected that, in the short and medium term, they may be extended by incorporating high value-added components. Let's take a look at some of the possibilities.
- Arquivo.pt
The historical archive of the .pt domain web pages is, by itself, a collection of immense value and a base for scientific research studies, especially in the area of computational processing of Natural Language and Computational Linguistics. However, with the increasing availability of open access tools for processing Portuguese language texts, the "Arquivo.pt" may make available not only the archive, but also services over this archive. As an example, see the potential interest in automatically obtaining the identification of the entities (people, organizations and places) mentioned in the publications of certain domains (e.g. online newspapers) in a given period of time; or, in addition, which events the people concerned participated in and with whom they related. Or, in what ways has the lexicon and syntax used in online publications changed over time?
- B-on: Knowledge Library
b-on integrates a vast set of scientific publications from the main international publishers and allows an integrated search to those collections. However, it is possible to develop and integrate advanced Natural Language processing tools, in order to incorporate a set of additional functionalities in the search module in the article collections. In fact, Language models are available nowadays, both for English and multi-languages, which may be used in the searches, allowing to obtain the scientific articles that are semantically closest to the searches performed. It is also possible to build a model of each b-on user, with their scientific interests, and send notices whenever an article related to their interests is added to one of b-on's integral collections.
- Open Science
Portugal joined plan S in 2021, with the goal of adopting the principles of Open Science, either in the publication of scientific articles or in the creation of data repositories. In this sense, FCT has been incorporating in its calls for proposals measures for the full adoption of plan S during this year. However, the monitoring and evaluation of the procedures associated with Open Science is not simple, given the large size of the data at stake (annual production of thousands of articles and data collections). The use of AI and Data Science methodologies may allow to automatically extract the relevant data and validate their publication form, eliminating the need for complex and repetitive manual procedures.
- Advanced Computing
This is the item where the relevance of artificial intelligence for its implementation and enhancement is most immediately apparent: machine learning anddeeplearning in particular require increasingly powerful and complex computing resources. FCCN /FCT manages the RNCA - National Network for Advanced Computing, which is made up of several nodes at national level and includes structures dedicated to high-performance processing, including deep neural networks. A huge increase in existing computing capacity is expected in the short and medium term.
- Researcher Services
FCCN offers a wide range of services to researchers, from content production services (educast), teaching and training platforms (NAU), video conferencing systems (colibri) and event broadcasting (videocast), to platforms to support the management of scientific activity (ciência id, ciência vitae and PTCRIS). In this area too, artificial intelligence could help raise the level of services made available to the scientific community. Some examples: the teaching and training platform could benefit from incorporating models of the trainees, with a representation of their mental state (e.g. goals and beliefs), in order to allow interaction and a personalized learning process; the CV management platform could, through Natural Language processing tools, identify additional relevant information in external sources and propose its inclusion in the corresponding Cvs.
- Infrastructures: RCTS, networks
This is a fundamental component of FCCN 's activity and supports the activity of the entire scientific community. It is an area that already integrates AI components, such as intrusion and attack detection or anomaly diagnosis. With the growing importance of cybersecurity, AI will play an increasingly important role in this field.
In conclusion, from the analysis carried out, as well as thanks to current developments in the field of AI, it is clear that this will be an inevitable and successful crossover, allowing FCCN to increase the quality of the services it already provides to the scientific community.
