Keynotes

Towards human centric querying and decision making: dealing with pros-and-cons type  bipolarity in intentions, judgments  and evaluations

By Janusz Kacprzyk

Abstract:

We are concerned with some big challenges facing IT/ICT for a long time which can be briefly stated as those related to making computers to be "cognitive partners" for the humans. We concentrate on a purposeful use of vast data and information resources. We are concerned, first, on how to find (retrieve) a proper information reflecting the human needs, interests, intentions, preferences, etc. Then, we deal with how to purposefully use that information for decision making which  is a ``meta-problem'' in all human activities. Since decisions are made by humans, and for the humans, even if mimicked by/in inanimate systems, then the decision making is a clear human centric/centered problem, and so is querying. Formally, decision making boils down to finding a best option, usually using some strict and formal choice or optimization tools. In real  situations, we should add some elements to our models to make them more human consistent, hence easier implementable, notably some adequate representations of human judgments, attitudes, preferences and intentions, for instance which involve an element of a positive and negative, necessary and optional, etc. evaluations, or the pros and cons, for short. We are concerned with how to formalize and solve problems in which there is a bipolarity in the decision maker’s judgments, intentions  and preferences which boils down in our context to the specification of what is necessary and optional, and  therefore what should result in the  rejection and acceptance of an option or course of action. We present the concept of a bipolar query exemplified by, for a real estate example: find a house which is more or less within our price limit and, if possibly, close to public transportation, or – when context is involved – find such a house among houses that are possibly characteristic for a specific zone. The problem is clearly a non-standard “and, if possibly” aggregation which can be modeled by fuzzy logic. We also show how, using a similar approach, a bipolar decision making setting can be devised, from various points of view, notably non-orthodox multicriteria and multiagent, and dynamic decision making, using fairness analyses, intention modeling, multiagent approaches, etc. We indicate potentials of this bipolar type approaches to solve human centric problems which are particularly relevant for modern IT/ICT based environments.

Biography:

Academician Janusz Kacprzyk, Fellow of IEEE, IET, IFSA, EurAI and SMIA, graduated from Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, with M.Sc. in automatic control and computer science, obtained in 1977 Ph.D. in systems analysis and in 1991 D.Sc. in computer science. He is Professor of Computer Science at the Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, WIT – Warsaw School of Information Technology, Chongqing Three Gorges University, Wanzhou, China, and Professor of Automatic Control at PIAP – Industrial Institute of Automation and Measurements. He is Honorary Foreign Professor at the Department of Mathematics, Yli Normal University, Xinjiang, China. He is Full Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Member of Academia Eureopaea (Informatics), Member of  European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Technical Sciences),  Foreign Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Spanish Royal Academy of Economic and Financial Sciences (RACEF),  Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, Flemish Royal Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts (KVAB) and the International Academy of Systems and Cybernetics.. He received the honorary doctorates (doctor honoris causa) from Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary, 2014;  Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary, 2016; Professor Zlatarev University, Bourgas, Bulgaria, 2017; and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland, 2017. He has been a frequent visiting professor in the USA, Italy, UK, Mexico, China, Austria, and Bulgaria and served on evaluation commissions of many foreign universities, as well as on panels for Advanced Grants at the European Research Council. His main research interests include the use of modern computation computational and artificial intelligence tools, notably fuzzy logic, in decisions, optimization, control, data analysis and data mining, with applications in databases, ICT, mobile robotics, systems modeling etc. He authored 6 books, (co)edited more than 100 volumes, (co)authored ca. 550 papers. He is a member of the IEEE CIS Award Committee, was Chair of 2016 IEEE CIS Award Committee, was in 2011 – 2016, and is from 2018 a member of Adcom of IEEE CIS, and was a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE CIS. He received many awards notably the 2006 IEEE CIS Pioneer Award in Fuzzy Systems, 2006 Sixth Kaufmann Prize and Gold Medal for pioneering works on soft computing in economics and management, 2007 Pioneer Award of the Silicon Valley Section of IEEE CIS for contribution in granular computing and computing in word. He is the President of the Polish Operational and Systems Research Society and Past President of International Fuzzy Systems Association.