LAB42 believes the future is human. The future needs people who can guide dialogue, kickstart innovation, and link technological advancement to societal problems.

That’s why LAB42 exists for the sake of development, and by the grace of its people. People like below.

Jelle Zuidema: Finding out why AI makes certain choices

It's a well-known example: in 2015, it became painfully clear that the application of AI can sometimes go terribly wrong. A month previously, Google had introduced the option of automatically tagging photos and putting them in an album. Very convenient in itself, you might say. However, the system got it very wrong in the case of a photo of a dark-skinned man and his girlfriend. Their photo was tagged ‘gorilla’. The app received a lot of criticism, and Google promised to remedy the error. But guess what? Three years later, the error had not been corrected at all; it turned out that Google had simply blocked the ‘gorilla’ category.

blog
10.08.22

‘Partnerships are a very appealing option for businesses’

The UvA and Bosch have extended their partnership with the launch of Delta Lab 2. Herke van Hoof, former lab manager for Delta Lab 1, is now passing the baton to Eric Nalisnick. Below, the two Machine Learning Lab scientists discuss the partnership.

blog
13.07.22

Khalil Sima'an: a translation machine that really understands language

How do you translate the Dutch word gezellig into English? Cosy is probably the first thing that comes to mind but it doesn’t really convey the full meaning. And take the Italian word culaccino , for example, which refers to the mark that a cold glass leaves on a table. Or the Portuguese word saudade , which can best be described as a combination of melancholy and yearning.

blog
14.06.22

Raquel Fernández: talking to your computer as if it were human

You may have seen one while shopping online: you scroll a bit and a pop-up suddenly appears in the corner of your screen, asking, ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ These ‘conversational agents’ or chatbots are like digital assistants meant to make our lives easier. The question is, do they? 

blog
01.03.22

Evangelos Kanoulas: saving lives with AI

Immunotherapy has the potential to cure cancer. But it is an expensive treatment that sometimes has unpleasant side effects and is only effective in 30 per cent of cases. Can AI help? Computer scientist Evangelos Kanoulas works as an associate professor at the Informatics Institute, as well as at the UvA Business School – and he recently founded the start-up Ellogon.AI in order to study this topic.

blog
22.02.22

Dean McHugh: computer models that ensure justice prevails

PhD candidate causal relations Dean McHugh is trying to find a model for causality. Where others might say ‘it's just a matter of how you define it’ to minimise the relevance of a given discussion, this statement actually sums up Dean's work rather nicely. To give a concrete example, his models might someday be a vital part of the justice system.

blog
15.02.22