AIhub monthly digest: April 2025 – aligning GenAI with technical standards, ML applied to semiconductor manufacturing, and social choice problems

Welcome to our monthly digest, where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, peruse the latest news, recap recent events, and more. This month, we find out about aligning generative AI with technical standards, learn how machine learning can be applied to semiconductor manufacturing, investigate social choice problems, and hear about the return of the AI Song Contest.

Interview with Joseph Marvin Imperial: Aligning generative AI with technical standards

We continued our series meeting the AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants in this interview with Joseph Marvin Imperial. Joseph is based at the University of Bath, focusing on aligning generative AI with technical standards for regulatory and operational compliance.

Interview with Amina Mević: Machine learning applied to semiconductor manufacturing

Amina Mević is another AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participant, working at the intersection of machine learning, physics, mathematics, and semiconductor technology. Her research also incorporates elements of psychology and ethics. She told us about her PhD research so far, what makes this field so interesting, and how she found the AAAI Doctoral Consortium experience.

Provably safe certification for machine learning models under adversarial attacks

In their work PROSAC: Provably Safe Certification for Machine Learning Models under Adversarial Attacks presented at AAAI 2025, Chen Feng, Ziquan Liu, Zhuo Zhi, Ilija Bogunovic, Carsten Gerner-Beuerle, and Miguel Rodrigues developed a new way to certify the performance of machine learning models in the presence of adversarial attacks with population-level risk guarantees. Here, Chen tells us more about their methodology, the main findings, and some of the implications of this work.

Investigating social choice problems

In their paper Reducing Leximin Fairness to Utilitarian Optimization, Eden Hartman, Yonatan Aumann, Avinatan Hassidim and Erel Segal-Halevi present a scheme for addressing social choice problems. In this interview, Eden tells us more about such problems, the team’s methodology, and why this is such a fascinating and challenging area for study.

AAAI 2025 workshops round-up

This month, we heard from the organisers of two AAAI 2025 workshops. Peter Santhanam filled us in on the key takeaways from the workshop on open source AI for mainstream use, whilst Daniela Annunziata and Marzia Canzaniello brought us up-to-speed with the latest happenings in the world of federated learning for unbounded and intelligent decentralization.

Open competition to create more realistic stock images of “digital transformation at work”

The ESRC Digital Futures at Work Research Centre and Better Images of AI have announced a competition to reimagine the visual communication of how work is changing in the digital age. There are eight prizes on offer for creation of new visual images across four themes: digital adoption, digital inclusion, changing employment contracts and working conditions, and digital dialogues. Artists and makers have until 18th May 2025 to enter. Find out more about the competition, and how to enter, here.

UK smart machines strategy 2035

The UK’s Robotics Growth Partnership (an independent expert committee appointed by the UK government) has published a roadmap to position the UK as a global leader in robotics. The report emphasizes the “transformative potential of smart machines to address pressing societal challenges, enhance economic productivity, and establish national leadership in a rapidly evolving technological landscape”.

How do people feel about AI?

A survey published by the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Alan Turing Institute reveals attitudes towards AI among the general public in the UK. It follows a previous survey carried out in 2022, before the release of ChatGPT and other LLM-based chatbots, which was published in 2023. The survey found that public awareness of different AI uses varies widely. While 93% have heard of driverless cars and 90% of facial recognition in policing, only 18% were aware of the use of AI for welfare benefits assessments. You can read more about the key findings here.

AI Song Contest back for 2025

The AI Song Contest is set to return in 2025, with the Award Show to take place in November in Amsterdam. The Contest is an international competition designed to showcase the creative potential of human–AI co-creativity in the songwriting process. If you are interested in taking part, you can find out more here.

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Lucy Smith is Senior Managing Editor for AIhub.

Lucy Smith is Senior Managing Editor for AIhub.