Dr hab. Marcin Koszowy from the Warsaw University of Technology, together with Swiss researchers from the Universita della Svizzera italiana, will conduct the project: “Reasons of the others: concession and counterargument in polylogues”. The researchers will investigate patterns of concession and counterargument (CO(u)N patterns) in discussions of Generative AI and LLMs on social media platforms.

• The project funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (FNSNF) and Polish National Science Centre (NCN)
• ReCount is worth €927k of which €310k comes to Warsaw University of Technology (€310,471; 1,426,302
  PLN)
• Team @WUT: (1) Principal Investigator: Marcin Koszowy (2) Co-Investigators: Paweł Stacewicz; Piotr Kulicki; Jarosław Chudziak (3) Research Assistants: tbc (4) Partners: tbc
• 11.2025-11.2029 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

Digitalisation is rapidly transforming our societies, transforming the dynamics of our interactions, transforming the culture of our debates. Trust plays a critical role in establishing intellectual humility and interpersonal civility in argumentation and discourse: without it, credibility is doomed, reputation is endangered, cooperation is compromised. The major threats associated with digitalisation – hate speech and fake news – are violations of the basic condition for trusting and being trustworthy which are key for constructive, reasonable and responsible communication as well as for the collaborative and ethical organisation of societies. These behaviours eventually lead to polarisation, when users repeatedly attack each other in highly emotional terms, focusing on what divides people, not what unites them.

Focusing on two timely domains of interest – gender equality and public health – iTRUST will deliver (i) the largest ever dataset of online text, annotated with features relevant for ethos, pathos and reframing; (ii) a new methodology of large-scale comparative trust analytics to detect implicit patterns and trends in hate speech and fake news; (iii) a novel empirical account of how these patterns affect polarisation in online communication and in society at large; and (iv) AI-based applications that will transfer these insights into interventions against hate speech, fake news and polarisation. Given the relevance for the knowledge-based society, the project puts great emphasis on outreach activities and users’ awareness in collaboration with media, museums and other partners.

The consortium consists of five experienced PIs with expertise in rhetoric, comparative political science, corpus linguistics, natural language processing, multi-agent systems and computational argumentation. The group is complemented by senior experts (ACP and KEP) in fields that provide valuable extensions, such as media studies and AI-based technologies. Our long-term ambition is to establish a pan-European network and foundations for trustworthy AI in response to the EC priority of “Europe fit for the Digital Age”.

• The project funded by “Foundations for Misbehaviour Detection and Mitigation Strategies in Online Social Networks and Media” (OSNEM) program of CHIST-ERA (Future and Emerging Information and Communication Technologies)
• iTRUST is worth €945k of which €250k comes to Warsaw University of Technology (€250,000; 1,110,000 PLN)
• Team @WUT: (1) Principal Investigator: Katarzyna Budzynska; (2) Co-Investigators: Jarosław Chudziak 2025-, Martin Hinton 2024-, Marcin Koszowy 2022-, Jakub Pruś 2024-, Bartłomiej Skowron 2023-, Paweł Stacewicz 2025-, Michał Stelmach 2025- (previously also Barbara Konat 2022-23, Alina Landowska 2022-24, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski 2022-23); (3) PhD student: Ewelina Gajewska 2023-25; (4) Research Assistants: Ewelina Gajewska 2022-23, Hanna Stacewicz 2025, Yana Sviatsilnikava 2023; (5) Academic Collaboration Partners: tbc
• iTRUST consortium: Lead PI: Katarzyna Budzynska; Co-PIs: Marie-Francine Moens, KU Leuven (BE); Andrea Rocci, Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano) (CH); Carles Sierra, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute IIIA (ES); Virginie Van Ingelgom, UCLouvain (BE)
• 11.2022-11.2025 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

Rephrasing speakers’ words is a powerful persuasive instrument in an argumentative discourse. The goal of AMoRe is to provide an argumentative model of rephrase by delivering: an annotation scheme and guidelines allowing to map dialogical arguments with rephrase structures; publicly available corpora of annotated rephrase types and structures; an inventory of propositional, stylistic, illocutionary and dialogical patterns associated with the use of rephrase; a methodological protocol allowing the systematic combination of linguistic and cognitive evidence which grounds our novel pragma-rhetorical account; and a fully-fledged pragma-rhetorical model of rephrase which integrates all aspects investigated in this project.

• The project funded by the OPUS-LAP program of the Polish National Science Center (NCN) and Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• AMoRe is worth €700k of which €165k comes to Warsaw University of Technology (€165,000; 753,000 PLN)
• Team @WUT: (1) Principal Investigator: Marcin Koszowy; (2) Co-Investigators: Katarzyna Budzynska 2022-, Jarosław Chudziak  2025-, Mitchell Welle 2024, Barbara Konat 2022-23; (3) PhD students: Maciej Uberna 2023-25, Konrad Kiljan 2023; (4) Academic Collaboration Partners: Amalia Haro Marchal
• AMoRe consortium: Lead PI: Marcin Koszowy, Warsaw University of Technology (PL); Co-PI: Steve Oswald, Co-I: Pascal Gygax, University of Fribourg (CH)
• AMoRe International Advisory Board: Isabela Fairclough, discourse analysis,  University of Central Lancashire (UK); Jean Goodwin, communication, North Carolina State University (US); Benno Stein, artificial intelligence, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE); Christopher Tindale, argumentation theory, University of Windsor (CA)
• 01.2022-12.2025 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

Far from a Europe-wide sphere of “public reason”, social media such as Twitter or comments on news sites suggest a growing crisis: especially when it comes to matters of identity, users repeatedly attack each other in highly emotional terms, with no sensitivity to differences across cultures, focusing on what divides people, not what unites them. With the DeLab, the project aims at an AI intervention system with which constructive, sensible and responsible communication in social media can succeed across cultural borders.

• The project funded by the “Artificial Intelligence – Its Effects on Tomorrow’s Society” of the German VW foundation (VolkswagenStiftung)
• DeLab is worth €1.5m of which over €200k comes to Warsaw University of Technology (€202,000; 920,000 PLN)
•  Team @WUT: (1) Principal Investigator: Katarzyna Budzynska; (2) Co-Investigators: Marcin Koszowy, Jarosław Chudziak;
• (3) Post-doctoral Researchers: Maciej Kulik 2023-24, Rory Duthie 2021-22; (4) Research Assistants: Katarzyna Michałowska 2024-25, Magdalena Pazderska 2023, Waldemar Raźniak 2023, Ewelina Gajewska 2022-23, Konrad Kiljan 2022-23, Maciej Uberna 2022-23, Yana Sviatsilnikava 2022-23, Marie-Amelie Paquin 2022; (5) Academic Collaboration Partners: tbc
• DeLab consortium: Lead PI: Valentin Gold (coordinator), experimental social science, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (DE); Co-PIs: Katarzyna Budzynska, ethical responsible AI, Warsaw University of Technology (PL), Annette Hautli-Janisz, empirical linguistics, University of Konstanz (DE), John Parkinson, political science, Maastricht University (NL), Chris Reed, argument technology, University of Dundee (UK)
  DeLab partners: André Bächtiger, Universität Stuttgart (DE), Manfred Stede, Universität Potsdam (DE), Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE)
• 01.08.2021-31.12.2026 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

• The project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• Consortium: Andrea Rocci and Carlo Raimondo, USI, Lugano U (CH, Coordinator); Chris Reed, Dundee U (UK)
• Advisory board: Katarzyna Budzynska, Warsaw University of Technology (PL); and Rudi Palmieri, Liverpool U (UK)
• 09.2021 – 08.2025

NL4XAI will train 11 creative, entrepreneurial and innovative early-stage researchers (ESRs), who will face the challenge of making AI self-explanatory and thus contributing to translate knowledge into products and services for economic and social benefit, with the support of Explainable AI (XAI) systems. At the Warsaw University of Technology, we are focusing on studying “Customized interactive argumentation schemes for XAI”. This involves defining, designing, developing and validating a new methodology for argumentation schemes tailored for planning and handling the discourse history in interactive conversational agents aimed at explaining AI in NL. The customisation will be achieved through the creation of a profile of the user and then adaptation of argumentation to match this profile.

• The project funded by the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN) under Horizon 2020.
• NL4XAI is worth just over €2.8m of which €227k comes to Warsaw University of Technology (€227,000; 1,033,000 PLN)
• Project coordinator at Santiago de Compostela U: Jose M. Alonso;  lead at WUT: Katarzyna Budzynska; PhD student at WUT (ESR8): He Zhang 2022-24, Martijn Demollin 2020-21; PA at WUT: Medea Kfoczynska-Łukasz
• Beneficiaries in the NL4XAI consortium: University of Santiago de Compostela (ES, Coordinator), University of Aberdeen (UK), Agencia Estatal del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (ES), Technische University of Delft (NL), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Università ta’ Malta (MA), Universiteit Utrecht (NL), Indra Soluciones Tecnologías de la Información SL (SP), Universiteit Twente (NL), Warsaw University of Technology (PL)
  Partner organisations in the NL4XAI consortium: University of Lorraine (FR), Arria NLG Limited (UK), Centre for Argument Technology, University of Dundee (UK), Wizenoze (NL), Orange (FR), Accenture (ES), Info Support (NL), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES)
  
• 09.2020-09.2024 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

The aim of this project is to develop an insight into conflict, and in particular how conflict evolves over time.

• • The project funded in the “Cybersecurity and Data Science (CyberiADa-2)” research priority of the Polish Ministry’s Excellence Initiative – Research University Programme at Warsaw University of Technology (171,000 PLN; €37,000)
  • Principal investigator: Katarzyna Budzynska, investigators: Ewelina Gajewska (2022), Konrad Kiljan (2022), Marcin Koszowy (2022), Rory Duthie (2021-22), Olena Yaskorska-Shah (2021)

• International partners: Annette Hautli-Janisz, University of Konstanz (DE), Chris Reed, University of Dundee (UK)
• 01.2021-12.2022 Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)

The main aim of the EthAn project is to understand the communicative structures of ethos related to a speaker’s character.

• • The project funded by the HARMONIA 7 program of the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) (517,000 PLN; €120,000)
  • Principal investigator: Katarzyna Budzynska, post-doctoral researchers: Barbara Konat & Marcin Koszowy,

• Consortium partners: Chris Reed (Dundee, Scotland), Patrick Saint-Dizier (Toulouse IRIT, France), Manfred Stede (Postdam, Germany)
  
• 05.2016-05.2021 Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN)

Processing and evaluation of trust in speaker’s credibility is crucial for many different sectors of industry such as e.g. reviews that provide the main source of information for users of online shopping networks such as Amazon and eBay, and travel sites as TripAdvisor. The goal of the project is to build a prototype of a system for semi-automatic identification and exploration through big maps of arguments linked to the credibility of their providers.

• An EPSRC DTG-funded PhD studentship (UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EPSRC) (£70,000; €87,000; 420,000 PLN)
• Supervisor: Katarzyna Budzynska, PhD student: Rory Duthie
• 01.2015-07.2018 University of Dundee