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 (WUT) (€202,000; 920,000 PLN)
• Coordinator at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen: Dr. Valentin Gold,  principal investigator at WUT: Katarzyna Budzynska, post-doctoral researcher at WUT (tba)
• DeLab consortium: Katarzyna Budzynska, ethical responsible AI, Warsaw University of Technology (PL), Valentin Gold, experimental social science, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (DE), Annette Hautli-Janisz, empirical linguistics, University of Konstanz (DE), John Parkinson, political science, Maastricht University (NL), Chris Reed, computational AI, University of Dundee (UK)
  DeLab partners: André Bächtiger, Universität Stuttgart (DE), Manfred Stede, Universität Potsdam (DE), Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE)
• 04.2021-03.2025 Warsaw University of Technology

Conflict is one of the engines of society: whether in political democratic processes, corporate decision making or discussions with friends, conflict is a driving force, powerful and vital. Using processes of argumentation and reasoning, it leads us from controversy to consensus in all fields of public discourse, allowing us to uncover assumptions and misassumptions, expunge solipsism, and refine understanding. 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
• International partners: Annette Hautli-Janisz, University of Konstanz (DE), Chris Reed, University of Dundee (UK)
• 01.2021-12.2022 Warsaw University of Technology

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 (WUT) (€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): Martijn Demollin
• 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)
  
• 09.2020-09.2023 Warsaw University of Technology

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)