PAAMS Conference brings together more than 500 researchers to discuss AI, blockchain or education in Guimarães (Portugal)

On 12, 13 and 14 July, Guimarães hosted the PAAMS conference on multi-agent systems; DCAI, Artificial Intelligence; PACBB, Bioinformatics; ISAmI, Ambient Intelligence; mis4TEL, Educational Technology; BLOCKCHAIN, and DECON, Economics. An event hosted by the BISITE Research Group of the University of Salamanca, the AIR Institute and IoT Digital Innovation Hub. 

The opening session common to all seven congresses was held on Wednesday, 12 July, with the presence of Paulo Novais; José Manuel Machado; Pedro Arezes and Pedro Rangel Henriques from the University of Minho and Juan Manuel Corchado, Director of the BISITE Research Group of the University of Salamanca and President of the AIR Institute.

Researchers' participation highly successful

This time the hybrid format allowed for the participation of close to 500 attendees including researchers, academics and experts from around the world, discussing the latest scientific and technical advances in different technologies. The quality and excellence of these conferences and organization throughout the twenty previous editions have led PAAMS to be endorsed and recognized with a B rating by CORE Ranking.

Four renowned experts participated in the plenary sessions: Julien Bourgeois, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (France), with the paper, "Building Real Objects with a Multi-Agent System". Tuomo Kujala, Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), presented a talk on linguistic models and artificial intelligence in "Cognitive Mimetics - Are big data and deep learning enough for intelligence" and "Applications of Social Agents in Games and Social Robotics". Finally, the fourth plenary session was delivered by Mike Sharples, Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University (UK), who discussed in depth the capabilities and limitations of chatGPT and other artificial intelligences in their application to education in "Generative AI: Implications for Assessment and Learning".

Excellence in research was recognized by AIR Institute, which awarded a prize of 1,000 euros to the best PAAMS demonstration paper. In addition, a committee of experts will select the best papers presented at the different congresses to be part of special issues of journals such as MDPI Sensors, MDPI Electronics, MDPI Systems or ADCAIJ.

It has certainly been a wonderful event, thanks to the coordination of AIR Institute and the BISITE Research Group of the University of Salamanca. Also, thanks to the support and sponsorship of the Municipality of Guimarães and the organization of ALGORITMI Center and Intelligent Systems Associate Laboratory (LASI) of the University of Minho, as well as the support of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA) and the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA).

Thanks to all of you who participated, we look forward to seeing you next year at PAAMS 2024, this time in Salamanca.