FBR-PDI-021-updated

Basic Information

Partners: University of Economics in Bratislava – Faculty of Economic Informatics – responsible person Dr. Miroslav Hudec, Bifröst University Iceland – responsible person Dr. Hanna Kristin Skaftadottir.

Duration: The official start is September 1, 2023, and the end is August 31, 2024.

Project Description

The project's primary purpose is cooperation in the emerging fields of business intelligence and explainable artificial intelligence. Its positive and negative impacts should be evaluated and documented for the benefit of education and society.

This goal will be realized through short research visits, improved study materials, publicity activities, and preparation of topics for master theses at the University of Economics in Bratislava and Bifrost University.

Project Objectives

The project's primary purpose is to improve the already established bilateral cooperation to a higher level in the emerging fields of teaching and research in business intelligence and explainable artificial intelligence, as well as the impact of these two concepts on society and education.

One of the objectives is also the participation of Ph.D. students and young researchers. On the Slovak side, we included mainly women, as there is a need for more women in (explainable) artificial intelligence and business intelligence.

Tasks and their Realization

Workshops and Conferences

The first meeting was held in week 20.11.-24.11. 2023 in Bratislava on the premises of the Faculty of Economic Informatics.

This week, Assistant Professor Jon Fryer Jonsson gave a talk at the TIESS conference co-organized by the University of Economics in Bratislava, Faculty of Economic Informatics, and Óbuda University Budapest. More information https://tiees.webconf.online/index.php/tiees-2023

One day was a conference: Methods and Technologies for Knowledge Extraction from Data for Economic Practice in Bratislava, where project team members gave their respective talks. More information https://fhi.euba.sk/www_write/files/aktuality/2023/pozv%C3%A1nka_workshop-sshi_eng.pdf

During the project workshop, we discussed our tasks and created a basis for outputs (e.g., agreeing on the final structure of the survey and improving the study materials).

The second meeting was held in week 22.4 -26.4.2024 in Reykjavik on the premises of the Bifröst University.

The first topic was reflecting on the improved study materials in the Business intelligence course (held in the autumn semester). The next topic was evaluating the ongoing improvements of study materials in the remaining courses in the spring semester.

We also discussed the initial findings from our survey, the lessons learned, surprising answers, and how to summarize all relevant findings into the journal article.

Meanwhile, our proposal for a small six-month grant in the mentioned COST initiative related to the synergy of statistical and XAI approaches in explaining data for practice in p2p lending has been accepted (see Publicity). Thus, we discussed how to proceed with the work.

Finally, we discussed the accepted articles for our special session at the ICEIS conference and chairing them by our Fenech colleague (see Publicity).

The third meeting was held in week 10.6.-14.6. 2024 in Bratislava on the premises of the Faculty of Economic Informatics.

Firstly, we focused on evaluating survey results, sharing new ideas and topics in BI and AI, working on journal article, and discussing how students reacted to improvements in our courses.

We also evaluated the ongoing work in our small grant in the frame of the mentioned COST initiative.

Our special guest was Prof. Francisco Javier Fernandez from the Public University of Navarra, Spain. This initiative supported an expert from the University of Fribourg, Prof. Edy Portmann. Four researchers from the University of Belgrade (partners in the bilateral Serbian-Slovak project supported by our respective national research agencies) also participated.

Thus, the next session was related to cooperation with our Serbian partners, namely how to invite them into the survey, i.e., to launch it at their university to have results from three countries, which is more relevant for a top-tiered journal.

Finally, we discussed ethnicity, sustainability, and other vital issues in XAI with all participants, which education should address.

The fourth meeting was held in weeks 26.8-30.8, 2024, in Reykjavik, on the premises of Bifröst University headquarters.

We finalized the journal article and sent it to the review process into the ranked Q2 in WoS journal.

We also evaluated the work in our small grant, awarded in the framework of the mentioned COST initiative, and worked on finalizing it.

We held a symposium in Reykjavík, a joint venture of COST Fintech/AI and BISICEDU. It was a two-day symposium that offered insight into fintech/AI, and we had multiple presentations and participants.

All participants agreed that the initiative was beneficial for both sides. In addition, our publicity on the TIESS conference, cooperation between Swiss and Spanish scientists, invitation of partners from Serbia, and merging the workshop with the COST Action CA19130 meeting enhanced the visibility of this initiative.