Prof. Dr. Fabrice Labeau is the Vice-president (Administration and Finance) at McGill University. His research interests are in applications of signal processing. He has (co-)authored more than 200 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings in these areas. 

Prof. Labeau is the Director of Operations of STARaCom, an interuniversity research center grouping 50 professors and 500 researchers from 10 universities in the province of Quebec, Canada. He is very involved in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and in particular in the IEEE Consumer Technology Society, IEEE Sensors Council, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and the IEEE Montreal Section.

He was a recipient in 2015 and 2017 of the McGill University Equity and Community Building Award (team category), of the 2008 and 2016 Outstanding Service Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and of the 2017 W.S. Read Outstanding Service Award form IEEE Canada. He was recognized in 2018 as “Ambassadeur Accrédité” for the Montreal Convention Center.

This great keynote session asks common yet systematized questions and provides preliminary findings on how users behave around AI. Our two keynote speakers will give overviews of the latest activities in understanding how AI influences user cognition and behavior, including trust, ethics, and self-efficacy outcomes of its use.

In this respect, Dr. Laurynas Adomaitis will present AIOLIA, a project that has the goal of giving a robust 3-tier response to the complex challenges posed by the need to operationally interpret the EU AI Act and global AI regulation. Dr. Adomaitis will show the digest outcome of an extensive literature review on the influence of AI on human cognition and behavior, and vice versa – how AI developers draw inspiration from human cognition. Four main common axes between human cognition and AI are analyzed: 1) Generalization, 2) Causal inference, 3) Embodied learning, and 4) Emotions. In addition to the literature review, AIOLIA performed semi-structured interviews with leading experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, AI, and robotics to validate the findings. Some of the working group’s insights were new or unexpected given the desk-research phase. Some unexpected findings through “no-go zones” are covered, including hypotheses that seem like a natural long-term effect of using AI, but experts do not see evidence for it in their fields of expertise. Finally, Dr. Adomaitis will discuss the upcoming phases of the project and how the co-creation process will work.

Prof. Snježana Babić will extend the story by showing results of a research conducted among 110 Croatian users to examine the relationship between trust, self-assessment of digital competences and perceived self-efficacy in using ChatGPT in everyday life. The results of Pearson's correlation analysis indicate a statistically significant positive relationship between all three factors. Furthermore, the respondents stated on average that they have the necessary digital competencies to use this tool and to apply it independently in everyday activities; however, they lacked confidence in this technology. In particular, the need to increase users' awareness of the ethical aspects of using ChatGPT and to develop their digital competence for integrating ChatGPT with other digital tools was identified. Suggestions are given as to developing strategies and educational programs that encourage effective and responsible use of ChatGPT, as well as AI in general.

Dr. Laurynas Adomaitis is an AI Ethics and Governance Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, specialising in bridging the gap between ethics and engineering practice. Previously, Laurynas was a postdoctoral researcher at CEA-Saclay, working in multiple EU Horizon projects. Laurynas has taught AI and Data Ethics at leading engineering faculties (SupOptique, CentraleSupélec) and business schools (emlyon) in Paris. He also has industry experience as an Innovation Manager at Nord Security, a cybersec unicorn from Vilnius. He defended his PhD in Philosophy cum laude at Scuola Normale Superiore in 2020.

Prof. Dr. Snježana Babić is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Informatics, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia. She is the head of the master's program in Informatics with a specialization in teaching. She holds a PhD in the field of acceptance and adoption of e-learning and the development of competencies for its application in education. Her research interests include innovation adoption, human-computer interaction, and early programming education. In 2024, she authored a study examining students’ perceptions of ChatGPT as a virtual assistant in academic environments. Dr. Babić has also contributed to research on the use of intelligent personal assistants in education, particularly among Croatian primary school teachers. She is actively involved in several projects.

Wen-Chung Kao is a chair professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, New Taipei, Taiwan. Before he joined academia in 2004, he was a department manager with SoC Technology Center, ITRI, Taiwan, an AVP with NuCam Corporation, Foxlink Group, and the co-founder of SiPix Technology Inc. His research interests include system-on-a-chip (SoC), embedded software design, flexible electronic paper, machine vision systems, and digital camera systems. He is the president of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Societyand a fellow of IEEE.

The presentation will delve into the challenges faced by the European automotive industry, highlighting the lack of software expertise and complex supplier interdependencies. It will propose continuous software integration and verification (CX) as a solution to improve software KPIs and enhance competitiveness in the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) race. The insights are drawn from Pickhard’s extensive practical experience rather than academic theory.

Friedhelm Pickhard, born in 1959, holds Dipl.-Ing. degrees in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Paderborn and in Electrical Engineering from Ruhr University Bochum. With over 30 years of experience in software-intensive product development and system engineering, gained from roles in the military and automotive sectors, has held prominent positions at Bosch, including President and Managing Director in India and CEO of ETAS. During his carreer acted as a board member at TTTech Auto AG.

We live in a world being redefined by software. In the past, connecting endpoints over a distance was the big challenge. The telephone system is the high point of that generation. The endpoints were just microphones and speakers, which are dependent upon the network to preserve the waveform.

Today we live in a very different world in which our devices are smart, and we no longer depend on a network provider’s smarts. In fact, those smarts create problems such as buffer bloat. We now implement systems as a collection of devices and are no longer confined to a single box. The components can be scattered across the world and can be part of multiple systems.

This new way of thinking is at odds with an infrastructure that puts barriers in the path (subscriptions) and second-guesses innovation by trying to “add value”. This is even more the case as AI has accelerated the pace of innovation.

Bob Frankston (born June 14, 1949) is an American software engineer and businessman who co-created, with Dan Bricklin, the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. Frankston is also the co-founder of Software Arts. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1966. He earned a S.B degree in computer science and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a Master of Engineering degree in computer science, also from MIT. Following his work with Dan Bricklin, Frankston later worked at Lotus Development Corporation and Microsoft. Frankston became an outspoken advocate for reducing the role of telecommunications companies in the evolution of the Internet, particularly with respect to broadband and mobile communications.