Do you remember the infamous question “so what do your parents do at work?” If someone were to ask your children what their parents do at work, do you know what their answer will be? The area of artificial intelligence is generally difficult to define for someone who is not “in the industry”. What exactly is machine learning or artificial intelligence or even data science? And how to describe it to a toddler, if explaining it to an adult is a hard nut to crack? We asked our developers, project managers and data scientists for advice. How would they explain what they do at work to a five-year-old? The simplest, yet probably the most straightforward answer came first: “Computers are smart,  but still not as smart as humans. At work I make computers smarter, almost as smart as people.” And if your kid wanted a short explanation to pass to…

Imagine the game in which all players are very good, very close to winning, and time is nearly out. In a few seconds we will know the winner. Let’s make a stop here and try to predict who will get the gold medal. What if you always knew who would win? How could you use this knowledge?  Now you can join our challenge and solve this problem! Analyze logs from Tactical Troops: Anthracite Shift video game. Compete with other analysts, mathematics and data scientists and maybe passionate about data gamers and win your prize! This challenge is organized by QED Software in association with the IEEE BigData 2021 International Conference. Visit KnowledgePit platform, challenge yourself, compete with others scientists and share your results. If you don’t know our platform yet, check out our blog post about it here. As of 2021 we have more than 2 000 participants registered from…

Tactical Troops: Anthracite Shift is a top-down, turn-based game that mixes tactical skills and the excitement of 80’s sci-fi movies. Created by QED Games Team of QED Software, it features many mechanics posing a great challenge for AI controlled characters, such as gridless movement and the topic of this article – teleportation. Link to Steam.   About Grail technology Opponent AI in Tactical Troops has been implemented using Grail. Grail is a multi-platform, modular, universal framework, allowing for implementation of advanced AI in video games. Using methods such as Utility AI, Monte Carlo Tree Search or Planners in connection with advanced knowledge representation using blackboards , Grail is able to improve the behavior of machine-controlled  players’ and make game experience more challenging.  Below you can read how our AI handled teleportation in Tactical Troops: Anthracite Shift.   AI in Tactical Troops: a brief overview Humanoid opponents in Tactical Troops are…

Knowledge Pit (2013) is the only platform for organizing competitions in the field of data science in Poland. Nowadays, it has nearly 2000 registered participants from all over the world, and one of the most popular challenges had over 150 entries.  The project was initiated by Andrzej Janusz and Dominik Ślęzak, who decided to create a tool for their students. “We wanted students to be able to face real-world problems. They liked the new platform very much, their engagement during classes increased significantly.”   Advantages for business and participants  The platform brings together not only students, and data science specialists from all over the world participate in the competitions. What can they count on? gaining valuable experience, a publication opportunity, rewards, which are offered by business partners, last but not least – fame and glory. However, it is a win-win relationship, because the companies with which we cooperate in the…

In the past semester, QED Software engaged in educational cooperation with Warsaw University of Technology. Students of the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, led by Michał Okulewicz and Marcin Luckner, had the opportunity to test their engineering and business skills in solving real-life problems that required Machine Learning solutions.   Mentors from QED Software took part in the course, which aimed at familiarizing students with the process of product development, starting from an idea, and ending with a working prototype and a short business-oriented presentation. Students divided into several groups had to go through the whole process with only a slight mentor’s supervision. The goal of the course is to provide students with hands-on experience that in the future may help them develop their start-ups and business ventures.   The representatives of QED Software provided insight related to satellite image processing, presented available image sources and possible use-cases, and…

The past year was unusual for many reasons. What are the most innovative achievements in the area of AI, ML and Big Data of 2020? What will 2021 bring? These questions are answered by QED Software specialists: Piotr Biczyk, Daniel Kałuża, Alina Powała and Maciej Świechowski. Achievements in 2020 in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence MACIEJ ŚWIECHOWSKI: Although a lot has happened in 2020, there is no clear winner in my personal ranking of the most pertinent breakthroughs of the year. Of course, the efforts related to data analysis around SARS-CoV-2 cannot be overlooked, but outside the pandemic, I would like to highlight two topics. The first is advances in image processing and computer vision: “Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition” was the highest cited work in computer science in 2020. The results obtained by nVidia in the field of GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) also deserve attention:…

IEEE BigData coming soon This year IEEE BigData 2020 taking place on-line from Atlanta (USA). Virtually, but organized with the same commitment, the conference will take place in mid-December. The IEEE International Conference on Big Data 2020 provides a leading forum for disseminating the latest research in Big Data. IEEE Big Data brings together leading researchers and developers from academia, research, and the industry from all over the world to facilitate innovation, knowledge transfer, and the technical progress in addressing the 5 V’s (Velocity, Volume, Variety, Value and Veracity) of Big Data. The purpose of the conference is to identify the deep technical and scientific nature of big data problems and share the future direction on the development of next-generation solutions for data-driven decision making. The conference will attract high-quality theory and applied research findings in big data science and foundations, big data infrastructure, big data management, big data search…

The current fascination with artificial intelligence is not something new. During the 60 years that have elapsed since the creation of the first machine to recreate the human thinking process, there have been periods of growth and decline in enthusiasm for this technology. The two “AI winters” that have happened since then proved to be an important lesson for the worlds of science and business alike. Let me start with a short disclaimer — I am aware that the term artificial intelligence is a huge mental shortcut. For the purposes of this article, I use it as a convenient umbrella term that covers all the techniques that reproduce the way people reason and make decisions. The challenges of 60 years ago and the first AI winter The term artificial intelligence was first used in 1956. Three years later, attempts were made to create a machine that would at least partially…