We analyze the structure of the market for foundation models, i.e., large AI models such as those that power ChatGPT and that are adaptable to downstream uses, and we examine the implications for competition policy and regulation. We observe that the most capable models will have a tendency towards natural monopoly and may have potentially vast markets. This calls for a two-pronged regulatory response: (i) Antitrust authorities need to ensure the contestability of the market by tackling strategic behavior, in particular by ensuring that monopolies do not propagate vertically to downstream uses, and (ii) given the diminished potential for market discipline, there is a role for regulators to ensure that the most capable models meet sufficient quality standards (including safety, privacy, non-discrimination, reliability and interoperability standards) to maximally contribute to social welfare. Regulators should also ensure a level regulatory playing field between AI and non-AI applications in all sectors of the economy. For models that are behind the frontier, we expect competition to be quite intense, implying a more limited role for competition policy, although a role for regulation remains.

Glaucoma is one of the primary causes of vision loss around the world, necessitating accurate and efficient detection methods. Traditional manual detection approaches have limitations in terms of cost, time, and subjectivity. Recent developments in deep learning approaches demonstrate potential in automating glaucoma detection by detecting relevant features from retinal fundus images. This article provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge deep learning methods used for the segmentation, classification, and detection of glaucoma. By analyzing recent studies, the effectiveness and limitations of these techniques are evaluated, key findings are highlighted, and potential areas for further research are identified. The use of deep learning algorithms may significantly improve the efficacy, usefulness, and accuracy of glaucoma detection. The findings from this research contribute to the ongoing advancements in automated glaucoma detection and have implications for improving patient outcomes and reducing the global burden of glaucoma.

Blockchain technology has revolutionized the way information is propagated in decentralized networks. Ethereum plays a pivotal role in facilitating smart contracts and decentralized applications. Understanding information propagation dynamics in Ethereum is crucial for ensuring network efficiency, security, and scalability. In this study, we propose an innovative approach that utilizes Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) to analyze the information propagation patterns in the Ethereum network. The first phase of our research involves data collection from the Ethereum blockchain, consisting of blocks, transactions, and node degrees. We construct a transaction graph representation using adjacency matrices to capture the node embeddings; while our major contribution is to develop a combined Graph Attention Network (GAT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) model to optimize the network efficiency and scalability. It learns the best actions to take in various network states, ultimately leading to improved network efficiency, throughput, and optimize gas limits for block processing. In the experimental evaluation, we analyze the performance of our model on a large-scale Ethereum dataset. We investigate effectively aggregating information from neighboring nodes capturing graph structure and updating node embeddings using GCN with the objective of transaction pattern prediction, accounting for varying network loads and number of blocks. Not only we design a gas limit optimization model and provide the algorithm, but also to address scalability, we demonstrate the use and implementation of sparse matrices in GraphConv, GraphSAGE, and GAT. The results indicate that our designed GAT-RL model achieves superior results compared to other GCN models in terms of performance. It effectively propagates information across the network, optimizing gas limits for block processing and improving network efficiency.

Formal methods refer to rigorous, mathematical approaches to system development and have played a key role in establishing the correctness of safety-critical systems. The main building blocks of formal methods are models and specifications, which are analogous to behaviors and requirements in system design and give us the means to verify and synthesize system behaviors with formal guarantees. This monograph provides a survey of the current state of the art on applications of formal methods in the autonomous systems domain. We consider correct-by-construction synthesis under various formulations, including closed systems, reactive, and probabilistic settings. Beyond synthesizing systems in known environments, we address the concept of uncertainty and bound the behavior of systems that employ learning using formal methods. Further, we examine the synthesis of systems with monitoring, a mitigation technique for ensuring that once a system deviates from expected behavior, it knows a way of returning to normalcy. We also show how to overcome some limitations of formal methods themselves with learning. We conclude with future directions for formal methods in reinforcement learning, uncertainty, privacy, explainability of formal methods, and regulation and certification.

The ability to monitor ambient characteristics, interact with them, and derive information about the surroundings has been made possible by the rapid proliferation of edge sensing devices like IoT, mobile, and wearable devices and their measuring capabilities with integrated sensors. Even though these devices are small and have less capacity for data storage and processing, they produce vast amounts of data. Some example application areas where sensor data is collected and processed include healthcare, environmental (including air quality and pollution levels), automotive, industrial, aerospace, and agricultural applications. These enormous volumes of sensing data collected from the edge devices are analyzed using a variety of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) approaches. However, analyzing them on the cloud or a server presents challenges related to privacy, hardware, and connectivity limitations. Federated Learning (FL) is emerging as a solution to these problems while preserving privacy by jointly training a model without sharing raw data. In this paper, we review the FL strategies from the perspective of edge sensing devices to get over the limitations of conventional machine learning techniques. We focus on the key FL principles, software frameworks, and testbeds. We also explore the current sensor technologies, properties of the sensing devices and sensing applications where FL is utilized. We conclude with a discussion on open issues and future research directions on FL for further studies

The emergence of pandemics has significantly emphasized the need for effective solutions in healthcare data analysis. One particular challenge in this domain is the manual examination of medical images, such as X-rays and CT scans. This process is time-consuming and involves the logistical complexities of transferring these images to centralized cloud computing servers. Additionally, the speed and accuracy of image analysis are vital for efficient healthcare image management. This research paper introduces an innovative healthcare architecture that tackles the challenges of analysis efficiency and accuracy by harnessing the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Specifically, the proposed architecture utilizes fog computing and presents a modified Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) designed specifically for image analysis. Different architectures of CNN layers are thoroughly explored and evaluated to optimize overall performance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a dataset of X-ray images is utilized for analysis and evaluation. Comparative assessments are conducted against recent models such as VGG16, VGG19, MobileNet, and related research papers. Notably, the proposed approach achieves an exceptional accuracy rate of 99.88% in classifying normal cases, accompanied by a validation rate of 96.5%, precision and recall rates of 100%, and an F1 score of 100%. These results highlight the immense potential of fog computing and modified CNNs in revolutionizing healthcare image analysis and diagnosis, not only during pandemics but also in the future. By leveraging these technologies, healthcare professionals can enhance the efficiency and accuracy of medical image analysis, leading to improved patient care and outcomes.

The potential of digital twin technology is yet to be fully realized due to its diversity and untapped potential. Digital twins enable systems' analysis, design, optimization, and evolution to be performed digitally or in conjunction with a cyber-physical approach to improve speed, accuracy, and efficiency over traditional engineering methods. Industry 4.0, factories of the future, and digital twins continue to benefit from the technology and provide enhanced efficiency within existing systems. Due to the lack of information and security standards associated with the transition to cyber digitization, cybercriminals have been able to take advantage of the situation. Access to a digital twin of a product or service is equivalent to threatening the entire collection. There is a robust interaction between digital twins and artificial intelligence tools, which leads to strong interaction between these technologies, so it can be used to improve the cybersecurity of these digital platforms based on their integration with these technologies. This study aims to investigate the role of artificial intelligence in providing cybersecurity for digital twin versions of various industries, as well as the risks associated with these versions. In addition, this research serves as a road map for researchers and others interested in cybersecurity and digital security.

Neural decoding involves correlating signals acquired from the brain to variables in the physical world like limb movement or robot control in Brain Machine Interfaces. In this context, this work starts from a specific pre-existing dataset of neural recordings from monkey motor cortex and presents a Deep Learning-based approach to the decoding of neural signals for grasp type classification. Specifically, we propose here an approach that exploits LSTM networks to classify time series containing neural data (i.e., spike trains) into classes representing the object being grasped. The main goal of the presented approach is to improve over state-of-the-art decoding accuracy without relying on any prior neuroscience knowledge, and leveraging only the capability of deep learning models to extract correlations from data. The paper presents the results achieved for the considered dataset and compares them with previous works on the same dataset, showing a significant improvement in classification accuracy, even if considering simulated real-time decoding.

The utilisation of deep learning segmentation algorithms that learn complex organs and tissue patterns and extract essential regions of interest from the noisy background to improve the visual ability for medical image diagnosis has achieved impressive results in Medical Image Computing (MIC). This thesis focuses on retinal blood vessel segmentation tasks, providing an extensive literature review of deep learning-based medical image segmentation approaches while comparing the methodologies and empirical performances. The work also examines the limitations of current state-of-the-art methods by pointing out the two significant existing limitations: data size constraints and the dependency on high computational resources. To address such problems, this work proposes a novel efficient, simple multiview learning framework that contrastively learns invariant vessel feature representation by comparing with multiple augmented views by various transformations to overcome data shortage and improve generalisation ability. Moreover, the hybrid network architecture integrates the attention mechanism into a Convolutional Neural Network to further capture complex continuous curvilinear vessel structures. The result demonstrates the proposed method validated on the CHASE-DB1 dataset, attaining the highest F1 score of 83.46% and the highest Intersection over Union (IOU) score of 71.62% with UNet structure, surpassing existing benchmark UNet-based methods by 1.95% and 2.8%, respectively. The combination of the metrics indicates the model detects the vessel object accurately with a highly coincidental location with the ground truth. Moreover, the proposed approach could be trained within 30 minutes by consuming less than 3 GB GPU RAM, and such characteristics support the efficient implementation for real-world applications and deployments.

The field of drug discovery has experienced a remarkable transformation with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. However, as these AI and ML models are becoming more complex, there is a growing need for transparency and interpretability of the models. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is a novel approach that addresses this issue and provides a more interpretable understanding of the predictions made by machine learning models. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the application of XAI techniques to drug discovery. This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in XAI for drug discovery, including various XAI methods, their application in drug discovery, and the challenges and limitations of XAI techniques in drug discovery. The article also covers the application of XAI in drug discovery, including target identification, compound design, and toxicity prediction. Furthermore, the article suggests potential future research directions for the application of XAI in drug discovery. The aim of this review article is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of XAI in drug discovery and its potential to transform the field.