Celebrating the Winning Entries: Highlights from the AI & Art Competition

By Claire Hudson, on 13 September 2024

The AI & Art competition we ran as part of the CDT Showcase event brought together a fantastic array of talent and creativity, with participants impressing us with their outstanding submissions. We were thrilled to see some innovative approaches and unique perspectives reflected in each entry and are excited to highlight the winning entries that stood out among the rest.

1^st Place: Romy Williamson-The convergence of perception
This piece shows a series of stone busts arranged in a figure. The busts blend smoothly between a perfect sphere, Max Planck, and Igea – the Greek Goddess of Health.
In order to blend smoothly between the busts, I converted the meshes into Spherical Neural Surfaces (read my paper or listen to my talk to find out more) and I optimised a smooth neural map between the two domain spheres, minimising the conformal distortion energy using a variant of the First Fundamental Form.
Romy Comment: the convergence of perception (as named by ChatGPT)
I used our novel shape representation (Spherical Neural Surfaces) to represent the heads of Max Planck and the goddess Igea (converted from meshes), and performed a geometric optimization to find a nice correspondence (diffeomorphism), which then allowed me to interpolate to get the in-between heads.
 This is my paper about Spherical Neural Surfaces: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07755 . The geometric optimization part is similar to Neural Surface Maps (https://geometry.cs.ucl.ac.uk/projects/2021/neuralmaps/).

2^nd Place:Reuben Adams – Nook 
The colours in this photo have been subtly changed to encode an audio file of a crackling fireplace, which in turn has been imperceptibly altered to encode a text file of Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush. The work telescopes into one image a dreary and wet walk through the peak district, warming by the fire, and thoughts of an old friend.

3^rd Place: Pedro José Ferreira Moreira-UCL Summer School
Welcome to ‘UCL Summer School,’ an exciting comic book adventure that follows a young student on their thrilling journey at University College London Summer School!

Imagine being able to create a whole comic book without knowing how to draw – thanks to AI, that’s exactly what happened here! From packing bags and boarding a plane to sightseeing around London and attending cool AI seminars, this comic capturers every moment with vibrant, dynamic art.
What AI Can Do: AI makes it possible to turn your wildest ideas into reality, even if you can’t draw a stick figure. It helps craft detailed and expressive comic panels that perfectly match the story in your head. Plus, AI is like a super-fast sidekick, helping to create everything in no time!
The Not-So-Great Parts: Sometimes, AI might miss the mark on capturing those deep, personal emotions or might not get the scene just right without some help. It’s great, but it’s not a mind reader – yet!
The Future Is Bright: Imagine a world where AI tools are even more creative, intuitive, and just plain fun to use. We’re talking about easier ways to blend human creativity with AI’s power, making art that’s truly one-of-a-kind.

In ‘UCL Summer School’ you’ll see how AI can turn anyone into a comic book creator, expressing thoughts and stories in a vibrant way that’s never been easier. This comic is all about having fu, exploring new tech and realizing that with a little help from AI, the sky’s the limit for your creativity!
Pedro’s Comments. The motivation behind this comic book art is simple: to show that creativity shouldn’t be limited by technical skills. With the help of AI, anyone can turn their ideas into reality, no matter their experience. Even if you’re “not good at drawing,” you can bring your imagination to life. Sure, the technology isn’t perfect (extra fingers popping up in the art can be a funny surprise), but it’s more than enough to convey emotion and tell captivating stories

4^th Place: Kai Biegun-In With The New
This piece aims to convey a juxtaposition of retro analogue photography and state of the art AI image generation. Four film photos were taken on various film stocks with vintage analogue cameras, and descriptions of those images were used to generate four corresponding photos with the Adobe Firefly image generation suite. I have always felt that the grainy, textured look of film photographs gives them a certain quality that makes looking at them feel like you’re looking at a snapshot from a memory. This is in stark contrast to the saturated, ultra-smooth, somewhat cartoonish look of AI generated photos. I believe this speaks to the fact that, although we are moving towards a world where digital and AI generated media are the norm, there is still place for the analogue to provide a window into real moments, memories, and experiences.
Kai’s comments. The piece is a study of the differences between images captured with analogue cameras and images generated by AI, whereby the analogue photographs were recreated by generative AI by prompting it with a text description of each image. It aims to highlight not just the superficial differences in colour, texture, and subject, but also the difference in feeling one gets from knowing how each image was captured, and question whether that in itself contributes to the artistic merit of the images.

5^th Place: Roberta Chissich-Forest Escape.
Materials Used: Blender 4.1, ANT Landscape Addon, Node Wrangler Addon, Cycles Render Engine, Sapling Tree Gen Addon, Poly Haven Textures.

The Interactive Forest Environment is a meticulously crafted 3D scene designed to immerse viewers in a realist natural landscape. This piece leverages advanced procedural techniques and tools within Blender, reflecting the growing intersection of AI and art in the digital age.

Blender’s geometry nodes and procedural generation tools were extensively used to create the ground and vegetation layouts. These nodes enable the creation of complex, natural-looking terrains and distributions with minimal manual intervention. This results in highly detailed and varied environments without the need for manual modelling of each element. The use of procedural shaders and texture blending techniques in Blender mimics AL-assisted methods to combine ground textures from Poly Haven seamlessly, ensuring enhanced detail and natural transitions.

To optimize rendering, the Cycles Render Engine utilizes NVIDIA’s AI-accelerated denoising technology. OptiX reduces noise in rendered images, significantly speeding up the rendering process while maintaining high-quality visuals. This integration of AI technology helps in producing clean, detailed renders with fewer samples, making the workflow more efficient.

This artwork is inspired by the calming and restorative qualities of nature. It aims to transport viewers to a serene forest environment, providing a momentary escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, capturing the essence of nature’s tranquility.
Roberta’s comments. This animated river scene, created in Blender, showcases the power of combining human creativity with advanced tools. By using OptiX rendering, the video achieves a higher level of visual fidelity, capturing the intricate details of light and water. The use of procedural scattering has simplified the placement of grass, leaves, and trees, making the natural landscape come to life effortlessly.
My motivation for this piece comes from the belief that art and technology are not in opposition, but are powerful allies; AI-enhanced tools can aid artists in their creative process. This artwork embodies the idea that we can use these innovations to elevate our creative expression. It’s not about replacing human artistry, it’s about how these tools can help us amplify our imagination, making the impossible possible, and turning complex visions into reality. Together, we can craft a future where human spirit and technological prowess unite to create beauty.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Each entry brought something special to the event and helped create a vibrant and memorable experience for all involved!

Internship Report: CDT Student Dennis Hadjivelichkov reports on his internship at Amazon Robotics in Berlin

By Claire Hudson, on 4 September 2024

As I return to my PhD studies at UCL after a transformative six-month internship at Amazon Robotics in Berlin, I find myself reflecting on the invaluable experiences and lessons gained during this period. I am eager to share insights from my journey and how they have shaped my thinking.
During my time at Amazon, I was immersed in a dynamic environment where innovation and collaboration were at the forefront. My role involved developing computer vision algorithms leveraging robot-object interactions. The challenges were both stimulating and rewarding. Working alongside brilliant colleagues, I witnessed first-hand the power of collective intelligence in tackling complex problems. The startup-like atmosphere fostered a culture of creativity and agility, enabling us to iterate and adapt swiftly to evolving demands.

This internship experience provided me with a deeper understanding of the importance of leadership principles in driving organizational success. The team’s well-defined values served as guiding beacons, shaping not only our professional conduct but also our approach to problemsolving. These principles, characterized by a customer obsession, working backwards from the goal, and relentless innovation, are invaluable assets that I intend to carry forward in my PhD and future career endeavors.
One of the most significant takeaways from my internship is the cultivation of an entrepreneurial mindset. Encouraged to think outside the box and embrace experimentation, I learned to approach challenges with a blend of creativity and pragmatism. This adaptive mindset enabled me to navigate uncertainty and also empowered me to explore new avenues for growth and development.
Would I recommend doing an internship at Amazon? Absolutely.
As I transition back to academia, I am grateful for the rich experiences and invaluable lessons learned during my internship, and for the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge robotics. Armed with newfound insights and skills, I am eager to apply them to my research at UCL and beyond. I am confident that the lessons learned and connections made during my time in Berlin will continue to influence and inspire my professional journey.

PS. For more information on how Amazon is approaching robotics and robot learning, check out https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/how-amazon-deploys-robots-in-its-operations-facilities

CDT Foundational Artificial Intelligence Showcase: London. 22-24 July

By Claire Hudson, on 27 August 2024

The event kicked off with a session focusing on “The future of AI: Forming your own opinion on what’s coming, when it’s coming, and what we should

Day three started with a visit to the Intelligent Robotics Lab at UCL East in which the group enjoyed a fast-paced morning with Professor Igor Gaponov.

The UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Foundational AI is proud to announce the participation of Sierra Bonilla in the International Computer Vision Summer School (ICVSS) 2024

By Claire Hudson, on 23 August 2024

The UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Foundational AI is proud to announce the participation of Sierra Bonilla in the International Computer Vision Summer School (ICVSS) 2024, held in Sicily from July 7 to July 13, 2024. This event is known for its rigorous selection process, with 30% of applicants accepted from a pool of 626.

This year, the theme focused on “Computer Vision in the Age of Large Language Models,” covering cutting-edge topics at the forefront of research and industry innovation. The summer school featured 30 hours of intensive lectures delivered by world-renowned experts, including:

Vijay Badrinarayanan (Wayve, USA)

Michael J. Black (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Meshcapade GmbH, DEU)

Andreas Geiger (University of Tübingen, DEU)

Georgia Gkioxari (California Institute of Technology, USA)

Abhishek Gupta (University of Washington, USA)

Aaron Hertzmann (Adobe Research, USA)

Derek Hoiem (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Diane Larlus (Naver Labs Europe, FRA)

Richard Newcombe (Meta Reality Labs Research, USA)

Pietro Perona (California Institute of Technology, USA)

Bobby Rao (Microsoft, USA)

Stefano Soatto (Amazon and University of California Los Angeles, USA)

Andrea Tagliasacchi (Simon Fraser University, CAN)

Antonio Torralba (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)

Lior Wolf (Tel Aviv University & Mentee Robotics, ISR)

One of the highlights of the event was the interactive poster sessions, where Sierra presented her recently accepted MICCAI ’24 Paper “Gaussian Pancakes”. The social events and the beautiful Sicilian environment and food made networking with peers and experts very memorable.

Special thanks go to the ICVSS 2024 organizers, particularly Giovanni Maria Farinella, Roberto Cipolla, and Sebastiano Battiato, for orchestrating such an incredible event. Additional gratitude is extended to Derek Hoiem for his valuable mentorship session.

The knowledge and insights gained from ICVSS 2024 are expected to greatly benefit Sierra Bonilla’s ongoing research and future projects, further contributing to the advancement of the field within the UKRI CDT in Foundational AI.

End of term social

By sharon.betts, on 14 December 2023

It is hard to believe that we are already reaching the end of another term at UCL. Since October we have welcomed 13 new students had PhD submissions, congratulated new Drs and seen a significant number of students have their work accepted for some of the most prestigious conferences in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning!

Before the CDT breaks up for the year, we felt it was only fitting to have our last student catch up session be one that taxed their minds and put their cohort collaboration skills to the test via an Escape Room journey!

We had 18 students divided into 4 teams to try and solve puzzles galore to escape in good time to eat mince pies and share their recent work and future plans.

We wish all students, staff and families happy holidays and the best for a successful 2024.

Demis Hassabis talk at UCL

By sharon.betts, on 8 December 2023

On Wednesday 29th November, UCL Events hosted Demis Hassabis to give the UCL Prize Lecture 2023 on his work at Google DeepMind, a company that he founded after completing his PhD at UCL.

Demis’ talk covered his journey through academia and interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence, which all started with a childhood love of games. Having started playing chess as young as 3, it is little wonder that this incredibly insightful and intelligent individual went on to work with algorithms and formats that were fun, functional and ground breaking. Demis’ interest in neuroscience and computational analysis was the perfect groundwork from which to create machine learning tools that now lead the world in their outcomes and developments. From AlphaGo to protein folding and beyond, Demis is a pioneer and revolutionary wrapped up in an extremely humble and engaging human being.

Our CDT is privileged to have a number of students funded by Google DeepMind, and these scholars were invited to attend a VIP meet and greet with Demis and his colleagues before the lecture began.

Our students were able to share their accomplishments and research with a number of academics, Google DeepMind executives and other invitees and were delighted to have been included in such a prestigious event.

There were over 900 people in personal attendance for the talk, with over 400 additional attendees online. With special thanks to the UCL OVPA team and UCL Events for making this happen and sharing the opportunity with our scholars.

The FAICDT Visit UCL East!

By sharon.betts, on 27 November 2023

On Wednesday 15th November, members of all cohorts within the FAICDT visited our Robotics labs at the newly opened UCL East Campus. Prof Dimitrios Kanoulas very kindly offered up his time and expertise in showing our students around both the Marshgate and Pool Street Labs.

Our students were able to interact with the quadra-ped robots and speak with academics and other researchers about their ground breaking work in the field of AI and robotics.

The visit to UCL East’s robotics lab was impressive. We saw the Boston Dynamics robot navigate stairs and avoid obstacles, showcasing the practical applications of these technologies. The most striking moment was seeing a robot execute a backflip, which highlighted the advanced capabilities in robotics. Dimitrios Kanoulas kindly also gave us a tour around the Marshgate building! The location’s calm park setting was a nice change from the main campus environment. – Sierra Bonilla, Cohort 5

A great time was had by all, and we are delighted that our students have been able to connect with other researchers in the AI field here at UCL.

The UKRI Inter CDT Conference 30-31 October 2023

By sharon.betts, on 22 November 2023

For the second year running, the UKRI CDT in Foundational AI, collaborated with the University of Bath and the University of Bristol to organise an inter CDT conference at the Bristol Hotel.

This year our CDT put on a session on AI Vision, organised with Prof Lourdes de Agapito, and a student-led session on the Threat of AI, organised with Reuben Adams and Robert Kirk.

The event began with a welcome to all from our FAICDT Deputy Director Gabriel Brostow, followed on by a Keynote Speech by Jasmine Grimsley and Sarah-Jane Smyth from the London Data Company.

The AI Vision session opened up the individual sessions conference on day one, and we were delighted to host three eminent academics to discuss their work and research. First we had Christian Rupprecht from the University of Oxford discussing ‘Unsupervised Computer Vision in the Time of Large Models’. He was followed on by Laura Sevilla-Lara from the University of Edinburgh, who discussed her work on ‘Efficient Video Understanding’ and the session finished with Edward Johns from Imperial College London, discussing his research on ‘Vision-Based Robot Learning of Everyday Tasks’. The room was filled with an eager audience who asked multiple questions of each speaker, with a real interest and excitement on the work that was being undertaken by all in this field.

The rest of the first day saw sessions from the other two CDTs involved, with an agenda for the event available here: UKRI Inter AI CDT Conference 2023 – ART-AI (cdt-art-ai.ac.uk)

As with our first conference, there was a popular poster session held at the MShed in the afternoon of Day 1, with prizes handed out at our evening dinner. Our new, cohort 5, student Ahmet Guzel was the winner from the FAICDT with a poster that won outstanding marks from all judges on the day.

Day two started with a keynote speech from our final year student Jakob Zeitler, who is currently on interruption whilst working on his start up company Matterhorn Studios. Jakob gave an insightful talk on ‘Machine Learning for Material Science: Using Bayesian Optimisation to Create a Sustainable Materials Future’. We were delighted to have Jakob provide a keynote here and it was wonderful to see so many individuals reach out to him after his talk to find out more about his research and work at Matterhorn.

The afternoon session by the FAICDT was led by students Reuben Adams and Robert Kirk. This was a vibrant session, asking attendees to think about where they currently sat on the spectrum of concern with regards to the safety of AI and then have in depth discussions with one another about possible AI solutions and potential regulations and possibilities for future safety. The event was interactive, and highly engaging!

The event closed with a final keynote by Steven Schokaert from Cardiff University with a networking session for all students before returning to their home institutions.

All in all, another successful event! With thanks to Brent Kiernan, Christina Squire and Suzanne Binding for being co-organisers extraordinaire!

Understanding and Navigating the Risks of AI – By Reuben Adams

By sharon.betts, on 19 October 2023

It is undeniable at this point that AI is going to radically shape our future. After decades of effort, the field has finally developed techniques that can be used to create systems robust enough to survive the rough and tumble of the real world. As academics we are often driven by curiosity, yet rather quickly the curiosities we are studying and creating have the potential for tremendous real-world impact.

It is becoming ever more important to keep an eye on the consequences of our research, and to try to anticipate potential risks.

This has been the purpose of our AI discussion series that I have organised for the members of the AI Centre, especially for those on our Foundational AI CDT.

I kicked off the discussion series with a talk outlining the ongoing debate over whether there is an existential risk from AI “going rogue,” as Yoshua Bengio has put it. By this I mean a risk of humanity as a whole losing control over powerful AI systems. While this sounds like science fiction at first blush, it is fair to say that this debate is far from settled in the AI research community. There are very strong feelings on both sides, and if we are to cooperate as a community in mitigating risks from AI, it is urgent that we form a consensus on what these risks are. By presenting the arguments from both sides in a neutral way, I hope I have done a small amount to help those on both ends of the spectrum understand each other. You can watch my talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI9OXHPyN8M

Ivan Vegner, PhD student in NLP at the University of Edinburgh, was kind enough to travel down for our second talk, on properties of agents in general, both biological and artificial. He argued that sufficiently agentic AI systems, if created, would pose serious risks to humanity, because they may pursue sub-goals such as seeking power and influence or increasing their resistance to being switched off—after all, almost any goal is easier to pursue if you have power and cannot be switched off! Stuart Russell pithily puts this as “You can’t fetch the coffee if you’re dead.” Ivan is an incredibly lucid speaker. You can see his talk Human-like in Every way? here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGeOMA25Xvc

For some, a crux in this existential risk question might be whether AI systems will think like us, or in some alien way. Perhaps we can more easily keep AI systems under control if we can create them in our own image? Or could this backfire—could we end up with systems that have the understanding to deceive or manipulate? Professors Chris Watkins and Nello Christianini dug into this question for us by debating the motion “We can expect machines to eventually think in a human-like way.” (Chris for, Nello against). There were many, many questions afterwards, and Chris and Nello very kindly stayed around to continue the conversation. Watch the debate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWCUHmIdWhE

Separate from all of this is the question of misuse. Many technologies are dual-use, but their downsides can be successfully limited through regulation. With AI it is different: the scale can be enormous and rapidly increased (often the bottleneck is simply buying/renting more GPUs), there is a culture of immediately open-sourcing software so that anyone can use it, and AI models often require very little expertise to run or adapt to new use-cases. Professor Mirco Musolesi outlined a number of risks he perceives from using AI systems to autonomously make decisions in economics, geo-politics, and warfare. His talk was incredibly thought-provoking: You can see his talk here: https://youtu.be/QH9eYPglgt8

This series has helped foster an ongoing conversation in the AI Centre on the risks of AI and how we can potentially steer around them. Suffice to say it is a minefield.

We should certainly not forget the incredible potential of AI to have a positive impact on society, from automated and personalised medicine, to the acceleration of scientific and technological advancements aimed at mitigating climate change. But there is no shortage of perceived risks, and currently a disconcerting lack of technical and political strategies to deal with them. Many of us at the AI Centre are deeply worried about where we are going. Many of us are optimists. We need to keep talking and increase our common ground.

We’re racing into the future. Let’s hope we get what AI has been promising society for decades. Let’s try and steer ourselves along the way.

Reuben Adams is a final year PhD student in the UKRI CDT in Foundational AI.

Student presentation – Alex Hawkins Hooker at ISMB

By sharon.betts, on 4 October 2023