Insider Vision: AI for Real-time Learning and Facilitation of Business Communication from Multimodal Media Streams

Recent years have seen explosive development and successful deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across large swathes of Human Practice and life. Systems capable of object detection and recognition from visual and audio recordings are available as open-source material. These systems, despite being free-to-access and use, are remarkably potent. And yet despite this success, their deployment does not go far beyond the original object detection/recognition tasks. On the other hand, there is a high demand for more sophisticated use of this technologies for e.g. automated higher-level behavioural profiling based on multiple heterogenous data streams.

In this project, we will be concerned with developing a technology for automated real-time profiling of groups of interacting individuals working on a common problem followed by creating environments and collaborative mechanisms of practice that that are best suited to, and optimise, group interaction and decision making to successfully deliver tasks. As organisational boundaries blur and technology spans disciplines and borders, the collaborative capacity of teams is becoming a priority issue. Teams are often poorly equipped with skills and cognitive tools that enable them to optimise work that is generative of ideas and collaborative in nature. Utilising AI to infer and visualise mechanisms of real-time team interaction offers the opportunity to revolutionise how human interaction and intelligent systems can enable each other. The project will make a major step forward from conventional state-of-the art to integrated systems/communities of specialized AIs serving a common goal. The project is inherently multi-disciplinary and involves an industrial partner, CALM, too.

The sheer complexity of the task - to develop a technology capable of tracking, detecting, profiling, and modelling all interacting parties is unprecedented. Yet, when developed the technology will have a capacity to be used in any commercial environment where team working is essential to success. Increasingly team-working is not a question of internally coherent groups working within single organisational boundaries. Work is now cross-boundary - of organisation, culture, expertise - and involves virtual and indirect, as well as face to face collaboration and interaction. The project has strong translational components as the technology can be deployed in a broad range of priority areas. Particular examples are security and healthcare - areas of high national importance and value, as well capital intensive joint-ventures, such as massive infrastructure or engineering programmes, HS2 being a current relevant example.