Project acronym ACUITY
Project Algorithms for coping with uncertainty and intractability
Researcher (PI) Nikhil Bansal
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The two biggest challenges in solving practical optimization problems are computational intractability, and the presence
of uncertainty: most problems are either NP-hard, or have incomplete input data which
makes an exact computation impossible.
Recently, there has been a huge progress in our understanding of intractability, based on spectacular algorithmic and lower bound techniques. For several problems, especially those with only local constraints, we can design optimum
approximation algorithms that are provably the best possible.
However, typical optimization problems usually involve complex global constraints and are much less understood. The situation is even worse for coping with uncertainty. Most of the algorithms are based on ad-hoc techniques and there is no deeper understanding of what makes various problems easy or hard.
This proposal describes several new directions, together with concrete intermediate goals, that will break important new ground in the theory of approximation and online algorithms. The particular directions we consider are (i) extend the primal dual method to systematically design online algorithms, (ii) build a structural theory of online problems based on work functions, (iii) develop new tools to use the power of strong convex relaxations and (iv) design new algorithmic approaches based on non-constructive proof techniques.
The proposed research is at the
cutting edge of algorithm design, and builds upon the recent success of the PI in resolving several longstanding questions in these areas. Any progress is likely to be a significant contribution to theoretical
computer science and combinatorial optimization.
Summary
The two biggest challenges in solving practical optimization problems are computational intractability, and the presence
of uncertainty: most problems are either NP-hard, or have incomplete input data which
makes an exact computation impossible.
Recently, there has been a huge progress in our understanding of intractability, based on spectacular algorithmic and lower bound techniques. For several problems, especially those with only local constraints, we can design optimum
approximation algorithms that are provably the best possible.
However, typical optimization problems usually involve complex global constraints and are much less understood. The situation is even worse for coping with uncertainty. Most of the algorithms are based on ad-hoc techniques and there is no deeper understanding of what makes various problems easy or hard.
This proposal describes several new directions, together with concrete intermediate goals, that will break important new ground in the theory of approximation and online algorithms. The particular directions we consider are (i) extend the primal dual method to systematically design online algorithms, (ii) build a structural theory of online problems based on work functions, (iii) develop new tools to use the power of strong convex relaxations and (iv) design new algorithmic approaches based on non-constructive proof techniques.
The proposed research is at the
cutting edge of algorithm design, and builds upon the recent success of the PI in resolving several longstanding questions in these areas. Any progress is likely to be a significant contribution to theoretical
computer science and combinatorial optimization.
Max ERC Funding
1 519 285 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
Project acronym COORDINATINGforLIFE
Project Coordinating for life. Success and failure of Western European societies in coping with rural hazards and disasters, 1300-1800
Researcher (PI) Balthassar Jozef Paul (Bas) Van Bavel
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary Societies in past and present are regularly confronted with major hazards, which sometimes have disastrous effects. Some societies are successful in preventing these effects and buffering threats, or they recover quickly, while others prove highly vulnerable. Why is this?
Increasingly it is clear that disasters are not merely natural events, and also that wealth and technology alone are not adequate to prevent them. Rather, hazards and disasters are social occurrences as well, and they form a tough test for the organizational capacities of a society, both in mitigation and recovery. This project targets a main element of this capacity, namely: the way societies have organized the exchange, allocation and use of resources. It aims to explain why some societies do well in preventing or remedying disasters through these institutional arrangements and others not.
In order to do so, this project analyses four key variables: the mix of coordination systems available within that society, its degree of autarky, economic equity and political equality. The recent literature on historical and present-day disasters suggests these factors as possible causes of success or failure of institutional arrangements in their confrontation with hazards, but their discussion remains largely descriptive and they have never been systematically analyzed.
This research project offers such a systematic investigation, using rural societies in Western Europe in the period 1300-1800 - with their variety of socio-economic characteristics - as a testing ground. The historical perspective enables us to compare widely differing cases, also over the long run, and to test for the variables chosen, in order to isolate the determining factors in the resilience of different societies. By using the opportunities offered by history in this way, we will increase our insight into the relative performance of societies and gain a better understanding of a critical determinant of human wellbeing.
Summary
Societies in past and present are regularly confronted with major hazards, which sometimes have disastrous effects. Some societies are successful in preventing these effects and buffering threats, or they recover quickly, while others prove highly vulnerable. Why is this?
Increasingly it is clear that disasters are not merely natural events, and also that wealth and technology alone are not adequate to prevent them. Rather, hazards and disasters are social occurrences as well, and they form a tough test for the organizational capacities of a society, both in mitigation and recovery. This project targets a main element of this capacity, namely: the way societies have organized the exchange, allocation and use of resources. It aims to explain why some societies do well in preventing or remedying disasters through these institutional arrangements and others not.
In order to do so, this project analyses four key variables: the mix of coordination systems available within that society, its degree of autarky, economic equity and political equality. The recent literature on historical and present-day disasters suggests these factors as possible causes of success or failure of institutional arrangements in their confrontation with hazards, but their discussion remains largely descriptive and they have never been systematically analyzed.
This research project offers such a systematic investigation, using rural societies in Western Europe in the period 1300-1800 - with their variety of socio-economic characteristics - as a testing ground. The historical perspective enables us to compare widely differing cases, also over the long run, and to test for the variables chosen, in order to isolate the determining factors in the resilience of different societies. By using the opportunities offered by history in this way, we will increase our insight into the relative performance of societies and gain a better understanding of a critical determinant of human wellbeing.
Max ERC Funding
2 227 326 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym EMBEDDING CONQUEST
Project Embedding Conquest: Naturalising Muslim Rule in the Early Islamic Empire (600-1000)
Researcher (PI) Petra Marieke Sijpesteijn
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this vast, ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse area which had its own, long imperial traditions, and to make this a sustainable enterprise. What built the empire, and what held it together? Scholarship to date has overwhelmingly relied on ‘literary’ sources in Arabic (e.g. chronicles, legal treatises, theological tracts), composed centuries after the conquests and shaped by court politics at their time of writing. This has created a false impression of the embedding of Muslim rule as a top-down process, directed from the centre, built on military coercion and control through administrative systems. Now, however, ‘documentary’ sources in multiple languages on papyrus, leather and paper from all over the empire (e.g. letters, contracts, fiscal accounts, petitions, decrees, work permits) are becoming increasingly available, with the PI in an internationally leading role. These sources, whose impact has been limited by linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, offer a direct, contemporary view of how the empire worked on the ground, and how political and social structures were experienced, modified and appropriated by its subjects.This project will uniquely incorporate all available documents reflecting Muslim rule from the first 400 years of Islam, to reconstruct the system of social relations that enabled the crucial transition from a conquest society to a political organism that survived the breakdown of central caliphal control, and remains the region’s benchmark model today. It will critically advance our understanding of a world historical event, make a radically new contribution to empire studies, and connect and synergise area studies and disciplinary inquiry.
Summary
What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this vast, ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse area which had its own, long imperial traditions, and to make this a sustainable enterprise. What built the empire, and what held it together? Scholarship to date has overwhelmingly relied on ‘literary’ sources in Arabic (e.g. chronicles, legal treatises, theological tracts), composed centuries after the conquests and shaped by court politics at their time of writing. This has created a false impression of the embedding of Muslim rule as a top-down process, directed from the centre, built on military coercion and control through administrative systems. Now, however, ‘documentary’ sources in multiple languages on papyrus, leather and paper from all over the empire (e.g. letters, contracts, fiscal accounts, petitions, decrees, work permits) are becoming increasingly available, with the PI in an internationally leading role. These sources, whose impact has been limited by linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, offer a direct, contemporary view of how the empire worked on the ground, and how political and social structures were experienced, modified and appropriated by its subjects.This project will uniquely incorporate all available documents reflecting Muslim rule from the first 400 years of Islam, to reconstruct the system of social relations that enabled the crucial transition from a conquest society to a political organism that survived the breakdown of central caliphal control, and remains the region’s benchmark model today. It will critically advance our understanding of a world historical event, make a radically new contribution to empire studies, and connect and synergise area studies and disciplinary inquiry.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 960 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym HARVEST
Project Plant foods in human evolution: Factors affecting the harvest of nutrients from the floral environment
Researcher (PI) Amanda Georganna Henry
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2015-STG
Summary Plant foods comprise the majority of most human diets, yet the potential importance of these foods in human evolution is often overlooked. Using a behavioral ecology framework, the HARVEST project explores fundamental questions: Why did hominins choose to eat certain plants? What were their foraging goals? We will focus on two objectives: 1) Reconstructing the diets of fossil hominins and 2) Exploring the costs and benefits of plant foods.
To understand the factors driving food choice by ancient hominins, we must know what they ate. Analyses of plant remains, proteins, DNA and other residues preserved in dental calculus are cutting-edge methods for reconstructing diets, and provide information about food, processing techniques, and oral microbiota. With a sequential sampling approach, we will combine these analyses to identify foods consumed by hominin groups for which plants are thought to be of great importance.
The decision to consume a particular plant depends on its inherent properties (nutrients and antifeedants) and on the biological and technological abilities of the consumer, so that each potential food has a different cost and benefit. We will study the variation in plant properties among microhabitats in African environments similar to those used by hominins, to better model their food choices. Separately, our study of the food choices among living African foraging and farming groups will reveal if plants are chosen for calories, micronutrients or cultural preferences, while analysis of their gut microbiota and studies of their food processing behaviors will indicate how they acquire nutrients from these foods. Finally, we will assess how the costs of fire might influence food processing choices.
Results from these studies will help fill important lacunae in our understanding of hominin diets, broaden our knowledge of hominin behaviors in a variety of environments, and help generate hypotheses about the relationships between diet and human evolution.
Summary
Plant foods comprise the majority of most human diets, yet the potential importance of these foods in human evolution is often overlooked. Using a behavioral ecology framework, the HARVEST project explores fundamental questions: Why did hominins choose to eat certain plants? What were their foraging goals? We will focus on two objectives: 1) Reconstructing the diets of fossil hominins and 2) Exploring the costs and benefits of plant foods.
To understand the factors driving food choice by ancient hominins, we must know what they ate. Analyses of plant remains, proteins, DNA and other residues preserved in dental calculus are cutting-edge methods for reconstructing diets, and provide information about food, processing techniques, and oral microbiota. With a sequential sampling approach, we will combine these analyses to identify foods consumed by hominin groups for which plants are thought to be of great importance.
The decision to consume a particular plant depends on its inherent properties (nutrients and antifeedants) and on the biological and technological abilities of the consumer, so that each potential food has a different cost and benefit. We will study the variation in plant properties among microhabitats in African environments similar to those used by hominins, to better model their food choices. Separately, our study of the food choices among living African foraging and farming groups will reveal if plants are chosen for calories, micronutrients or cultural preferences, while analysis of their gut microbiota and studies of their food processing behaviors will indicate how they acquire nutrients from these foods. Finally, we will assess how the costs of fire might influence food processing choices.
Results from these studies will help fill important lacunae in our understanding of hominin diets, broaden our knowledge of hominin behaviors in a variety of environments, and help generate hypotheses about the relationships between diet and human evolution.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 950 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym Persia and Babylonia
Project Persia and Babylonia: Creating a New Context for Understanding the Emergence of the First World Empire
Researcher (PI) Caroline AN H Waerzeggers
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) represented a new political order in world history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya. It was three times as large and twice as long-lived as the previously most successful polity (Assyria), and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia.
What explains Persia’s success? This question eludes scholarship due to a lack of evidence and a lack of engagement. Since this Empire unified for the first time in history millions of people under its rule – a condition that became a recurring experience of humanity – understanding Persia’s success transcends its intrinsic relevance to the period in question.
The principal reason why an effective engagement with this question is presently impossible is the lack of data. The PERSIA AND BABYLONIA project presents a substantial new data set that allows us, for the first time, to contextualize the emergence of the Persian Empire as a complex social process, shifting away from understandings of the Empire as a one-dimensional, state-initiated construct. This data derives from cuneiform textual sources that were produced in Persia’s most important periphery – Babylonia. A key analytical device in our work will be to compare Persian responses to those of the Assyrians, who were unable to establish control of Babylonia a century earlier. By combining a long-term with a deeply contextualized perspective, we will be able to draw out the distinctive efficiency of Persian rule, within the long history of this particular region. In addition to making a significant step towards understanding the emergence of Ancient Persia, we will develop a much-needed research tool for historians of empire and society in the ancient world.
Summary
The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) represented a new political order in world history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya. It was three times as large and twice as long-lived as the previously most successful polity (Assyria), and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia.
What explains Persia’s success? This question eludes scholarship due to a lack of evidence and a lack of engagement. Since this Empire unified for the first time in history millions of people under its rule – a condition that became a recurring experience of humanity – understanding Persia’s success transcends its intrinsic relevance to the period in question.
The principal reason why an effective engagement with this question is presently impossible is the lack of data. The PERSIA AND BABYLONIA project presents a substantial new data set that allows us, for the first time, to contextualize the emergence of the Persian Empire as a complex social process, shifting away from understandings of the Empire as a one-dimensional, state-initiated construct. This data derives from cuneiform textual sources that were produced in Persia’s most important periphery – Babylonia. A key analytical device in our work will be to compare Persian responses to those of the Assyrians, who were unable to establish control of Babylonia a century earlier. By combining a long-term with a deeply contextualized perspective, we will be able to draw out the distinctive efficiency of Persian rule, within the long history of this particular region. In addition to making a significant step towards understanding the emergence of Ancient Persia, we will develop a much-needed research tool for historians of empire and society in the ancient world.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 733 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym QINTERNET
Project Quantum communication networks
Researcher (PI) Stephanie Wehner
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2015-STG
Summary My goal is to overcome the two-most pressing theoretical challenges necessary to build large-scale quantum communication networks: routing and designing protocols that use them to solve useful tasks. In two interconnected projects, I will devise entirely new concepts, models and mathematical methods that take into account the intricacies of real world quantum devices that can operate on only very few quantum bits at a time.
(1) Security: I will prove the security of quantum cryptographic protocols under realistic conditions, and implement them in collaboration with experimentalists. I will develop a general theory and practical tests for the security of multi-party cryptographic primitives using untrusted quantum devices. This is mathematically challenging due to the possibility of entanglement between the devices.
(2) Routing: I will initiate the systematic study of effective routing in a quantum communication network. This is necessary for quantum networks to grow in scale. Quantum entanglement offers very different means of routing messages than is possible in classical networks, and poses genuinely new challenges to computer science. I will design routing protocols in a multi-node quantum network of potentially different physical implementations, i.e., hybrid networks, that will establish a new line of research in my field.
Quantum networks are still in their infancy, even though quantum communication offers unparalleled advantages that are provably impossible using classical communication. Building a quantum network is an interdisciplinary effort bringing together computer science, physics, and engineering. I am in a unique position in computer science, since I have recently joined QuTech where I have direct access to small quantum devices - bringing me tantalizingly close to seeing such networks realized. As with early classical networks, it is difficult to predict where our journey will end, but my research will join theory and experiment to move forward.
Summary
My goal is to overcome the two-most pressing theoretical challenges necessary to build large-scale quantum communication networks: routing and designing protocols that use them to solve useful tasks. In two interconnected projects, I will devise entirely new concepts, models and mathematical methods that take into account the intricacies of real world quantum devices that can operate on only very few quantum bits at a time.
(1) Security: I will prove the security of quantum cryptographic protocols under realistic conditions, and implement them in collaboration with experimentalists. I will develop a general theory and practical tests for the security of multi-party cryptographic primitives using untrusted quantum devices. This is mathematically challenging due to the possibility of entanglement between the devices.
(2) Routing: I will initiate the systematic study of effective routing in a quantum communication network. This is necessary for quantum networks to grow in scale. Quantum entanglement offers very different means of routing messages than is possible in classical networks, and poses genuinely new challenges to computer science. I will design routing protocols in a multi-node quantum network of potentially different physical implementations, i.e., hybrid networks, that will establish a new line of research in my field.
Quantum networks are still in their infancy, even though quantum communication offers unparalleled advantages that are provably impossible using classical communication. Building a quantum network is an interdisciplinary effort bringing together computer science, physics, and engineering. I am in a unique position in computer science, since I have recently joined QuTech where I have direct access to small quantum devices - bringing me tantalizingly close to seeing such networks realized. As with early classical networks, it is difficult to predict where our journey will end, but my research will join theory and experiment to move forward.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 725 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-03-01, End date: 2021-02-28
Project acronym QPROGRESS
Project "Progress in quantum computing: Algorithms, communication, and applications"
Researcher (PI) Ronald De Wolf
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING CENTRUM VOOR WISKUNDE EN INFORMATICA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "Quantum computing combines computer science, physics and mathematics to fundamentally speed up computation using effects from quantum physics. Starting in the early 1980s with Feynman and Deutsch, and gaining momentum in the 1990s with the algorithms of Shor and Grover, this very interdisciplinary area has potentially far reaching consequences. While a large-scale quantum computer has not been built yet, experimenters are getting more optimistic: a recent prediction is that it will take another 10-15 years.
However, the tasks where such a quantum computer would be able to significantly outperform classical computers are still quite limited, which lends urgency to finding new applications. This proposal will find more such tasks, and produce new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of quantum computing. It is divided into three workpackages:
1. Algorithms & complexity. Find new quantum algorithms that are more efficient than the best classical algorithms, for example for matrix multiplication and graph problems. Extend our knowledge of the ultimate limitations of quantum algorithms, and possible parallelization (which has barely been studied so far).
2. Quantum communication. Communication complexity analyzes the amount of communication needed to solve distributed computational tasks, where separate parties each hold part of the input. Find new
distributed problems where quantum communication outperforms classical communication, and explore links with fundamental physics issues like the role of entanglement and Bell-inequality violations.
3. Classical applications. Apply the newly developed mathematical tools of quantum computing to analyze problems in other areas, as we recently did for linear programs for the traveling salesman problem. This
third workpackage will have impact regardless of progress in building a quantum computer.
The PI is one of the world’s top researchers in each of these three areas."
Summary
"Quantum computing combines computer science, physics and mathematics to fundamentally speed up computation using effects from quantum physics. Starting in the early 1980s with Feynman and Deutsch, and gaining momentum in the 1990s with the algorithms of Shor and Grover, this very interdisciplinary area has potentially far reaching consequences. While a large-scale quantum computer has not been built yet, experimenters are getting more optimistic: a recent prediction is that it will take another 10-15 years.
However, the tasks where such a quantum computer would be able to significantly outperform classical computers are still quite limited, which lends urgency to finding new applications. This proposal will find more such tasks, and produce new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of quantum computing. It is divided into three workpackages:
1. Algorithms & complexity. Find new quantum algorithms that are more efficient than the best classical algorithms, for example for matrix multiplication and graph problems. Extend our knowledge of the ultimate limitations of quantum algorithms, and possible parallelization (which has barely been studied so far).
2. Quantum communication. Communication complexity analyzes the amount of communication needed to solve distributed computational tasks, where separate parties each hold part of the input. Find new
distributed problems where quantum communication outperforms classical communication, and explore links with fundamental physics issues like the role of entanglement and Bell-inequality violations.
3. Classical applications. Apply the newly developed mathematical tools of quantum computing to analyze problems in other areas, as we recently did for linear programs for the traveling salesman problem. This
third workpackage will have impact regardless of progress in building a quantum computer.
The PI is one of the world’s top researchers in each of these three areas."
Max ERC Funding
1 453 700 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym R3S3
Project Research on Really Reliable and Secure Systems Software
Researcher (PI) Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING VU
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2008-AdG
Summary Current operating systems have poor reliability and security. Computers crash regularly whereas other electronic devices such as televisions and mobile phones never crash. Furthermore, practically every week one reads about another security hole in Windows. As computers become more essential for all aspects of society this situation is unacceptable. The goal of my proposed research is to conceive, design, implement, and test an operating system that is as reliable and secure as is humanly possible. The job will be finished when the average user has never experienced a crash in his lifetime and RESET buttons on computers have passed into history, like 5¼ -inch floppy disks. The basic concept I want to use to achieve a reliable, secure operating system is the POLA The Principle of Least Authority. The operating system will be moved out the kernel (where it has unrestricted access to all of memory, critical machine instructions the I/O devices) into a set of multiple, tightly constrained user processes. Each process (e.g., a file server) will be given exactly the authority it needs to do its job and no more. This mechanism ensures that problems in one process cannot spill over into other ones. While this goal has floated around for years, no one really knows how to do it, so research is needed. Furthermore, I also want to make the system fault tolerant and self healing so it can continue to run even in the presence of hardware and software errors. Recovery should be done automatically without affecting running programs. Designing and building a new operating system that runs counter to 50 years of experience is extremely ground-breaking and ambitious. But the current road we are on with millions of lines of code in the kernel and growing all the time cannot be sustained. We need research that will lead to much better reliability and security. I have 30 years experience in the field and think I have a chance to pull it off.
Summary
Current operating systems have poor reliability and security. Computers crash regularly whereas other electronic devices such as televisions and mobile phones never crash. Furthermore, practically every week one reads about another security hole in Windows. As computers become more essential for all aspects of society this situation is unacceptable. The goal of my proposed research is to conceive, design, implement, and test an operating system that is as reliable and secure as is humanly possible. The job will be finished when the average user has never experienced a crash in his lifetime and RESET buttons on computers have passed into history, like 5¼ -inch floppy disks. The basic concept I want to use to achieve a reliable, secure operating system is the POLA The Principle of Least Authority. The operating system will be moved out the kernel (where it has unrestricted access to all of memory, critical machine instructions the I/O devices) into a set of multiple, tightly constrained user processes. Each process (e.g., a file server) will be given exactly the authority it needs to do its job and no more. This mechanism ensures that problems in one process cannot spill over into other ones. While this goal has floated around for years, no one really knows how to do it, so research is needed. Furthermore, I also want to make the system fault tolerant and self healing so it can continue to run even in the presence of hardware and software errors. Recovery should be done automatically without affecting running programs. Designing and building a new operating system that runs counter to 50 years of experience is extremely ground-breaking and ambitious. But the current road we are on with millions of lines of code in the kernel and growing all the time cannot be sustained. We need research that will lead to much better reliability and security. I have 30 years experience in the field and think I have a chance to pull it off.
Max ERC Funding
2 448 420 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-11-01, End date: 2014-04-30
Project acronym REINS
Project Responsible Intelligent Systems
Researcher (PI) Johannes Maria Broersen
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary I propose to develop a formal framework for automating responsibility, liability and risk checking for intelligent systems. The computational checking mechanisms have models of an intelligent system, an environment and a normative system (e.g., a system of law) as inputs; the outputs are answers to decision problems concerning responsibilities, liabilities and risks. The goal is to answer three central questions, corresponding to three sub-projects of the proposal: (1) What are suitable formal logical representation formalisms for knowledge of agentive responsibility in action, interaction and joint action? (2) How can we formally reason about the evaluation of grades of responsibility and risks relative to normative systems? (3) How can we perform computational checks of responsibilities in complex intelligent systems interacting with human agents? To answer the first two questions, we will design logical specification languages for collective responsibilities and for probability-based graded responsibilities, relative to normative systems. To answer the third question, we will design suitable translations to related logical formalisms, for which optimized model checkers and theorem provers exist. Success of the project will hinge on combining insights from three disciplines: philosophy, legal theory and computer science.
Summary
I propose to develop a formal framework for automating responsibility, liability and risk checking for intelligent systems. The computational checking mechanisms have models of an intelligent system, an environment and a normative system (e.g., a system of law) as inputs; the outputs are answers to decision problems concerning responsibilities, liabilities and risks. The goal is to answer three central questions, corresponding to three sub-projects of the proposal: (1) What are suitable formal logical representation formalisms for knowledge of agentive responsibility in action, interaction and joint action? (2) How can we formally reason about the evaluation of grades of responsibility and risks relative to normative systems? (3) How can we perform computational checks of responsibilities in complex intelligent systems interacting with human agents? To answer the first two questions, we will design logical specification languages for collective responsibilities and for probability-based graded responsibilities, relative to normative systems. To answer the third question, we will design suitable translations to related logical formalisms, for which optimized model checkers and theorem provers exist. Success of the project will hinge on combining insights from three disciplines: philosophy, legal theory and computer science.
Max ERC Funding
1 968 057 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym SECURE
Project "Securing Europe, Fighting its Enemies: The making of a security culture in Europe and beyond, 1815-1914"
Researcher (PI) Beatrice Albertha De Graaf
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "This project examines the development of a European security culture as the sum of mutually shared perceptions on “enemies of the states,” “vital interests,” and corresponding practices, between 1815 and 1914. By studying seven distinct instances of supranational security cooperation and their professional agents we will analyze how this European security culture emerged as early as 1815 as an open process of convergence and divergence, and of inclusion and exclusion. The team consists of the PI, 3 PhDs, 1 Post-Doc, and a research assistant.
The postulated existence of a shared European security culture in the 19th century may seem counterintuitive. Historians and scholars of international relations generally view the first half of this age through the lenses of “balance of power” and hegemony, and the second half as shaped by bellicose nationalism rather than collective security. European security cooperation and culture is generally situated after 1918, or 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of war and motivated by economic considerations. Nevertheless, after 1815 several concrete transnational security regimes were forged, (partly) designed to deal with “enemies of the states,” such as the Commissions on the Rhine and the Danube (to fight smugglers), the European Commissions on Syria and China (to fight colonial rebels), the Anti-Piracy and Anti-Anarchism Campaigns, and others. These security regimes, dictated by the threats and interests, were highly dynamic, encompassing a growing corpus of professional agents from different branches (police, judicial, military), and evolving from military interventions into police and judicial regimes. They were midwife to a veritable European security culture. This important development has not received the attention it deserves within the framework of the history of international relations and international studies.
Our hypothesis is that the development of this culture (threat/interest perceptions and practices) was dependent on four determinants: 1) the quality of the epistemic community (agents), 2) their threat/interest demarcations (subject/object), 3) the level of juridification and the use of military/police force (norms), and 4) innovations in the information, communication, and transportation technologies (technology). These determinants explain variance and change, ranging from inclusion to exclusion of groups and interests, and from juridical convergence between the European states/societies regarding the security practices in some cases to a total dissolution in other cases.
This project pioneers a new multidisciplinary approach to the combined history of international relations and internal policy, aiming to “historicize security.” Using new material, we are comparing seven different security regimes where Europe engaged globally, that stretched across the political and commercial domain, affected urban and maritime environments, and reached around the world to the Ottoman Empire and China."
Summary
"This project examines the development of a European security culture as the sum of mutually shared perceptions on “enemies of the states,” “vital interests,” and corresponding practices, between 1815 and 1914. By studying seven distinct instances of supranational security cooperation and their professional agents we will analyze how this European security culture emerged as early as 1815 as an open process of convergence and divergence, and of inclusion and exclusion. The team consists of the PI, 3 PhDs, 1 Post-Doc, and a research assistant.
The postulated existence of a shared European security culture in the 19th century may seem counterintuitive. Historians and scholars of international relations generally view the first half of this age through the lenses of “balance of power” and hegemony, and the second half as shaped by bellicose nationalism rather than collective security. European security cooperation and culture is generally situated after 1918, or 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of war and motivated by economic considerations. Nevertheless, after 1815 several concrete transnational security regimes were forged, (partly) designed to deal with “enemies of the states,” such as the Commissions on the Rhine and the Danube (to fight smugglers), the European Commissions on Syria and China (to fight colonial rebels), the Anti-Piracy and Anti-Anarchism Campaigns, and others. These security regimes, dictated by the threats and interests, were highly dynamic, encompassing a growing corpus of professional agents from different branches (police, judicial, military), and evolving from military interventions into police and judicial regimes. They were midwife to a veritable European security culture. This important development has not received the attention it deserves within the framework of the history of international relations and international studies.
Our hypothesis is that the development of this culture (threat/interest perceptions and practices) was dependent on four determinants: 1) the quality of the epistemic community (agents), 2) their threat/interest demarcations (subject/object), 3) the level of juridification and the use of military/police force (norms), and 4) innovations in the information, communication, and transportation technologies (technology). These determinants explain variance and change, ranging from inclusion to exclusion of groups and interests, and from juridical convergence between the European states/societies regarding the security practices in some cases to a total dissolution in other cases.
This project pioneers a new multidisciplinary approach to the combined history of international relations and internal policy, aiming to “historicize security.” Using new material, we are comparing seven different security regimes where Europe engaged globally, that stretched across the political and commercial domain, affected urban and maritime environments, and reached around the world to the Ottoman Empire and China."
Max ERC Funding
1 973 419 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-06-01, End date: 2019-05-31
