Research & Expertise news at HSE University

The Russian Technical Committee for the Standardization of ‘Artificial intelligence’ (TC164), together with the Chamber for Indo Russo Technology Collaboration and the RUSSOFT Non-profit Partnership of Software Developers, has published new White Papers related to Artificial Intelligence Conformity Assessment. It reflects the approaches to the standardization and ethical regulation of AI technologies in two pilot industries — healthcare and agriculture.

An international team of researchers including scientists at HSE University have tested 11 communication strategies aimed to encourage pro-environmental behaviours. The sample included nearly 60,000 individuals from 63 countries. While interventions aimed at reducing psychological distance from climate problems proved to be effective, those targeting behaviours which require more effort, such as tree-planting or reducing one's carbon emissions, were not as successful. The study findings have been published in Scientific Advances.

Researchers at HSE University, having examined the role of daydreaming in the Russian cultural context, conclude that constructive daydreaming can help people with gaining insight into their life's trajectory, fostering personal growth, discovering existential meaning, enhancing psychological wellbeing, and cultivating a balanced temporal perspective. The study findings have been published in Cultural-Historical Psychology.

An international team of researchers, including neuroscientists at HSE University, has developed a computational model for simulating semantic dementia, a severe neurodegenerative condition that progressively deprives patients of their ability to comprehend the meaning of words. The neural network model represents processes occurring in the brain regions critical for language function. The results indicate that initially, the patient's brain forgets the meanings of object-related words, followed by action-related words. Additionally, the degradation of white matter tends to produce more severe language impairments than the decay of grey matter. The study findings have been published in Scientific Reports.

From April 26 to May 7, a team of professors and students from HSE University-St Petersburg conducted a field study in the Indian Himalayas. Below, Aleksei Sorbale, academic supervisor of the Bachelor's programme 'Political Science and World Politics', and Pavel Bazarov, a student of the Master's programme 'Global and Regional History', speak about their research and share their impressions of the expedition.

The HSE Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Cognitive Sciences (AICS) has launched regular seminars, offering students and scientists from various universities and research centres the opportunity to share their latest research and discuss the most recent developments in artificial intelligence in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. The first seminar was held on May 15.

Prof. Olga Volosyuk, Head of the School of International Regional Studies, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, spoke to the HSE News Service about international relations, research, and conferences organised by the School.

Scientists at the AI Research Centre and the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE University, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI), and Sber AI have come up with novel architecture for diffusion neural networks, making it possible to configure eight distinct types of noise distribution. Instead of the classical Markov chain model with Gaussian distribution, the scientists propose a star-shaped model where the distribution type can be selected and preset. This can aid in solving problems across various geometric modalities. The results were presented at the NeurIPS 2023 conference.