{"id":21,"date":"2015-03-09T17:07:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T16:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slais.ijs.si\/wp\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2021-09-07T09:11:10","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T07:11:10","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/slais.ijs.si\/index.php\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History of AI in Slovenia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Research organisations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research in artificial intelligence (AI) in Slovenia started in 1972 at the Computer Science Department of the Jozef Stefan Institute<\/a> (JSI) in Ljubljana<\/a>, and later also at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science<\/a> (FRI), University of Ljubljana<\/a>. At JSI, the AI Group was formally founded in 1979 and reorganised into the AI Laboratory in 1985. In 1995, the Department of Intelligent Systems<\/a> was established by merging Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Language and Speech Technology Laboratory. At FRI, the AI Laboratory<\/a> was founded in 1981. Both research groups (at JSI and FRI) were lead by Professor Ivan Bratko and closely cooperated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both groups were successful and grew in terms of achievements, employed and newly trained researchers, international collaborations and projects. This required further reorganisations<\/a>. In 2004, the former JSI Department of Intelligent Systems and Computer Technologies Laboratory were reorganised into two new departments: Department of Knowledge Technologies<\/a> (head: Nada Lavra\u010d) and Department of Intelligent Systems<\/a> (head: Matja\u017e Gams). At FRI, in addition to the former Artificial Intelligence Laboratory<\/a> (head: Ivan Bratko), two new laboratories were formed: Laboratory for Cognitive Modeling<\/a> in 2001 (head: Igor Kononenko) and Bioinformatics Laboratory<\/a> in 2010 (head: Bla\u017e Zupan). In 2011, a new research group was formed at JSI: AI Laboratory (head: Dunja Mladeni\u0107), which was constituted as a Department for Artificial Intelligence in 2020 (head: Dunja Mladeni\u0107). In 2021, the leadership of the
Department of Knowledge Technologies<\/a> at JSI was transferred from Nada Lavra\u010d to Sa\u0161o D\u017eeroski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the work done at JSI and FRI, AI research is also carried out at some other institutions, most notably the National Institute of Chemistry<\/a>, Ljubljana, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science<\/a> and Faculty of Mechanical Engineering<\/a> at the University of Maribor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to SICRIS<\/a> (SlovenIan Current Research Information System), there are now more than 30 research groups in Slovenia<\/a> whose research is related to AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovenian AI researchers and practitioners are associated in SLAIS<\/a> (SLovenian Artificial Intelligence Society). SLAIS was founded in 1992 and is a member society of ECCAI<\/a> (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence). Currently, SLAIS has about 120 members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research areas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, AI research in Slovenia was concerned with heuristic search, including knowledge-based approaches to computer chess. The emphasis then gradually shifted and expanded to the areas of machine learning, knowledge representation, computer-aided multi-attribute decision making, qualitative reasoning and modelling, and combinatorial optimisation. This provided a solid basis for later application projects. In 1982, the development and implementation of AI tools started and soon resulted in practical applications in a number of domains including: financial, management, project\/enterprise assessment, metallurgy, geology, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, medicine and health-care. Most of these applications were based on Assistant Professional<\/em>, an inductive learning system, and DEX<\/a>, a computer-aided decision making system. Later, several other systems were devolped including GINESYS<\/em>, RETIS<\/em>, LINUS<\/em>, m-FOIL<\/em>. These systems implement various approaches to machine learning: attribute-based learning, regression tree learning and inductive logic programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990’s, the Slovenian AI research further expanded and diversified, addressing the main research areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n