Workshop on Awareness and Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence (ACAI)
Description
The workshop will be held in conjunction with the 2025 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, from October 14-16, 2025, at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
Call for papers
The pursuit of awareness and consciousness in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a cornerstone of research for decades, yet it remains one of the most complex and unresolved challenges. While AI systems have made remarkable strides in sensory processing, pattern recognition, and decision-making, they often lack the depth of understanding and adaptability that characterize true awareness. Real awareness involves more than just data processing—it requires context, self-monitoring, and the ability to adapt to dynamic environments. For AI, this translates to moving beyond rigid algorithms toward systems that can reason probabilistically, learn from interactions, and exhibit a form of “understanding” that aligns with human expectations.
This workshop explores the boundaries of awareness in AI, focusing on its theoretical foundations, practical applications, and societal implications. Our scope is structured around three core themes:
- Beyond Human-Centric Models: Developing new frameworks to define and measure awareness in artificial systems, moving beyond traditional human-centric perspectives.
- Building Trust Through Awareness: Investigating how aware systems can demonstrate understanding and adaptability to foster human trust and collaboration.
- Awareness in Action: Exploring real-world applications of aware AI, from self-monitoring smart buildings to adaptive robotics and decision-support systems.
Topics of interest
We encourage submissions on a variety of topics, including but not limited to:
- Foundations of Artificial Awareness
- Theories of consciousness and awareness: Attention Schema Theory (AST), Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), Predictive Processing, and other cognitive neuroscience models.
- Architectures for artificial consciousness: Computational models of awareness, memory, and decision-making.
- Social and collective awareness: Emergent awareness in multi-agent systems, human-robot interaction, and collaborative environments.
- Value-Aware AI: Ethical frameworks for moral decision-making in autonomous systems.
- Sensing and Perception
- Advanced sensing technologies: RF-based sensing (radar, WiFi, RFID), audio-based sensing, optical signal processing, and environmental monitoring.
- Cross-modality data fusion: integrating data from multiple sensing modalities for robust perception.
- Context-aware systems: adaptive systems that respond to environmental and user context.
- Distributed Intelligence and Self-Aware Systems
- Distributed learning and probabilistic reasoning: techniques for enabling systems to monitor, analyze, and adapt to their surroundings.
- Self-monitoring and self-evaluation: metacognitive models for performance monitoring and adaptation.
- Emergent awareness in collectives: collaborative awareness in distributed systems, including robotic swarms and IoT networks.
- Applications of Aware Systems
- Smart environments: self-aware buildings, smart homes, and offices that adapt to user needs and sentiments.
- Healthcare: Health monitoring systems with contextual awareness and adaptive decision-making.
- Industry: Autonomous systems for industrial applications, including predictive maintenance and tool invention.
- Social robots and assistive technologies: Robots with social awareness and value-aligned decision-making.
- Sustainability and Ethical Considerations
- Energy-efficient systems: low-power embedded systems, solar-powered devices, and energy optimization techniques.
- Privacy and security: Secure authentication, data protection, and communication in IoT networks.
- Ethical AI: ensuring that aware systems align with human values and societal norms.
Important dates
- Submission deadline: June 22, 2025
- Notification: July 20, 2025
- Camera-ready: July 27, 2025
- Workshop: 12 October 2025
Workshop Policies
- The workshop will be affiliated with UbiComp / ISWC 2025, to be held in Espoo, Finland.
- Workshop papers will be included in the UbiComp/ISWC Adjunct Proceedings, which will be included in the ACM Digital Library as part of the UbiComp conference supplemental proceedings.
- The correct template for submission is a double-column Word Submission Template or a double-column LaTeX Template. The maximum paper length is 5 pages, including references. Please see https://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp-iswc-2025/authors/formatting/ for more details on submission format and templates.
- Submit your papers via PCS: https://new.precisionconference.com/submissions
- Each accepted workshop paper requires at least one author attending the workshop and UbiComp/ISWC 2025 in person.
Advisory Committee
- Daqing Zhang, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France / Peking University, China.
- Stephan Sigg, Aalto University, Finland.
Technical Programme Committee
- Bing Zhai, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
- Luan Chen, ETIS UMR8051, CY Cergy Paris Université, ENSEA, CNRS, France.
- Luis A. Leiva, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
- Manel Gasulla Forner, Universitat Politènica de Catalunya, Spain.
- Martin Andraud, UCLouvain, Belgium.
- Nihan Kahraman, Yildiz University, Istanbual, Turkey.
- Quintino Francesco Lotito, University of Trento, Italy.
- Siqi Wang, Sorbonne Université, France.
- Yan Liu, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China.
- TBA
Organisers
Si Zuo
Si Zuo is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University, Finland. She obtained her PhD from Aalto University in 2024. During her doctoral studies, she conducted research visits at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and UNSW Sydney. Her work focuses on the intersection of wearable sensing, generative models for multimodal time-series data, and privacy protection in IoT devices.
Xujun Ma
Xujun Ma is a postdoctoral researcher at Télécom SudParis, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France. He received PhD degree from Southeast University, China, in 2020. He received the second-place best student paper award of 2019 IEEE-IMBioC. His research interests include digital health, wireless sensing, and RF/mmWave IC design for radar and communication.
Giovanni Iacca
Giovanni Iacca is an Associate Professor of Information Engineering at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento, Italy, where he founded the Distributed Intelligence and Optimization Lab (DIOL). Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Germany (RWTH Aachen, 2017-2018), Switzerland (University of Lausanne and EPFL, 2013-2016), and The Netherlands (INCAS3, 2012-2016), as well as in industry in the areas of software engineering and industrial automation. He is co-PI of the PATHFINDER-CHALLENGE project “SUSTAIN” (2022-2026). Previously, he was co-PI of the FET-Open project “PHOENIX” (2015-2019). He has received two best paper awards (EvoApps 2017 and UKCI 2012). His research focuses on computational intelligence, distributed systems, explainable AI, and analysis of biomedical data. In these fields, he co-authored more than 190 peer-reviewed publications. He is actively involved in organizing tracks and workshops at some of the top conferences on computational intelligence, and he regularly serves as a reviewer for several journals and conference committees. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Applied Soft Computing, Memetic Computing, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI