Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan
Delegate, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
Board Member, AI Ethics Board, Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
Lead Manager, JSAI Special Interest Group for Artificial General Intelligence
Project Member, CREST "AI systems that can be explained in language based on knowledge and reasoning"
Project Member, PALGAIT (Philosophical Applications and Its Limits in Generative AI Technology)
Member of AAAI, ACL, JSAI, ANLP, JCSS.
Education
Ph.D. (Engineering) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 2004. Dissertation title: "Commonsensical and Emotional Knowledge Retrieval from the Internet Resources"
M.A. (Japanese Linguistics) Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, 1999. Thesis title: "インターネットにおける日本語チャットのコミュニケーション方法 ーー 新たな記号論的な機能に対する自然言語の構造の変貌" ("Communication Methods in Japanese Online Chat - Changes in Natural Language Structure Due to New Semiotic Functions")
Previous Academic Positions
2004-2024: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan
2018-2020: Visiting Scientist, Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, RIKEN
2020 (March - April): Visiting Researcher, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
2017 (January - September): Visiting Fellow, Centre of Excellence for the Dynamic of Language, Australian National University
2013 (Spring): Visiting Researcher, Behavioural Studies, Monash University, Australia
2011 (Spring): Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, United States
2004-2007: Assistant, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan
Grants, Scholarships, Awards
2024-2028 EU-Spain Grant for PALGAIT (Philosophical Applications and Its Limits in Generative AI Technology) Project, with J. Vallverdu, A. Estany Profitos, M. Gensollen, L. Magnani, A. Sans Pinillos and D.J. Casacuberta Sevilla
2023 Best Paper "Sentiment Analysis of Polish Online News Covering Controversial Topics - Comparison Between Lexicon and Statistical Approaches" (co-authored, EDO 2023)
2023-2025 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Development of a New Guidance System Using Artificial Intelligence to Prevent Technology Leakage", with Akihiko Obayashi, approx. 14,000USD)
2022-2024 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Creation and Evaluation of Tacit Knowledge Database Based on Semantic Primes", approx. 25,600USD)
2021 Best Paper "Medical Publications Retrieval Model Considering Paper Structure and the Title Separately" (in Japanese, co-authored, SIG-LSE 2021)
2021 Best Paper by Young Researcher "Using BM25 to Identify Publications as Potential Sources of Evidence for Online Medical News Articles" (in Japanese, Co-authored, IEEE Hokkaido Chapters Joint Convention 2021)
2021 Best Budding Research Award "Mapping arguments to key point: Match Scoring of arguments using sentence embedding and MoverScore without labelled data" (Co-authored, WI2 Symposium, 2021)
2020-2022 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Development of Interactive Advisory System for Security Export Control", with Akihiko Obayashi, approx. 14,000USD)
2019 Best Innovative Work Award: "Emotional and Moral Impressions Associated with Buddhist Religious Terms in Japanese Blogs - Preliminary Analysis" (Co-authored, "Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures" BICA 2019)
2019 Outstanding Research Award: "Emotional and Moral Impressions Associated with Buddhist Religious Terms in Japanese Blogs - Preliminary Analysis" (Co-authored, "Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures" BICA 2019)
2017-2021 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Contextual Knowledge Acquisition for Large-scale Inverse Reinforcement Learning", approx. 40,000USD)
2016-2017 IST Grant for Research Fellowships for Young Researchers ("Investigation of Communication Development Stages and Conversational Characteristics for Foreign Language Tutoring Systems", work with ANU, approx. 22,000USD)
2014-2015 IST Grant For Excellent Young Researchers ("Methods For an Automatic Generation of MIT ConceptNet Japanese Entries", 4,600USD)
2012-2015 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Development and application of flexible technology for detecting harmful expressions by processing reputation, affect and ethics"), with Fumito Masui (approx. 50,200USD)
Best Paper Award: "Exploiting Wikipedia-based Information-rich Taxonomy for Extracting Location and Creator Related Information for ConceptNet Expansion" (Co-authored, "Emotions, Decisions, Opinions" EDO 2015)
2012-2014 JSPS KAKENHI Wakate B Grant ("Algorithm For an Automatic Moral Judgement of Human Behavior By Using Web-Mining", approx. 32,450USD)
2010-2012 IST Grant For Excellent Young Researchers ("Applying Common Sense Retrieved from the Web to a Housekeeping Robot", approx. 4,600USD)
Best Paper Award: "Introducing Grammatically Aware Regular Expressions" (Co-authored, Pacific Association For Computational Linguistics 2011)
2008-2012 JSPS KAKENHI C Grant ("Dynamically Self-Developing Internet Wordbook") with Fumito Masui (approx. 40,750USD)
2008-2012 Hokkaido University GCOE Grant ("Automatic Retrieval of Elementary Knowledge for Nano-electronics") with Kenji Araki
2008-2009 [Extended for two more years in 2007, approx. 24,400USD]
Best Paper Award: "Disentangling emotions from the Web. Internet in the service of affect analysis" Second International Conference on Kansei Engineering & Affective Systems KEAS 2008
2006-2007 Nissan Cognitive Science Grant ("Communication Ability Development Toy with Common Sense Dialogue System", approx. 10,400USD)
Best Paper Award: "Ideas for the Web-Based Affective Processing", Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics; vol. XIV 2003
Best Paper Award: "Prediction of the User's Reply Using Emotional Information Retrieved from Internet Resources", IEEE Hokkaido Chapters Joint Convention 2002
Best Paper Award: "Basic Idea of General Belief Retrieving Agent "GENTA", IEEE Hokkaido Chapters Joint Convention 2001
2001-2003 [Extended for 3 years, approx. 61,100USD]
1999-2001 Japanese Ministry of Education Postgraduate Scholarship (Otaru University of Commerce, Cognitive Science, approx. 40,700USD)
1996-1997 Japanese Ministry of Education Undergraduate Scholarship (Hokkaido University, Japanese Linguistics, approx. 16,700USD)
Teaching
Current:
Will Robots Have Emotions? (in Japanese, shared with other professors), Hokkaido University
Natural Language Processing (in Japanese), Faculty of Information Science and Technology
Text Mining in Python (in Japanese), Engineering Department (Media Network B3)
Advanced Java (in Japanese, second semester), Hokkai-gakuen University
Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence (in English), Asahikawa College of Technology (Guest Lectures)
Past:
Introduction to Informatics (in Japanese), Hokkaido University (first year students)
Computer Architectures (in Japanese, first semester), Hokkaido Institute of Technology
Logic Gates in Practice (in Japanese, second semester), Hokkaido Institute of Technology
Signal Processing (in Japanese), Engineering Department (B3)
Natural Language Processing (in Japanese), Hokkai-gakuen University
Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence (in English), Kushiro College of Technology (Guest Lectures)
Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence (in English), Hakodate College of Technology (Guest Lectures)
Introduction to Data Analysis with R (in English, one semester), Australian National University
Java Basics (in Japanese, one semester), Hokkai-gakuen University
Introduction to C language (in Japanese, first semester), Hokkai-gakuen University
Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence (in English), Tomakomai College of Technology (Guest Lectures)
Selected Publications
Rafal Rzepka, Yali Ge, Kenji Araki: Naturalness of an Utterance Based on the Automatically Retrieved Commonsense (Proceedings of IJCAI 2005 - Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2005)
Shinsuke Higuchi, Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki: A Casual Conversation System Using Modality and Word Associations Retrieved from the Web (Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2008), pp. 382-390, Honolulu, USA, October 2008)
Michal Ptaszynski, Pawel Dybala, Wenhan Shi, Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki: Towards Context Aware Emotional Intelligence in Machines: Computing Contextual Appropriateness of Affective States, Proceedings of Twenty-first International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09), Pasadena, pp. 1469-1474, California, U.S.A., July 2009
Michal Ptaszynski, Jacek Maciejewski, Pawel Dybala, Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki: CAO: Fully Automatic Emoticon Analysis System, In Proceedings of The Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10), July 11 - 15 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, pp. 1026-1032, 2010.
Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki, "Semantic Analysis of Bloggers Experiences as a Knowledge Source of Average Human Morality", book chapter in Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology, ed. Jeffrey White and Rick Searle, pp. 73-95. 2015. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. DOI:10.4018/978-1-4666-8592-5.ch005
Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki: "ELIZA Fifty Years Later: An Automatic Therapist Using Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches", book chapter in Machine Medical Ethics, Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering Volume 74, 2015, pp. 257-272, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-08108-3_16
Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki, "Haiku Generator That Reads Blogs and Illustrates Them with Sounds and Images", Proceedings of 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015), Buenos Aires, Argentina, pp. 2496-2502, July 25-31, 2015
Kenji Araki, Rafal Rzepka, Michal Ptaszynski and Pawel Dybala, "AI with Empathy: language, emotions, ethics, humor, common sense", Morikita Publishing House, 2016 (in Japanese [心を交わす人工知能:言語・感情・倫理・ユーモア・常識]).
Xiaodong Liu, Rafal Rzepka and Kenji Araki, "Parameter-efficient feature-based transfer for paraphrase identification". Natural Language Engineering, 1-31. 2022
Da Li, Rafal Rzepka, Michal Ptaszynski, Kenji Araki, “HEMOS: A novel deep learning-based fine-grained humor detecting method for sentiment analysis of social media”, Information Processing & Management, Volume 57, Issue 6, 2020, 102290, ISSN 0306-4573
ジェプカ，ラファウ：「レクチャーシリーズ：AI と社会と人間～ぶつかる・なじむ・とけこむ～」〔第6 回〕AI 用の「ぶつからない常識」研究のこれから —普遍意味原素から現実世界の大規模シミュレーションまで—」，人工知能，人工知能，2023年38巻6号 p. 943-953
Rafal Rzepka; Ryoma Shinto; Kenji Araki, "Semantic Primes-Inspired Tacit Knowledge Dataset for Simulating Basic Perception Capabilities of Cognitive Architectures", 17th Artificial General Intelligence Conference AGI 2024, Seattle, WA, USA, August 2024
Invited Talks
“Birth of Researcher AI: Co-Creation or Competition with Humanity” - SIG-AGI-28 Panel Discussion with Shiro Takagi and Yachima Kagurazaka, Yokohama, 20 December 2024 (in Japanese)
"Toward the Era of AI Understanding Language: Lights and Shadows of Large-Scale Language Models", invited talk at E-SilkRoad University, 24 October 2024 (online, in Japanese)
"Artificial Intelligence and Understanding Language: How AI Has Come to 'Understand' Language" Hokkaido University and Hokkaido Shimbun Academy Invited Lecture, 14 September 2024 (in Japanese)
"Diverse Applications and Possibilities of NLP: Reflections from a Practical Perspective" at The 10th Hokkaido University Cross-Departmental Symposium (Invited SHort Lecture), 6 September 2024 (in Japanese)
"Capabilities, Limitations, and Potential Social Impacts of AI: The Current State of Artificial Intelligence, Dividing Expert Opinions" Hokkaido University Festival 2024 Public Lecture, 9 June 2024 (in Japanese)
"Future of ChatGPT and AI Capabilities" at the Tomakomai Science Center, Japan, 6 June, 2024 (in Japanese, talk for Tomakomai city citizens)
"Examples of NLP applications in detecting immoral behavior in Japanese", invited panel talk ate the Fifth Conference on Information theories and information analysis in forensics, criminology, law and security sciences, The Jacob of Paradies University, June 2, 2023 (presented online, in Polish)
"Basics of Artificial Intelligence" at the Sapporo Machizukuri Society gathering, Japan, 6 March, 2023. (in Japanese, talk Sapporo city citizens)
"Building Future with AI" at the Tomakomai Science Center, Japan, 21 January, 2023. (in Japanese, talk for children of Tomakomai City)
"Artificial Intelligence and Ethics" at the Tomakomai Science Center, Japan, 21 January, 2023. (in Japanese, talk for Tomakomai city citizens)
"Large Language Models - Sophisticated Autocomplete Tools or a Big Step Towards AGI?", Third Wave of AGI Workshop panel talk, SIG-AGI-022-02, at Keio University, Japan, 22 November, 2022
"Mind the Gap - Thinking About Meaning in the Context of Ethical AGI" - invited lecture at Indian Institute of Information Technology Kottayam, September 14, 2022
"Humanizing Machines by Simulating Empathy and Understanding Human Needs" at the IJCAI Humanizing AI Workshop, August, 12, 2019, Macao, China (in English)
"AI Ethics for Developers, Users and Legislators - Problems and Solutions" at the Nitobe School, Hokkaido University, June 15, 2019 (in English)
"Building Future with AI" at the Tomakomai Science Center, Japan, 29 June, 2019. (in Japanese)
"Common Sense Morality for Machines - Are Our Shared Experiences the Only Solution for Safe Artificial Intelligence?" at the "Morality mod Science", Nagoya University, Japan, 21 September, 2018. (in Japanese)
"Wisdom of Crowds as The Source of The Human Moral Sense for Artificial Intelligence" at the National Information Academy in Poznan Seminar, Poland, August 2, 2018. (in Polish)
"Beyond Theoretical Machine Ethics ‐ Casuistry-based Artificial Moral Agent with Less Biased Judgement" at the Center of Applied Ethics and Philosophy Center workshop, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 24 April 2018. (in Japanese)
"How to use AI in your research - update on Big Data and AI trends in academia" at the Transferable Skills Seminar 27 February, 2018, Sapporo, Japan.
"From Signals, through Words, to Safe Behavior - Value Alignment by Human Experience Analysis" at the 8th International Workshop on Signal Design and its Applications in Communications (IWSDA’17), September 28, 2017. (in English)
"Do It Yourself Artificial Intelligence - the latest technologies all PhDs should know" at the Transferable Skills Seminar 27 March, 2017, Sapporo, Japan.
"Broader Perspectives of Machine Reading Technology", at the Connecting Japan and Belgium Symposium, Moral and Philosophical Aspects of Articifical Intelligence Panel, Ghent, Belgium, 29 February, 2016. (in English)
"Automatic Text Understanding - More and Less Serious Usages" at Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland, December 2015. (in Polish)
"Pros and Cons of Borrowing Morality from P2P Civilization" at AAAI Spring Symposium, 27 March 2014, Stanford, USA. (In English)
"Toward Moral Judgment Algorithm Based on Experiences of Crowd" at Otago University, 13 March 2013. (In English)
"Artificial Common Sense in a Pill" at Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, May 2011 (in Polish)
"Japanese machines know what you feel - about interdisciplinary approach to AI" at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, February 2010. (in Polish)
"Why does my robot read your blog - about new perspectives for AI in the Internet era", at Szczecin Institute of Technology, Szczecin, Poland, February 2010. (in Polish)
Committess and Editorial Boards
🟧 Boards:
2024- 汎用人工知能研究会 主幹事
2021- 人工知能学会 倫理委員会 委員
2023- 人工知能学会 代議員
2021-2023 人工知能学会 理事
2014-2024 汎用人工知能研究会 幹事
2023 AAAI Councilor Nominee
2021 言語処理学会 編集委員
2015 言語処理学会 評議員
2011- Lifeboat Foundation (USA), Robotics/AI Board Member
2009-2011 情報処理学会 自然言語処理研究 運営委員
🟧 Organizer:
2024 第28回 汎用人工知能研究会(SIG-AGI)
2024 9th LaCATODA - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, PRICAI 2024 Workshop
2022 8th LaCATODA 2022 - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, ACII 2022 Workshop
2021 第18回 汎用人工知能研究会(SIG-AGI)
2021 7th LACATODA - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, IJCAI 2021 Workshop
2020 6th LACATODA'20 - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, IJCAI 2020 Workshop
2020 第15回 汎用人工知能研究会(SIG-AGI)
2019 5th LACATODA - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, IJCAI 2019 Workshop
2018 平成30年度電気・情報関係学会北海道支部連合大会 実行委員
2018 AGI 2018 Moderator
2018 4th LACATODA - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, IJCAI-ECAI 2018 Workshop
2017 3th LACATODA - Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents, IJCAI 2017 Workshop
2015 The 1st Workshop on Processing Emotions, Decisions and Opinions (EDO 2015)
2014 言語処理学会 第20回年次大会 実行委員
2013 言語処理学会 第19回年次大会プログラム委員
2012 言語処理学会 第18回年次大会プログラム委員
2012 2nd LaCATODA - Linguistics and Cognitive Approaches to Dialogue Agents (LaCATODA 2012)
2012- JSAI International Symposia on AI
2012 情報処理学会 第207回自然言語処理研究会 実行委員
2010 1st LaCATODA - Linguistics and Cognitive Approaches to Dialogue Agents (LaCATODA 2010)
2009 Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics (PACLING 2009), Local Co-organizer
2003 41st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2003), Local Staff Coordinator
🟧 Editorials:
2024-2025 Guest Editor of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence journal special issue "Prompts: The Double-Edged Sword Using AI"
2024-2025 Guest Editor of Algorithms Journal Special Issue "Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents"
2021-2023 Guest Editor of Applied Sciences Journal Special Issue "Application of Artificial Intelligence Methods in Processing of Emotions, Decisions and Opinions"
2023 Guest editor of Information Processing and Management Journal
2021-2023 Guest Chief Editor of IPM Journal Special Issue "Ethical NLP"
2020 KBS Special Issue on Commonsense Knowledge Representation & Reasoning Guest Editor
2018 IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, Editorial Board Member
2018 Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Journal Guest Editor
2018 AGI 2018 Proceedings Editor
2014 Human Language Technology Challenges for Computer Science and Linguistics (Springer book), Editorial Board Member
2014 Mining User Generated Content (CRC Publishing book), Editorial Board Member
2010-2012 International Journal of Computational Linguistics Research, Editorial Board Member
🟧 Program Committees:
Reccuring:
Artificial General Intelligence Conferences (since 2013)
Australasian Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (since 2008)
Cognitive Systems Research Journal (since 2016)
New Generation Computing Journal (since 2018)
Information Processing and Management Journal (since 2020)
Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to Dialog Agents workshops (since 2010)
Language Acquisition and Understanding symposia (since 2023)
SAI International Symposia on AI (since 2021)
NAACL Gender Bias Workshops (since 2021)
2009-2023 Language and Technology Conference (LTC)