The first special issue of the new ITU Journal: ICT Discoveries will forecast how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will improve user experience by enhancing the performance and efficiency of communications networks.

A Call for Papers invites submissions until the extended deadline of 16 October 2017.

Researchers are invited to propose novel applications of AI techniques to improve the performance and efficiency of communications infrastructure, systems and components. Contributors are encouraged to consider a broad range of scenarios in their description of AI’s potential to drive the creation of new services and ensure optimal user experience.

This technical analysis will be accompanied by investigation of the legal and social dimensions of AI’s influence on communications, exploring means to expand technical cooperation and ensure that advances in AI work to the benefit of digital inclusion.

The official launch the ITU Journal is planned for 25 September 2017 in Busan, Korea, at ITU Telecom World.

ITU Journal: ICT Discoveries will match research on technical innovation in ICT with analysis of associated transformations in business and society and the related complexities of governance in the digital era. “We believe that this is the unique selling point of this journal,” says the ITU Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Jian Song of Tsinghua University.

“Another selling point of this journal will be that the contributors may have influence on ITU’s work … if the contribution is accepted it can eventually translate into the related work within the United Nations system,” says Professor Song.

This point of view explains the ITU Journal’s focus on AI in its first special issue.

AI is certain to impact many fields of ITU’s work, with examples found in data management, network orchestration, video coding, virtual and augmented reality, intelligent transport systems, and the Internet of Things and smart cities.

Speaking at the AI for Good Global Summit in June, Thomas Wiegand of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute – a key contributor to ITU’s award-winning video coding work – highlighted that the computational complexity of modern video coding is such that, “the coding algorithm becomes so complicated we created a learning algorithm that creates an algorithm to do the video coding.”

The first special issue of the ITU Journal will assist ITU members in their preparations for AI’s expected influence on their work, providing the context for this influence from the perspectives of technology as well as law, ethics, society and regulation.