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Music has always been an essential aspect of human culture, and the methods for its creation and analysis have evolved alongside the advancement of computational capabilities. With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and one of its major goals referring to mimicking human creativity, the interest in music-related research has increased significantly. This review examines current literature from renowned journals and top-tier conferences, published between 2017 and 2023, regarding the application of AI to music-related topics. The study proposes a division of AI-in-music research into three major categories: music classification, music generation and music recommendation. Each category is segmented into smaller thematic areas, with detailed analysis of their inter- and intra-similarities and differences. The second part of the study is devoted to the presentation of the AI methods employed, with specific attention given to deep neural networks—the prevailing approach in this domain, nowadays. In addition, real-life applications and copyright aspects of generated music are outlined. We believe that a detailed presentation of the field along with pointing out possible future challenges in the area will be of some value for both the established AI-in-music researchers, as well as the new scholars entering this fascinating field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents characteristics of model-based optimization methods utilized within the Generalized Self-Adapting Particle Swarm Optimization (GA– PSO) – a hybrid global optimization framework proposed by the authors. GAPSO has been designed as a generalization of a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm on the foundations of a large degree of independence of individual particles. GAPSO serves as a platform for studying optimization algorithms in the context of the following research hypothesis: (1) it is possible to improve the performance of an optimization algorithm through utilization of more function samples than standard PSO sample-based memory, (2) combining specialized sampling methods (i.e. PSO, Differential Evolution, model-based optimization) will result in a better algorithm performance than using each of them separately. The inclusion of model-based enhancements resulted in the necessity of extending the GAPSO framework by means of an external samples memory - this enhanced model is referred to as M-GAPSO in the paper.

Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a powerful approach to designing game-playing bots or solving sequential decision problems. The method relies on intelligent tree search that balances exploration and exploitation. MCTS performs random sampling in the form of simulations and stores statistics of actions to make more educated choices in each subsequent iteration. The method has become a state-of-the-art technique for combinatorial games. However, in more complex games (e.g. those with a high branching factor or real-time ones) as well as in various practical domains (e.g. transportation, scheduling or security) an efficient MCTS application often requires its problem-dependent modification or integration with other techniques. Such domain-specific modifications and hybrid approaches are the main focus of this survey. The last major MCTS survey was published in 2012. Contributions that appeared since its release are of particular interest for this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real life applications of deep learning (DL) are often limited by the lack of expert labeled data required to effectively train DL models. Creation of such data usually requires substantial amount of time for manual categorization, which is costly and is considered to be one of the major impediments in development of DL methods in many areas. This work proposes a classification approach which completely removes the need for costly expert labeled data and utilizes noisy web data created by the users who are not subject matter experts. The experiments are performed with two well-known Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures: VGG16 and ResNet50 trained on three randomly collected Instagram-based sets of images from three distinct domains: metropolitan cities, popular food and common objects - the last two sets were compiled by the authors and made freely available to the research community. The dataset containing common objects is a webly counterpart of PascalVOC2007 set. It is demonstrated that despite significant amount of label noise in the training data, application of proposed approach paired with standard training CNN protocol leads to high classification accuracy on representative data in all three above-mentioned domains. Additionally, two straightforward procedures of automatic cleaning of the data, before its use in the training process, are proposed. Apparently, data cleaning does not lead to improvement of results which suggests that the presence of noise in webly data is actually helpful in learning meaningful and robust class representations. Manual inspection of a subset of web-based test data shows that labels assigned to many images are ambiguous even for humans. It is our conclusion that for the datasets and CNN architectures used in this paper, in case of training with webly data, a major factor contributing to the final classification accuracy is representativeness of test data rather than application of data cleaning procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of finding optimal strategies in Stackelberg Security Games when playing against a non-perfectly rational Attacker. To this end, a novel Duel-based NeuroEvolutionary approach to Security Games (DNESG) is proposed, which utilizes the Strategy Comparison Neural Network (SCNN) as a surrogate model to compare pairs of Defender's strategies. SCNN is trained on historical data (past attack attempts) and does not require any direct information about the Attacker's preferences regarding targets, payoff distribution, or decision-making model. SCNN is embedded in the Evolutionary Algorithm framework and implements a tournament-based selection method in place of a time-consuming direct strategy evaluation. The effectiveness of DNESG is assessed on a set of 90 benchmark Deep Packet Inspection games inspired by real cybersecurity scenarios. The proposed method provides high-quality solutions and outperforms state-of-the-art approaches (both exact and approximate) with statistical significance when playing against non-perfectly rational Attacker. Moreover, DNESG offers excellent time scalability, being two orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art Mixed-Integer Linear Programming method. [Display omitted] • Generic and flexible method for solving sequential Stackelberg Security Games. • Neural network as a surrogate model for comparing Defender strategies. • Attacker's decision making model learnt from historical data. • Experimental evaluation on games inspired by real cybersecurity scenario. • Excellent performance and time scalability of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present an efficient construction of the Game Description Language (GDL) interpreter. GDL is a first-order logic language used in the General Game Playing (GGP) framework. Syntactically, the language is a subset of Datalog and Prolog, and like those two, is based on facts and rules. Our aim was to achieve higher execution speed than anyone's of the currently available tools, including other Prolog interpreters applied to GDL. Speed is a crucial factor of the state space search methods used by most GGP agents, since the faster the GDL reasoner, the more game states can be evaluated in the allotted time. The cornerstone of our interpreter is the resolution tree which reflects the dependencies between rules. Our paradigm was to expedite any heavy workload to the preprocessing step to optimize the real-time usage. The proposed enhancements effectively maintain a balance between the time needed to build the internal data representation and the time required for data analysis during actual play. Therefore we refrain from using tree-based dictionary approaches such as TRIE to store the results of logical queries in favour of a memory-friendly linear representation and dynamic filters to reduce space complexity. Experimental results show that our interpreter outperforms the two most popular Prolog interpreters used by GGP programs: Yet Another Prolog (YAP) and ECLiPSe, respectively, in 22 and 26 games, out of the 28 tested. We give some insights into possible reasons for the edge of our approach over Prolog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of General Game Playing (GGP) has been to develop computer programs that can perform well across various game types. It is natural for human game players to transfer knowledge from games they already know how to play to other similar games. GGP research attempts to design systems that work well across different game types, including unknown new games. In this review, we present a survey of recent advances (2011 to 2014) in GGP for both traditional games and video games. It is notable that research on GGP has been expanding into modern video games. Monte-Carlo Tree Search and its enhancements have been the most influential techniques in GGP for both research domains. Additionally, international competitions have become important events that promote and increase GGP research. Recently, a video GGP competition was launched. In this survey, we review recent progress in the most challenging research areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) related to universal game playing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a classification algorithm based on an idea of ‘multiple-resolution’ (or ‘multiscale’) approach to analysis of the data. In practice, the method uses an average of kernel density estimators where each estimator corresponds to a different data ‘resolution’. First, we examine theoretical properties of this method; next, we propose a practical implementation of such an algorithm with parameters of density estimators adjusted to minimise the misclassification probability. Subsequently, we test the algorithm on artificial data sets characterised by a ‘multiple-resolution’ property. The tests show that the introduced algorithm is superior to the basic version based on one estimator per class. We also test the algorithm on benchmark data sets and compare the results obtained with the results of other classification algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This goal of the paper is introduction and experimental evaluation of neuro-genetic system for short-term stock index prediction. The system works according to the following scheme: first, a pool of input variables are defined through technical data analysis. Then GA is applied to find an optimal set of input variables for a one day prediction. Due to the high volatility of mutual relations between input variables, a particular set of inputs found by the GA is valid only for a short period of time and a new set of inputs is calculated every 5 trading days. The data is gathered from the German Stock Exchange (being the target market) and two other markets (Tokyo Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange) together with EUR/USD and USD/JPY exchange rates. The method of selecting input variables works efficiently. Variables which are no longer useful are exchanged with the new ones. On the other hand some, particularly useful, variables are consequently utilized by the GA in subsequent independent prediction periods. The proposed system works well in cases of both upward or downward trends. The effectiveness of the system is compared with the results of four other models of stock market trading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial neural networks, trained only on sample deals, without presentation of any human knowledge or even rules of the game, are used to estimate the number of tricks to be taken by one pair of bridge players in the so-called double dummy bridge problem (DDBP). Four representations of a deal in the input layer were tested leading to significant differences in achieved results. In order to test networks' abilities to extract knowledge from sample deals, experiments with additional inputs representing estimators of hand's strength used by humans were also performed. The superior network trained solely on sample deals outperformed all other architectures, including those using explicit human knowledge of the game of bridge. Considering the suit contracts, this network, in a sample of 100000 testing deals, output a perfect answer in 53.11% of the cases and only in 3.52% of them was mistaken by more than one trick. The respective figures for notrump contracts were equal to 37.80% and 16.36%. The above results were compared with the ones obtained by 24 professional human bridge players—members of The Polish Bridge Union—on test sets of sizes between 27 and 864 deals per player (depending on player's time availability). In case of suit contracts, the perfect answer was obtained in 53.06% of the testing deals for ten upper-classified players and in 48.66% of them, for the remaining 14 participants of the experiment. For the notruinp contracts, the respective figures were equal to 73.68% and 60.78%. Except for checking the ability of neural networks in solving the DDBP, the other goal of this research was to analyze connection weights in trained networks in a quest for weights' patterns that are explainable by experienced human bridge players. Quite surprisingly, several such patterns were discovered (e.g., preference for groups of honors, drawing special attention to Aces, favoring cards from a trump suit, gradual importance of cards in one suit—from two to the Ace, etc.). Both the numerical figures and weight patterns are stable and repeatable in a sample of neural architectures (differing only by randomly chosen initial weights). In summary, the piece of research described in this paper provides a detailed comparison between various data representations of the DDBP solved by neural networks. On a more general note, this approach can be extended to a certain class of binary classification problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two methods of genetic evolution of linear and non-linear heuristic evaluation functions for the game of checkers and give-away checkers are presented in the paper. The first method is based on the simplistic assumption that a relation ‘close’ to partial order can be defined over the set of evaluation functions. Hence an explicit fitness function is not necessary in this case and direct comparison between heuristics (a tournament) can be used instead. In the other approach a heuristic is developed step-by-step based on the set of training games. First, the end-game positions are considered and then the method gradually moves ‘backwards’ in the game tree up to the starting position and at each step the best fitted specimen from the previous step (previous game tree depth) is used as the heuristic evaluation function in the alpha-beta search for the current step. Experimental results confirm that both approaches lead to quite strong heuristics and give hope that a more sophisticated and more problem-oriented evolutionary process might ultimately provide heuristics of quality comparable to those of commercial programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]