Exploring cutting-edge research, applications, and future directions in artificial intelligence across diverse domains

Abstract

This issue highlights the most recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) research, which cover a wide range of applications, methodologies, and emerging technologies. The gathered works highlight AI's transformative potential in a variety of fields, including healthcare, environmental monitoring, energy systems, intelligent transportation, cybersecurity, smart agriculture, and human-computer interactions. The featured studies demonstrate novel applications of deep learning, convolutional neural networks, vision transformers, reinforcement learning, ensemble methods, and explainable AI techniques, with a focus on both performance optimisation and interpretability. The issue also delves into AI integration with IoT, blockchain, big data, and mobile platforms, showcasing scalable and real-time solutions for dynamic, data-intensive settings. Aside from technical accomplishments, the contributions address practical issues such as model generalisation, feature selection, data quality, privacy, and ethical concerns. These works show how AI is improving decision-making, predictive capabilities, and operational efficiency while addressing complex societal and industrial issues. Looking ahead, this issue encourages reflection on AI development trajectories, emphasising the importance of robust, explainable, and adaptive systems that balance computational power and interpretability. This issue aims to inform, inspire, and guide practitioners and researchers in shaping the next generation of intelligent technologies by providing a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge AI research and real-world applications.