HumaneAI releases AI research agenda for the telecommunications industry

In collaboration with the Humane AI net project, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Telefónica, GSMA, The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) and German Entrepreneurship organised a closed-door industry workshop which took place on 29 November 2022 in Munich, Germany to discuss promising artificial intelligence (AI) research areas for the telecommunications industry.

AI Research agenda for the telecommunications industry
AI Research agenda for the telecommunications industry

The objective of the workshop was to define the telecommunications industry research agenda in AI. More than 10 mobile network operators (MNOs) participated from Europe and from the rest of the world (Australia, Middle East) including Axiata, O2 Germany, Orange, stc, Telefónica, Telenor, Telia, Telstra, TIM, Turkcell and Vodafone, and they came together for two days to discuss what is needed from AI in the future.

During the workshop, the Humane AI net project explained the major trends in AI research. Then, several companies shared how they are using AI currently in their operations and business practises. Finally, the respective companies explained what AI capabilities they would be interested in for the future.

This last part has been the input for the telecommunications industry AI research agenda. The agenda is available in English and Spanish.

Beyond ChatGPT: Europe Needs to Act Now to Ensure Technological Sovereignty in Next-Generation AI

We co-hosted a half-day event on May 25th at the European Parliament, titled Beyond ChatGPT: How can Europe get in front of the pack on Generative AI Models?, organized by a broad consortium from science and civil society.

The event resulted in a CALL FOR ACTION signed by the speakers in which AI experts “call upon the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the governments of the EU member states to make investments without delay, to protect our technological sovereignty, our shared values, and our future.”

The organizing committee included the HumanE-AI-Net European Network of Centres of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under the auspices of UNESCO, the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence in Europe (CLAIRE), and other ICT-48 networks such as TAILOR, AI4Media, and VISION, and language projects like ELG and ELE.

The event was a success and

Download the statement here.

 

HumaneAI delivering a one day event @ European Parliament

We hosted a half-day event on May 25th at the European Parliament, Paul-Henri Spaak Building, Rue Wiertz 60, 1047 Brussels, Belgium, titled Beyond ChatGPT: How can Europe get in front of the pack on Generative AI Models?, organized by a broad consortium from science and civil society.

The organizing committee included the HumanE-AI-Net European Network of Centres of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under the auspices of UNESCO, the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence in Europe (CLAIRE), and other ICT-48 networks such as TAILOR, AI4Media, and VISION, and language projects like ELG and ELE

The event was a sussces and included the following speakers: Paul Lukowicz, Cees Snoek, Fredrik Heintz, Ioannis Kompatsiaris, Virginia Dignum, Ieva Martinkenaite, Francesca Rossi, Holger Hoos, Marko Grobelnik, Catelijne Muller, Clara Neppel, Dino Pedreschi, and Cécile Huet.

HumaneAI extended until 2023

The HumaneAI project has been successfully extended into the HumanE-AI-Net under the H2020 call topic ICT-48-2020 – Towards a vibrant European network of AI excellence centres which now gives the consortium 3 years to build and exciting new scientific domain.

The HumanE AI Net brings together top European research centers, universities and key industrial champions into a network of centers of excellence that goes beyond a narrow definition of AI and combines world-leading AI competence with key players in related areas such as HCI, cognitive science, social sciences and complexity science.

New talk by project leader Paul Lukowicz

Künstliche Intelligenz Potenzial erkennen und nutzen

A new book by Virginia Dignum (Umea partner) is out with Springer

Responsible Artificial Intelligence, How to Develop and Use AI in a Responsible Way, Dignum, Virginia, Springer (New York – Berlin).

In this book, the Virginia Dignum examines the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence systems as they integrate and replace traditional social structures in new sociocognitive-technological environments. She discusses issues related to the integrity of researchers, technologists, and manufacturers as they design, construct, use, and manage artificially intelligent systems; formalisms for reasoning about moral decisions as part of the behavior of artificial autonomous systems such as agents and robots; and design methodologies for social agents based on societal, moral, and legal values.

Humane AI research plans

We have shaped a report describing results from an initiative to organize a community of researchers and innovators around a research program that seeks to create AI technologies that empower humans and human society to vastly improve quality of life for all. Read the deliverable.

Policy recommendations for Human Centered AI

The HumaneAI team has summarised the ideas and considerations that have emerged in the course of considering various ways to sustain and develop a large-scale Humane AI community in the absence of a Flagship. They are intended as recommendations for the funding bodies of the Union with respect to an efficient implementation of large-scale long-term research initiatives in AI and similar fields. Read the deliverable.

HumaneAI third project meeting

On October 10 and 11 the HumaneAI partners meet in Den Haag to create the Reseach Roadmap for the new science of Human Centric Artificial Intelligence.

Dino Pedreschi, University in Pisa

Dino Pedreschi, University in Pisa

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

The important thing for Europe is to devise AI which is beneficial to people. Which essentially mean two things. Beneficial to individual people and beneficial to our societies as our communities. And this are two very different things. We might be very intelligent smart individual and be very stupid as a crowd. To somehow engineer social technical society which is able to leverage the right network effect that bring us to decide the properties of well-being. Plurally has been democracy. A better place to live. Well to do this we really need to rely on AI, sure. But we need to rely into developing AI which is working with us towards the same objective. We are not only smart as individuals, but we are smartly adopting as an intelligent crowd, reaching common goals all together, making the traffic flow in the city or make democracy work.

What would be your blue sky project in AI for Europe?

If I had a lot of resources, especially beautiful minds for a blue-sky project, I would like to engineer the platform for democracy. The platform that would enable people to be competent and connected to many different views of any controversial issue. To become essentially more able to understand our peers, and be more able to, to become a pluralistic diversity of opinions, able to make the best choice in every possible moment towards all the big challenges that are in front of us, from the climate challenge to the democracy challenge, to the economic and jobs challenge, the inequality challenge. All those require our ability more competent, more connected and more open people. And AI can, Humane AI, can really much help in this direction.

János Kertész, Central European University

János Kertész, Central European University

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

The human AI project is especially interesting for me because of its social aspects as I already said. Most people deal with Human–machine interaction when they are thinking in terms of Artificial Intelligence, that humans are embedded into society. That is a very, very important aspect. We act as social beings. Wellbeing of the human depends not only on the individual properties but also on how we feel ourselves in the society. And that is very much influenced by AI and it will be more and more influenced as time goes on. This are aspects which we want to explore within this project.

We are looking at problems where AI is able to impose some kind of biases onto the society. I am thinking in terms of recommendation systems, I am thinking in terms of social online networks, which a large impact on the society, it can enhance segregation, fragmentation of the society, which are bad consequences of these algorithms, which are applied. And we are also looking for possible way outs of these traps of the new technology.

What would be your blue sky project in AI for Europe?

AI has a self-development, it is from the point of view of companies of technology, very rapidly developing, technology with fantastic future, but I think if I had the possibility I would put much more emphasize on social aspect, on assuring that the development of AI will not bring us to society which is not compatible with European values. We want to live in a ecosystem where AI and humans have their place, but with the values which we have now about social life.