Andrea Passarella, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Well, for us, it is essentially understanding the trend of the decentralization of AI, so we are moving more and more towards models where instead of having centralized monolithic AI systems, AI is coming closer to the users and we are moving to  systems where small pieces of AI analyze data that are generated directly on user devices and therefore they should be more and more human centric because whatever they do has more and more to do with the specifics of the users that generate those data and the knowledge we extract is more and more human centric. That is why we are so interested in the Humane AI project as a way to understand the interplay between those local models and the way they interact with each other, considering they are more and more proxy of the human users.

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

I think we are very much on the onset of this new paradigm, where AI comes to the edge of the internet, to the edge of the systems and therefore I think we should better understand what is the interplay between huge amount of small pieces of AI, that work together to build a collective AI system. This changes dramatically the paradigm, because we’re not anymore in a centralized system, therefore we have to take into the account emergent behavior. The way the human-centric small pieces of AI interact with each other according to social norms, social behavior, social trust between users, so the human dimension comes into play more and more in this kind of system. I think my blue sky research project would be to understand how do we move from monolithic to a totally decentralized human-centric and socially aware AI system.

Giuseppe Manco, Research ICAR-CNR

I think the most interesting part according to me; the most interesting part is how to combine symbolic AI let’s say with differentiable AI. This is essentially useful because there are some aspects which I’m trying to model within my research, let’s say for example trying to provide recommended system which is a better impact, let’s say trying to provide novel stuff to people, you know, or diverse stuff. Let’s try for example to say, on Spotify, I want to try new things, or Netflix, I want to get a suggestion about a movie that I wasn’t even aware of, that its totally surprising to me and that I more likely I will like. This essentially means in my opinion trying to inject kind of constraints, kind of new ways of providing this recommendation and trying to avoid to be repetitive or trivial in a sense. It seems to me that this has to mostly to do with the intelligence with a way of trying to encode the ground knowledge about what you can do and what you would like to express and also trying to inject is a machine learning system with machine learning algorithms. This is basically my personal view of how humans or AI can contribute into development of a field. Basically, the essential idea that you can in a sense encode the feelings the emotions, whatever you can model about human, human being and try to directly model it within the machine learning algorithms, within the Artificial Intelligence, with what Artificial Intelligence can deliver back to humans. In a sense it is a two way interaction, you would like to get the most that you can and on the same time you can deliver results that can be very, very well exploitable for people.

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

Well it is very well related once again, I would like to have the possibility (03:09, 03:10) that are able to answer or enhance user experience. I am fortunate enough to live in a world where we are all connected people, we use mobile phones, we could do things that we could not do ten years ago, let’s say for example, I come to Paris and I have a mobile phone and I can find the spot where the workshop is, or I can move the station to the airport, or whatever, to the hotel. This is essentially enhancing user experience. I would be very nice if we could proceed farther. And let’s say deliver people with stuff people don’t even know they need it. This is my blue sky project.

Ville Mäkelä, LMU München

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Human – Centered AI is an approach to designing and developing AI that improves humans, that aims to not replace the human, but enhance the human. AI has the power to significantly change the world, to some extend it already has, but I think the biggest changes are still ahead of us and I am highly interested in being a part of that change.

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

My blue sky project for AI is to make better humans, to improve the quality of life, to enable humans to do things that they perhaps couldn’t do before, to make people better that the best people out there currently.

Gerardo Iñiguez, Central European University

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Yes, I think the basic idea behind a Human – Centered AI is the idea that we not only need to make algorithms to fulfil a certain purpose, but we need to make individuals and society better. We have to introduce values of ethics and of social welfare into the algorithms that are trying to solve issues. I think it is a good project, it is something we need. Now, most od the development in the AI is being done in private companies, by corporate interests and researches are just, you know, understanding how it behaves. We are not taking like an active role in also developing these algorithms. So, I think we need to create some sort of ecosystem between institutions, governments, researches and companies to really make AI better and more ethical.

I think we live in a strange moment in society, that we have very big problems that we have to solve. We have a climate emergency, we have extreme inequality, we have a lot of technology that we can use in order to solve these problems, but somehow, we are very disconnected from this, as a society, and from this technology. I think we can use AI to make use better informed, to actually help us in looking for solutions to these big problems. But we need that this AI is well engineered. That it is not only made by companies, but is actually made, you know, by the researches, by the governments, by corporations all put together. I think this is one of the only ways in which we’re actually going to solve giant problems, like climate change.

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

My blue sky project is to solve with well informant ethical AI.

Juan Durán, TU Delft

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Well. Okay. I guess everyone would have a different idea of what it is, right, and I’m a philosopher and most people here are computer scientists, so probably our ideas are going to be very different. My idea of Human AI is something like being able to still introduce AI in our life in such a way that we remain somehow human and not because AI is going to replace us in some way, but rather that introduce AI to help us as humans to become better humans, to help others to find more free time for being without kids or for finding better ways to have work as oppose to replacing us in exactly those same domains.

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

I think that we need to, okay, again, from the point of view of humanity as I would put out, if I had unlimited resources, I would bring a lot of philosophers, sociologists and historians and all these people that try to think from a different angles and try to understand how, you know, AI works and why and where are we heading towards and what can we say about past technologies and how it affect our lives and what not, so trying to figure out in that way. And I would of course focus on my own research, which is explanation, explanatory AI, understanding and everything that had to do with the ethics of it.

Gene Freuder, University College Cork

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Well we want computers to work for us and for the good of all of us, obviously. And, at this time in particular, there are things that we think humans and machines working together, can accomplish better than either working alone.

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

Well, for a long time I’ve wanted to see a kind of a electronic avatar of myself and similar for other individuals. Something that can represent me and the electronic world that could understand me, that could know me, and that could be the next step beyond the Siri type assistance. In the real world if you’re very rich, you can have a personal assistant, or a butler who understands your needs and can meet your needs with minimal help from yourself. If could get something like that in the electronic world that would be a great assistant for myself and I think a great (02:01) for any of us.

Patrick Gatellier, Thales

Human – centered AI is AI which is for the benefit of human, this being understood as applying the European value to AI as well as too other dimension of the society in Europe and for Europe.

Yes there is a strong connection between the two projects, they are both clearly dedicated to better research, better AI results, for the sake of people, for the sake of growth, for the sake of well-beingness. That is a real blue sky project.

Stéphane Doncieux, Sorbonne Université

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

Right now, artificial systems are mostly built to reach a certain goal and humans to some extend to adapt this machines that achieve wonderful things, but if we consider robots for an instance, for a long time they have been working alone in cages far from humans. What we are trying to work on right now is to open the cage and make new robots that could work along with humans, not replace them but work with them, to have them in their current job. There are a lot of progresses that have been done in Artificial Intelligence, thanks to different techniques. Right now, we are much more able to take into account, more complex models, a lot of issues we need to deal with, but we are making progress fast in that direction.

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

The blue sky project with unlimited resources would be first the ability to collect a lot of data, having many robots moving around interacting with humans, so that we can collect a lot of information about how it goes so that we can exploit it and then learn new representation to make robots.

Ron Chrisley, University of Sussex

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

I am really excited about the Humane AI approach. Because I think the way to create the kinds of AI that we really want to see created, is to collaborate, to find collaborations between machines and people, or use machines, use AI systems to help people collaborate with each other. I think this can be seen especially in the area of creativity, which is what I’m interested in. Rather than trying to just create machines that are somehow creative, maybe it would be a better approach to build machines that can assist us in being more creative. We have some particular ideas in mind her in the Humane AI group about how to do that.

I hope that this project will gather together people who really want to see a different kind of AI in Europe, expressing the European values, human centered European values, that would be world leading. That’s why I’m most excited about, being involved in this group, because I think, not just got the right ideas, the right talent and expertise, but its heart is in the right place to. That’s what I really am looking forward to working with colleagues about.

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

What I would like to see, is, if resources weren’t an issues and time weren’t an issue, I would like to see AI systems that can not only help us and be very good at perceiving the world, but that could perceive themselves and acquire the knowledge of how they work that would allow them to be much more sophisticated that they currently are. I think the applications of such systems are many and hard to imagine would be, hard to underestimate the sophistication that one could add to AI, if this AI systems could learn about themselves with the same power that they are currently learning about photos of cats.

Wojciech Borkowski, University of Warsaw

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

It is important, but for me maybe more important is how to track the politics and the effects of what are people doing for the future and computer simulation is a very good tool for this. What particular political decision, how it may work in the future.

It connects?

It is very connected. In social simulation we use some kind of agents. Agents have small intelligence or less or more intelligence. We try to limit, especially because we have no tools for to make the very intelligent agents. And to make a group of very intelligent agents because of limited resources of computational resources.

Could that be for example your potential blue sky project?

First thing should be standardization of social simulation, because many people use many languages, different algorithms, it is many things work many times. The standardization will be very good and second thing will be use the language that is efficient. I use different language for simple project but different for serious project. For simple project I use processing, it is some kind of simplified Java. It works very well for students for example, but it is simple, it works on Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac. The same code work well. But for serious processes I use C++ and sometimes Quda, this is sort of parallel programming for graphic cards. If you could make something, if you could make effort to make this thing together, it would be good for this discipline I think.

Standardization of languages, programming languages?

Yes, or interaction between languages, it would be also possible to make good library in C++ and then connect the server to small module, write in Java or processing, when people that are not very good in programming, can write for example how one person, how agent work, not person, how agent work and put it into the big system.

Rinzivillo Salvatore, Research ISTI-CNR

What is your opinion on Human – Centered AI?

For the Human – Centered AI let’s say human at the center of AI is some sort of let’s say grounding this technical information that for many people might look something like “wow it’s quite magic”, but basically it is just bringing together pieces that each of us is living, some sort of digital background that we are living behind. I am doing this action of Facebook, I am buying this kind of stuff at the supermarket, I bought a flight ticket to came here in Paris for this workshop. All this kind of different pieces can be brought together in order to build our complete picture that at the moment is difficult, even for me to construct and to put together and also to make a sense of this kind of thing.

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

One challenging thing where we are starting investigating is to try to bring this kind of model where each individual in society collect some data and make sense of some data in order to bring on a common platform where each individual can make a collective intelligence, where my data may be used by the person that is near to me in order to create an intelligence, as I was saying, that can bring beneficial result for all the societies. This can be helping improving and making my own life better in terms of let’s say ecological food print, or let’s say the way that I can use my resources or my time, to improve social relationship and so on. It is a sort of meta collection of this individual data that can gives a new boost on the way we treat and sense our own data

Peter Schüller, TU Wien

I would say that Human – Centered AI is not a project, but is more or less prerequisite for AI to go to the future, so that AI and humans will not diverge, but will work together and continue together in a collaboration.

My blue sky project would be to have a system that can work together with humans, as I am coming from a language perspective, to interpret texts. And he big point of this system would be that it does not start from what is the correct meaning of a text, because that is different for each human, but the system would learn from different humans what it means and then it would be possible to somehow converge all to keep separate opinions about the same texts. Like the reality would require.