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CLAIRE Community Update | June 2021
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Dear friends, colleagues, members & supporters of CLAIRE!
Hard to believe it, but this is CLAIRE's 3rd Anniversary … Thanks for being part of our vision and of our journey; thanks for your commitment, your support and your passion for the topic of responsible Artificial Intelligence "made in Europe". As a community and as an organisation, we've achieved a lot over the last 12 months, and we are excited to share with you today some highlights and updates on our activities and achievements.
Let's celebrate!
Let's continue working together for the future of "AI made in Europe", AI for Good and AI for All.
#ai4good #ai4all #humancenteredai #aimadeineurope
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Our Success Stories: CLAIRE turns 3 !
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The CLAIRE Innovation Network
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Europe has an impressive number of strong businesses in all shapes, markets and sizes; it is also home to some of the world’s strongest Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientists, research groups and centres as well as universities. However, Europe lags behind other regions in turning AI technologies into global products, platforms and services. CLAIRE has not only created an ambitious, global vision for European excellence in AI, but also brings together AI scientists, research groups, industry, innovation-driven enterprises and startups.
Since its launch in June 2018, CLAIRE has grown to represent more than 400 AI research labs and organisations, counting more than 24 000 researchers and support staff from across all of Europe. Today we are excited to announce the launch of the CLAIRE Innovation Network, which will complement the existing Research Network with a similar community of commercial companies, start-ups, and entrepreneurs developing or using AI methods or technologies. These will work closely together to jointly address the needs and opportunities of the European AI ecosystem.
The launch of the innovation network represents the next major step towards the realisation of CLAIRE’s ambitious vision for "AI made in Europe": Excellence across all of AI. For all of Europe. With a human-centered focus. These goals can only be realised if all parts of the AI ecosystem, including academia, industry, entrepreneurs, investors and governments, are strongly interconnected. Accordingly, joining the CLAIRE Innovation Network gives members access to the world's largest AI community, allows them to stay informed about AI developments and policy initiatives, and collaborate with partners from academia and industry to work on a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda to shape the future of AI in Europe.
Today we are delighted to welcome and introduce the initial founding members of the CLAIRE Innovation Network (in alphabetical order):
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Are you interested in joining the CLAIRE Innovation Network as a founding member?
For the remainder of 2021, we will welcome additional founding members, and following this, the innovation network will be further expanded with regular members. For more information, please contact . |
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New co-programmed partnership
on AI, Data and Robotics
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The European Commission and the newly established AI, Data and Robotics Association (Adra) sign a public-private partnership to jointly invest 2.6 Billion Euro
“Artificial intelligence, data and robotics are at the core of the ongoing digital transformation of Europe. This transformation will have a profound impact on European businesses as well as European science; it will touch upon all parts of society and all parts of our lives. Adra will become a strong lens and amplifier for Europe’s digital economy, and an opportunity for its partners to contribute to an important and beneficial development for all of Europe and all Europeans.” - Morten Irgens - CLAIRE Co-founder and Director of Innovation, as well as newly elected Vice President of Adra.
On 23 June 2021, the European Commission and the newly established AI, Data and Robotics Association (Adra) signed a Memorandum of Understanding that establishes the co-programmed partnership that will serve as the European focal point for AI, Data and Robotics. The partnership leverages 1.3B Eur of public investments through the Horizon Europe programme, complemented with 1.3B Eur of private investments in the period 2021-2030 to address the key challenges in European AI, Data and Robotics.
Adra was founded on 21 May 2021 by three AI associations: CLAIRE, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), together with the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) and the European Robotics Association (euRobotics). These 5 European associations previously collaborated on the preparatory Joint Strategic Research Innovation and Deployment Agenda (SRIDA) that was released in September 2020. CLAIRE has played an important role in the negotiations that led to the creation of Adra, and will retain a leading role in the organisation, as reflected by the election of Morten Irgens as vice-president of the newly formed association.
To ensure the success of Adra and the partnership, CLAIRE will promote a focus on openness and inclusiveness, which are also at the core of the values pursued by the CLAIRE community since its inception in 2018. A broad and balanced dialogue is essential for bringing together all facets of the European innovation ecosystem and to fully exploit the European strengths and unique selling points of European AI, Data and Robotics technology. We will keep you posted on the developments and opportunities in the context of Adra.
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AI made in Europe - Office Opening Roadshow Review
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As a community, we help shape our future by shaping technology. CLAIRE is paving the way to trustworthy, safe & inclusive AI technologies for the future of Europe and the World.
A celebration of European excellence in research for a greater good: Pan-European excellence in research and technology, within a trusted environment, by the people, for the people and for our planet!
Building bridges beyond borders and connecting the brightest minds in research, industry and politics to unite for one vision: Inclusive and co-creative collaboration for responsible AI research and innovation across all of AI, for all of Europe, with a human-centered focus.
These new offices complement the four previously established CLAIRE offices in The Hague, Prague, Rome and Saarbrücken.
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Your participation and support are key to the future of "AI made in Europe", for an inclusive and impactful ecosystem, bringing together the best of AI research and innovation - stronger together, united in diversity, for trusted AI technology based on shared values.
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Further Highlights and Activities
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SAIROP Database for AI Research
Swiss organisations from the fields of research funding, academia and industry have agreed to jointly compile an overview of the expertise of Swiss research institutions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). As an enabling technology that is finding its way into all areas of daily life, AI is of outstanding importance for Switzerland as a research location and for future value creation.
The planned platform – the Swiss AI Research Overview Platform (SAIROP) – is intended to present an overview of AI competencies in Switzerland's scattered research landscape. To this end, the partners involved will compile information on current research projects from existing databases, process it and make it more accessible by means of the new platform – which is likely to be unique in the European region at the planned level of detail. SAIROP will improve the visibility of Swiss AI research partners, providing a new gateway for local and international companies and research institutions to initiate future innovation projects. SAIROP is scheduled to be launched in the Autumn of 2021 and will be publicly accessible. CLAIRE makes key contribution to SAIROP through the newly established CLAIRE | Zurich office.
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The Intersection of AI and Information Systems: CLAIRE–ERICS Collaboration
Spanning the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems, CLAIRE joined forces with the European Research Center of Information Systems (ERCIS) with a Memorandum of Understanding. The parties are particularly interested in exploring networking opportunities and joint activities, and the collaboration will specifically bundle and foster application-oriented AI research and related activities.
First joint activities are already planned, for example in the context of the upcoming Joint Theme Development Workshops organised by CLAIRE together with the EU ICT-48 Networks of Excellence. Especially the planned Theme Development Workshop for the public sector will be an outstanding opportunity in this context, since digitisation of public administration is a prominent field of research in Information Systems (IS), and this sector is highly relevant for addressing some of CLAIRE’s top priorities: Contributing to AI for Good and AI for All. The CLAIRE-ERCIS collaboration is supported mainly out of CLAIRE | Saarbrücken.
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ICT-48 Networks of Centres of Excellence
Through its involvement in the ICT-48 Networks of Centres of Excellence, officially launched in September 2020, CLAIRE plays an important role in the AI strategy of the European Commission.
Members of the CLAIRE Research Network play key roles in all four Networks of Centres of Excellence (AI4Media, ELISE, HumanE-AI-Net and TAILOR); through Leiden University, one of three institutional launch partners of CLAIRE, we also have the lead in the VISION coordination and support mandate intended to foster collaboration across the four networks.
CLAIRE has been working with the ICT-48 ecosystem on a number of highly visible events, including the European Vision for AI 2021 event directly following the announcement of the European Commission's latest plans for AI on 22 April, and is now preparing further events together with the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NoEs), including a series of theme development workshops starting this autumn.
Through the VISION CSA, CLAIRE is also helping to connect the ICT-48 NoEs with AIhub, of which CLAIRE has been a trustee since last year. CLAIRE's key role in ICT-48 is supported by several offices and coordinated by our headquarters in The Hague.
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The Hessian Center for AI
(Formerly known as AI@DA) at Technical University Darmstadt (Germany)
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Most of AI in use today falls under the categories of the first two waves of AI research. First-wave AIs follow clear rules, written by people, aiming to cover every eventuality. Second-wave AI systems are the kind that use machine learning to arrive at an answer for a certain type of problem. The AI team at TU Darmstadt envisions a future in which machines are more than just tools that execute human-programmed rules or generalise from human-curated data sets. AI systems of this third wave of AI can acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognise new situations and to adapt to them. For example, a third-wave AI system might note that a speed limit of 120 km/h does not make sense when entering a small village.
The vision of our interdisciplinary team—Iryna Gurevych, Mira Mezini, Carsten Binnig, Kristian Kersting, Jan Peters, Stefan Roth and Constantin Rothkopf, among others— from the fields of AI, computer science and cognitive science is to lay down both the algorithmic and the system design foundations of this third wave of AI. We take a “Systems AI” view, i.e., a systemic view on AI that captures, understands and utilises the interaction of individual AI building blocks to yield a single, complex AI system.
Therefore, we are happy and proud to be a core supporter of CLAIRE, part of TAILOR and home to the Hessian Center for AI (hessian.AI) with its 22 new tenured AI professorships and its connections to startups and industry. Only a strong ecosystem can drive research excellence, education, practice and leadership in AI to foster economic growth and improve the human condition. The AI team at TU Darmstadt team has been awarded several prestigious ERC grants and received numerous scientific recognitions, such as EurAI, ACL, IEEE and ELLIS Fellows, the German AI Award, the EurAI Dissertation Award, IEEE Robotics & Automation Early Career Award, and several best paper awards at leading AI venues; we actually co-chaired several of them (e.g., ACL, CVPR, UAI, ECCV, ECML PKDD, CoRL).
Author:
Prof. Dr. Kristian Kersting, EurAI Fellow, ELLIS Fellow
Co-Director of the Hessian Center for AI (hessian.AI)
Head of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Group
Computer Science Department & Center for Cognitive Science
TU Darmstadt
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Would you like to step up your involvement in CLAIRE or be featured as a CLAIRE member in a future newsletter? Do you have ideas that might help us in the pursuit of our common vision for "AI made in Europe"? Contact us.
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CLAIRE - Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe
Fluwelen Burgwal 58
The Hague, South Holland 2511 CJ
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