What?

CLAIRE seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation. Its extensive network forms a pan-European Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe. CLAIRE was launched in 2018 as a bottom-up initiative by the European AI community and aims for “brand recognition” similar to CERN.

Why?

We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will fundamentally change the way we live and work. It is also likely to become crucial in addressing society’s grand challenges, such as climate, energy and mobility; food and natural resources; health; and inclusive, secure societies.

In addition, AI is a global “game changer” that has become a major driver of innovation, future growth and competitiveness.

It is sometimes said that the best way to meet the future is to create it. We believe that Europe, with its existing strength across all areas of AI and with its strong universities, research institutions and companies, is in an excellent position to do that. Europe can ensure that many of tomorrow’s advanced technologies, products, systems and services are European and are based on and reflect European realities, needs and values.

This is particularly important for AI.

If Europe were to fall behind in AI technology, we would be likely to face challenging economic consequences, academic brain drain, reduced transparency, and increasing dependency on foreign technologies, products and values. The CLAIRE initiative presents a proposal for avoiding that.

It is not only Europe that needs AI made in Europe.

How?

The CLAIRE initiative aims to establish a pan-European network of Centres of Excellence in AI, strategically located throughout Europe, and a new, central facility with state-of-the-art, “Google-scale”, CERN-like infrastructure – the CLAIRE Hub – that will promote new and existing talent and provide a focal point for exchange and interaction of researchers at all stages of their careers, across all areas of AI. The CLAIRE Hub will not be an elitist AI institute with permanent scientific staff, but an environment where Europe’s brightest minds in AI meet and work for limited periods of time. This will increase the flow of knowledge among European researchers and back to their home institutions.

• CLAIRE will focus on trustworthy AI that augments human intelligence rather than replacing it, and that thus benefits the people of Europe.

• CLAIRE will work for a major increase in funding towards existing scientific strengths in AI, novel research opportunities and key European interests.
• CLAIRE will work with key stakeholders to find mechanisms for citizen engagement, industry and public sector collaboration and innovation-driven startup and scale-up.
• CLAIRE will in this way define and address challenges in various sectors and across a wide range of applications, including health, manufacturing, transportation, scientific research, sustainable agriculture, financial services, public administration and entertainment.