CLAIRE Event on the Future of European Excellence in AI at ECAI

2020 September 04 @ ECAI2020

CLAIRE initiators, Holger Hoos, Morten Irgens, and Philipp Slusallek, led the CLAIRE event on the Future of European Excellence in AI during the 24th Digital European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2020) on 4 September 2020.

At the event, which attracted an audience of over 140, the CLAIRE extended core team, along with selected speakers and panelists, presented updates on CLAIRE’s work towards fostering excellence in all areas of AI, across all of Europe, with a human-centred focus, as well as an outline of next steps in achieving critical mass and global impact for “AI made in Europe”. The event highlighted progress on CLAIRE’s activities and partnerships including planned joint works with EurAI to increase synergy among the European AI community; plans under the new ICT-48 networks of centres of excellence and the VISION coordination and support mandate; CLAIRE’s response on the EC White Paper on AI; the setting up of a co-programmed partnership in AI, data and robotics; the collaboration with AIhub which aims to connect the AI community to the public; and CLAIRE’s Industry Task Force which aims to complement existing CLAIRE Research Network with an Innovation Network.

In a bid to support research in and through CLAIRE, Giuseppe De Giacomo (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and Programme Chair of ECAI 2020) also introduced initiatives planned under the CLAIRE Task Force on AI Research. This initiative aims to develop a backbone for supporting AI research within CLAIRE, which will strengthen and focus the CLAIRE research network as a world-class, Pan-European scientific community.

Overall, the well-attended public event generated valuable discussion among CLAIRE’s experts and the community at large. An online feedback mechanism on how to realise CLAIRE’s vision has also been facilitated successfully by Morten Irgens, with an expert panel composed of Fredrik Heintz (Linköping University, Sweden), Marc Schoenauer (INRIA and Université Paris-Saclay, France), Jan Bormans (European Startup Network), Josef Urban (CIIRC, Czech Republic), Holger Hoos and Philipp Slusallek.

Watch the recorded version of the event on CLAIRE’s Youtube page, at https://youtu.be/6yvOQqyw3uk, and check out the presentation slides at http://bit.ly/clairecommunitymeeting.