The need to share with the general public how the European scientific community is currently acting to move European Artificial Intelligence (AI) forward, to future success in a growing competition environment with countries such as the US or China, has led scientists to organise the “European Vision for AI“ event. The online discussions are scheduled for Thursday 22 April 2021 and organised by the VISION project partners in cooperation with four networks of AI centres of excellence (AI4Media, ELISE, TAILOR, Humane-AI-Net). Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics in Prague (CIIRC CTU) is one of the main organizers of this event.
During the event European citizens with an interest in AI will gain an overview of Europe’s position in the field of AI and how this impacts Europe’s economy and society. Since this event is coordinated with, and closely linked to, the official announcement on new regulations and further investment in AI, scheduled by the European Commission for next week, the event will represent one of the first opportunities for public discussion on these new plans at the European level.
Vít Dočkal, head of Project Management Office at CIIRC ČVUT, who also manages the communication activities of the VISION project, sees this event as a step towards closer communication between the European scientific AI community and the general public: „Our goal is to get young people, researchers, innovators, companies and politicians at least virtually at the same table and discuss ambitious European plans for artificial intelligence and the evolving ecosystem of AI excellence.“
Thanks to the strong coordinating role of CIIRC CTU, it was possible to recommend Sara Polak, a member of the interuniversity non-profit initiative prg.ai, which has recently become one of the most prominent faces of popularization of artificial intelligence among the Czech broad and professional public. „Personalities who have something to say about artificial intelligence were selected to represent various areas, both professional and geographical. We are very happy that the Czech Republic is represented in the program thanks to Sara,“ said Eva Doležalová from CIIRC CTU, who is in charge of coordinating the event.
Starting at 11am, the event will be fully online, streamed at event.vision4ai.eu for free and with no prior registration. The program will be conducted in English. The public will be able to enter discussions via chat. Participants will also get the opportunity to choose from three parallel sessions focusing on society, industry and skills & training, depending on their particular interests.
About organisers
This event is organised by the consortium of partners of the project VISION (www.vision4ai.eu), the coordination and support action (CSA) awarded under the H2020-ICT-48-2020 call. The aim of VISION is to reinforce, interconnect and mobilise Europe’s AI community. Europe has been investing in the European model of AI, with a new set of four European networks of AI excellence centres. Launched in September 2020, these four networks of excellence centres – AI4Media, ELISE, HumanE-AI-Net and TAILOR – are now working on various aspects of trustworthy, human-centric AI. In parallel to these efforts, the VISION project aims to create connections, synergy and joint initiatives between these networks as well as with key stakeholders across Europe. These projects are key components in the European Commission’s AI strategy. CIIRC CTU is involved in two out of the four networks and in addition, it is in charge of all communication activities as part of the VISION coordination project. This gives CTU and the Czech Republic a huge chance to be at the forefront of European research in the field of AI and also to significantly influence and direct this research.
