The prestigious AI Awards 2024, which annually honour the most significant projects in the field of artificial intelligence, were presented on 21 November 2024 at the Vzlet Cultural Centre in Vršovice. The main prize for long-term contribution this year went to scientist Tomas Mikolov, head of basic AI research at the CIIRC and a pioneer in the field of self-supervised learning, which is the basis of current large-scale language models, including ChatGPT.
In accepting the AI Awards 2024, Mikolov stressed that despite the top talents the Czech Republic has, funding for AI projects is still insufficient and called for systemic changes in education and support for science.
Other AI Awards 2024
A jury of leading experts selected from a total of 134 nominations. The awards went to projects across a variety of fields:
- AI and societal benefit:
o Verifee Research Collective for its original solution to the problem of misinformation, focusing on the credibility of articles instead of fact-checking. - AI in Education:
o ScioBot, a tool for teachers that is already used by over 30,000 educators to prepare lessons and teaching materials. - AI in Business:
o Fly4Future, pioneers of flying robots with on-board AI that have also succeeded in the global market. - AI in Public Administration:
o Chatbot Adele from MAMA TELMA AI, who modernized recruitment for the Army and increased the number of applicants threefold. - Research and Development:
o Ondřej Dušek from MFF UK for his contribution in natural language generation and linking neural models with knowledge graphs.
About the competition
The AI Awards, organized by the Czech National AI Platform (CNAIP), are the only professional awards in the field of artificial intelligence in the Czech Republic. The event was held under the auspices of President Petr Pavel and several ministries, which underlines its importance.
More information can be found at AIAwards.cz.
