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CLAIRE: A European Vision for AI

  • Philipp SLUSALLEK profile
    Philipp SLUSALLEK
    3 October 2018
  • 3 comments
    Total votes: 6
Document(s): 
PDF icon CLAIRE Vision document
PDF icon CLAIRE in a Nutshell
External link: 
https://claire-ai.org/
Author(s): 
Holger Hoos, Morten Irgens, and Philipp Slusallek
Year of publication: 
2018
Tags: 
AICLAIRE

This is the Vision document formulated when founding the CLAIRE initiative, targeting "Excellence across all of AI. For all of Europe. With a Human-Centred Focus."

CLAIRE (Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe) is an initiative by the European AI community that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation, with a strong focus on human-centred AI, and to establish world-wide brand recognitionfor "AI made in Europe". CLAIRE seeks to establish:

  • The CLAIRE Hub:​ A facility that serves as a highly visible and vibrant focal point for the CLAIRE collaborative network. Here, excellent scientists at all levels and from all partners will work together for periods of time and find outstanding infrastructure and support for research and innovation, particularly suited to the needs of AI.
  • CLAIRE Centres of Excellence:​ A selection of research labs in the CLAIRE Network, located strategically throughout the Europe. These will play strong roles as hubs for the members of the CLAIRE network in their region.
  • The CLAIRE Network:​ A collaborative network of research labs (existing and new) and organisations across Europe. They will jointly identify fundamental questions for basic and applied research, discuss the most promising approaches, and participate in collaborative approaches to address them.

The attached document "CLAIRE in a Nutshell" contains a summary of the goals of CLAIRE. More detailed information on CLAIRE can be found at the CLAIRE web site (http://claire-ai.org), including the list of supporters, news, FAQs, media coverage, quotes and other information.

CLAIRE is already supported by a massive number of supporters from the European AI community, many top AI experts from research and industry, as well as the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) and most of the national AI associations (see website for details).

Please consider also signing up as a supporter of CLAIRE and spread this information among friend and colleagues.

 

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Ray WALSHE's picture
Ray WALSHE,
15/10/2018 14:20

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 is an international standards committee responsible for developing artificial intelligence (AI) standards. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 is underneath ISO/IEC JTC 1, Joint Technical Committee 1 of ISO and IEC, that is responsible for standardization in the field of information technology. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 is a systems integration committee and has the following scope: Standardization in the area of Artificial Intelligence • Serve as the focus and proponent for JTC 1's standardization program on Artificial Intelligence • Provide guidance to JTC 1, IEC, and ISO committees developing Artificial Intelligence applications

https://image-store.slidesharecdn.com/6deec47d-dd02-47fc-9537-233799210565-large.jpeg

 

Total votes: 0
Giuseppe ATTARDI's picture
Giuseppe ATTARDI,
11/10/2018 19:10

Here are several good reasons to support the creation of a central CLAIRE laboratory, in particular if modeled after the CERN statute (https://council.web.cern.ch/en/content/convention-establishment-european...):

 

1. it can have a stable budget, provided by the participating countries, allowing for longer term planning, rather than funding on short term projects

 

2. it can use the funding for provisioning the required infrastructure facilities required to stay on par with  other word leading institutions (private in the USA, public in China), including  computational hardware specilaized for training and inference, and storage for alrge common train data sets. Funding for infrastrucure are quite hard to obtain otherwise. Notice that computers specialized for training and inference do not coincide with traditional supercomputers. Specilalized hardware (not just GPUs or TPUs) are being designed for AI applications, providing higher performance, lower cost and energy consumption than traditional supercomputers. To stay on the leading edge, these computers will have to be upgraded frequently, following expected advancements of technology, and increasing their size according to demand, rather than building a single large supercomputer to be used for long enough to admortize its huge costs.

 

3. a central hub with advanced facilities can attract young researchers and motivate them to stay in Europe, rahther than be hired by large US corporations that can offer them high salaries, adequate facilities and a bunch of fringe benefits. Researchers that spend a period at the CLAIRE Lab, might get an extra indemnity added to their salary, as do physicist than go to CERN.

 

4. the Lab can be directed by a council composed by the scientists themselves, deciding through consensus about the goals to be set for the activities of the lab

 

5. every European researches will feel at home there, not just as a guest, and s/he will feel proud of such facility, that all would have contributed to create

 

6. it can involve both public institutions and private companies, which can provide direct financial support to the actibities of the lab. Following here the MIT Medialab model (CERN does not contemplate private partnerships), companies that provide funding are entitled to suggest topics for projects and can send people to the lab to participate in its activities. The scientific golas would still be set by the Council.

 

 

Giuseppe Attardi

Università di Pisa

Member of Italian Task Force on AI

 

Total votes: 0
Holger Hoos's picture
Holger Hoos,
06/10/2018 18:45

Also of interest: CLAIRE's response to the recent news coverage of AI in Europe in The Economist (20 September 2018):

https://claire-ai.org/claire-economist-memo/

The Economist articles can be found here:

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/22/can-the-eu-become-another-ai-superpowerhttps://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/09/22/how-europe-can-improve-the-development-of-ai

This should provide relevant input to the HLEG meeting next week.

Total votes: 0