FundingBox will lead the support to early adopters of an Artificial Intelligence-on-Demand Platform funded by the EC with €20 million
79 partners from 21 countries are part of the initiative, that includes research institutes, SMEs and enterprises
End of year celebrations have passed, and most of Europeans face now the long hard Winter. Not in Barcelona. On January 9 the Spring had just arrived to the Spanish Mediterranean city, because of the weather and the good vibes that the partners of AI4EU brought to the city. AI4EU is an Artificial Intelligence-on-Demand Platform funded by the European Commission (EC) with €20 million. 79 partners from 21 countries are part of the programme, including top research institutes, SMEs and large enterprises. The Kick Off meeting took place from January 9 to 11.
The aim of the initiative is to build a platform to gather Artificial Intelligence resources including data repositories, computing power, tools and algorithms. 8 pilots with large corporations will be developed and 120 early adopters of the platform will be selected and supported. AI4EU, an open and collaborative platform, will also provide up-skilling and re-skilling courses.
The project will last 3 years and is lead by the French company Thales. We, at FundingBox are part of the Executive Board and our main mission is to identify the early adopters for the platform and prove that it adds value to them. We will select 100 AI Prototypes and the best 20 European AI startups that will build technologies that can be reused by any other SME. We will provide services and support to those potential users of the technology, and we will help them test and integrate AI solutions in their processes, products and services.
AI4EU will work closely with the Digital Innovation Hubs for robotics, that gathers five projects that started in January 2019. FundingBox is part of 2 of them: DIH2 and RIMA.
According to Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, “Europe can only reap the full benefits of AI innovations if this technology is easily usable by all. The AI4EU project will help bring AI to small businesses, non-tech companies and public administrations across Europe.”
“The first objective is to gather all the resources and research laboratories that exist in Europe, which produce a huge amount of results (30% of scientific publications worldwide) (…). In addition, an ethical observatory for AI will be established”, said Patrick Gatellier, R&D Manager at Thales.“[AI on demand platform] will be like a large area that you can access and, in a single position, buy everything. Each person who needs an AI resource can request the list of algorithms that do what they are looking for”, Gatellier added.
The Commission has committed a total investment of €1.5 billion in AI for period 2018–2020 under the Horizon2020 Programme, what should lead to a total public and private investment in AI of at least €20 million by the end of 2020. On December 2018 the EC presented the made in Europe plan to foster the development and use of AI in Europe. This plan will include an investment of €7 billion in the Horizon Europe (2021–2027) Programme.
