How I ended up discussing AI with public and private leaders:
My PIONEER-Master journey
For the past 1,5 years, I’ve been studying and living in three different European countries: Belgium, Germany and Estonia as part of the PIONEER-Master. During this period, I’ve traveled to more than 10 countries, met the Dutch and Belgium Kings, the Grand-Duke of Luxembourg, saw the Pope, listened to Barack Obama and recently assisted the Estonian government with a high-level conference on Artificial Intelligence. Do you want to know my journey? This is my PIONEER-Story (so far!):
In the spring of 2017, I received an email stating that I was accepted for the new joint-master “Public Sector Innovation and eGovernance”, cleverly given the nickname PIONEER. Together with 15 other students from all over the world, I am part of the first class of this new programme: a mixture of Public Administration and Information Sciences in order to understand the latest technological developments to be used in the public sector. Backed up with a very generous Erasmus Mundus scholarship, I went off from my parents home in the Netherlands towards the picturesque town of Leuven.
The first semester in Leuven was challenging from the first moment: it was the first time living on my own, so it truly took some time to figure out how to properly do groceries, clean and cook. Not to mention the new classes: whereas I had experience in Public Administration, Database Management and Business Information Systems were completely uncharted territory for me. Without the help of my amazing new family; the other PIONEERs, I would never have passed. We were all in it together; we shared a floor in a student apartment, were all coming from abroad and had the same challenging assignments to complete. However, our time in Leuven didn’t only involve university classes. Due to the close proximity to Brussels, it was possible to attend various European conferences on Digital Government. We were even invited to go to the DG-CONNECT of the European Commission to discuss how to involve citizens in the ongoing digital transformations of governments!
After a couple of long, hard-working evenings together in the “Kitchen Office” (our apartment kitchen transformed to study area), we managed to complete the first semester. “Tot ziens Leuven!” Onward towards the next semester in Münster, the cycling city of Germany! Like all Dutch people, I’m very keen on cycling, so I managed to navigate throughout the city as I was at home! However, even from Germany, Brussels was calling. I was asked to come to Brussels to talk (briefly) with the King of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium and the Grand-Duke of Luxembourg about the future of the Benelux Union as it has existed for 60 years. An experience I will never forget!
After countless kilometers cycling from home to the university and back to home, even the semester in Münster came to an end. During this semester, we had more classes from the Information Sciences perspective, which was very new to me. For one of the classes, we even designed a fully functioning citizen-sourcing website which local governments could use to connect with citizens. Pretty cool! Now, it was time to leave Germany and head towards the cold, but beautiful city Tallinn. It’s really one of my favourite cities.
Before the classes even started, I joined the Estonian Government Office as an trainee to assist them with the organization of the Tallinn Digital Summit. This is a high-level conference for the leading digital countries in the world, hosted by Estonia. Bringing in state, public sector and private sector leaders from digital-minded countries, the aim of the summit was to discuss the opportunities and challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-technologies use massive amounts of data to learn ‘on its own’, detecting patterns humans will never be able to see. This way, the technology can make very accurate predictions and conduct ‘cognitive’ tasks which we previously thought only humans could do. While the technology is still in its infancy, we’re using AI-technologies already: our mobile phones have plenty of applications using this technology. The potential of this technology is great: AI-technologies are already able to diagnose diseases or detect tumors on pictures more or less as accurate as humans! However, as with most technologies, there is also a darker side: AI-powered weapon systems could be used to target specific minority groups or individuals, there is a serious risk of bias within these systems and as of now, a fear of mass unemployment and lack of clear explanations why AI-systems take certain decisions, just to name a few.
While my role was minor, I did get the task to read, evaluate and discuss the conference papers with the knowledge partners of the conference: McKinsey Global Institute, The Lisbon Council, Centre for Public Impact and the European Centre for International Political Economy. During a couple of months, I was reading many reports on AI from numerous organizations and trying to understand this fascinating new technology: all to be able to discuss the technology with all conference members! They even took me to the Nordic Business Forum in Helsinki where Barack Obama was a speaker too!
Privileged with an organizer-badge, I attended as many meetings, discussions and dinners of the conference possible. It was such an incredible experience to be able to discuss among high-level policy makers, top consultants, researchers and ministers. It’s amazing how much you can learn in one day by just listening to these experts. I’m sure they were quite surprised themselves to find a student present there! Hopefully next year I can attend again!
My PIONEER-Story has not ended yet. With the semester in Tallinn coming to and end, I’m already preparing for my departure towards sunny Spain! Next semester, I’ll be working on my Master Thesis in order to complete my studies. The experience I had at the Tallinn Digital Summit has inspired me to continue working on AI in the public sector. Together with the European Commission’s research institute, JRC-Seville, I’ll write my Master-thesis about Artificial Intelligence in governments. So far, the PIONEER-Master has been the best time of my life: the text above is just a small snippet of all the conferences I’ve been, cities I’ve visited and other memorable things I experienced! I can’t wait to discover what is next!
* KU Leuven, University of Münster & TalTech offer a unique Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in ‘Public Sector Innovation and eGovernance’ (PIONEER) that prepares future experts in eGovernance and the digitalization of modern organizations.
