European AI Office

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The European AI Office will be the centre of AI expertise across the EU. It will play a key role in implementing the AI Act – especially for general-purpose AI – foster the development and use of trustworthy AI, and international cooperation.

The European AI Office will support the development and use of trustworthy AI, while protecting against AI risks. The AI Office was established within the European Commission as the centre of AI expertise and forms the foundation for a single European AI governance system.

The EU aims to ensure that AI is safe and trustworthy. For this purpose, the AI Act is the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on AI worldwide, guaranteeing the health, safety and fundamental rights of people, and providing legal certainty to businesses across the 27 Member States.

The AI Office is uniquely equipped to support the EU’s approach to AI. It will play a key role in implementing the AI Act by supporting the governance bodies in Member States in their tasks. It will enforce the rules for general-purpose AI models. This is underpinned by the powers given to the Commission by the AI Act, including the ability to conduct evaluations of general-purpose AI models, request information and measures from model providers, and apply sanctions. The AI Office also promotes an innovative ecosystem of trustworthy AI, to reap the societal and economic benefits. It will ensure a strategic, coherent and effective European approach on AI at the international level, becoming a global reference point.

For a well-informed decision-making, the AI Office collaborates with Member States and the wider expert community through dedicated fora and expert groups. These combine knowledge from the scientific community, industry, think tanks, civil society, and the open-source ecosystem, ensuring that their views and expertise are taken into account. Grounded in comprehensive insights of the AI ecosystem, including advances in capabilities, deployment and other trends, the AI Office fosters a thorough understanding of potential benefits and risks.

GenAI4EU

In January 2024, the Commission has launched an AI innovation package to support startups and SMEs in developing trustworthy AI that complies with EU values and rules. Both the ‘GenAI4EU’ initiative and the AI office were part of this package. Together they will contribute to the development of novel use cases and emerging applications in Europe’s 14 industrial ecosystems, as well as the public sector. Application areas include robotics, health, biotech, manufacturing, mobility, climate and virtual worlds.

Tasks of the AI Office

Supporting the AI Act and enforcing general-purpose AI rules

The AI Office makes use of its expertise to support the implementation of the AI Act by:

  • Contributing to the coherent application of the AI Act across the Member States, including the set-up of advisory bodies at EU level, facilitating support and information exchange
  • Developing tools, methodologies and benchmarks for evaluating capabilities and reach of general-purpose AI models, and classifying models with systemic risks
  • Drawing up state-of-the-art codes of practice to detail out rules, in cooperation with leading AI developers, the scientific community and other experts
  • Investigating possible infringements of rules, including evaluations to assess model capabilities, and requesting providers to take corrective action
  • Preparing guidance and guidelines, implementing and delegated acts, and other tools to support effective implementation of the AI Act and monitor compliance with the regulation

Strengthening the development and use of trustworthy AI

The Commission aims to foster trustworthy AI across the internal market. The AI Office, in collaboration with relevant public and private actors and the startup community, contributes to this by:

  • Advancing actions and policies to reap the societal and economic benefits of AI across the EU
  • Providing advice on best practices and enabling ready-access to AI sandboxes, real-world testing and other European support structures for AI uptake
  • Encouraging innovative ecosystems of trustworthy AI to enhance the EU’s competitiveness and economic growth
  • Aiding the Commission in leveraging the use of transformative AI tools and reinforcing AI literacy

Fostering international cooperation

At international level, the AI Office contributes to a strategic, coherent, and effective EU approach, by:

  • Promoting the EU’s approach to trustworthy AI, including collaboration with similar institutions worldwide
  • Fostering international cooperation and governance on AI, with the aim of contributing to a global approach to AI
  • Supporting the development and implementation of international agreements on AI, including the support of Member States

To effectively carry out all tasks based on evidence and foresight, the AI Office continuously monitors the AI ecosystem, technological and market developments, but also the emergence of systemic risks and any other relevant trends.

Cooperation with institutions, experts and stakeholders

Collaboration with a diverse range of institutions, experts and stakeholders is essential for the work of the AI Office.

At an institutional level, the AI Office works closely with the European Artificial Intelligence Board formed by Member State representatives and the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT) of the Commission.

The Scientific Panel of independent experts ensures a strong link with the scientific community. Further technical expertise is gathered in an Advisory Forum, representing a balanced selection of stakeholders, including industry, startups and SMEs, academia, think tanks and civil society. The AI Office may also partner up with individual experts and organisations. It will also create fora for cooperation of providers of AI models and systems, including general-purpose AI, and similarly for the open-source community, to share best practices and contribute to the development of codes of conduct and codes of practice.

The AI Office will also oversee the AI Pact, which allows businesses to engage with the Commission and other stakeholders such as sharing best practices and joining activities. This engagement will start before the AI Act becomes applicable and will allow businesses to plan ahead and prepare for the implementation of the AI Act. All this will be part of the European AI Alliance, a Commission initiative, to establish an open policy dialogue on AI.

Further initiatives to foster trustworthy AI development and uptake within the EU are mapped on the Coordinated Plan on AI.

Job opportunities and collaboration

The AI Office is recruiting talents with a variety of backgrounds for policy, technical and legal work and administrative assistance. Find more information about the vacancies in the announcement. The deadline for expression of interest is 27 March 2024 at 12:00 CET. You can express your interest via the respective application form for technology specialists and administrative assistants.

Check the calls for expression of interest on EPSO website:

External experts and stakeholders will also have the chance to join dedicated fora, and to support the work of the AI Office, through a separate call for expression of interest.

You can also sign up to receive updates from the AI Office.

You can get in touch with the European AI Office through the following contact details: CNECT-AIOFFICE@ec.europa.eu for general inquiries and CNECT-AIOFFICE-RECRUITMENT@ec.europa.eu for inquiries related to job opportunities.

 

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-office

Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence

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The Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence aims to accelerate investment in AI, implement AI strategies and programmes and align AI policy to prevent fragmentation within Europe.

The Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was published in 2018. It is a joint commitment between the Commission, EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland to maximise Europe’s potential to compete globally. The initial Plan defined actions and funding instruments for the uptake and development of AI across sectors. In parallel, Member States were encouraged to develop their own national strategies.

The plan’s latest update was published in 2021. It shows Europe’s commitment to creating global leadership in trustworthy AI. The 2021 plan is also closely aligned with the Commission’s digital and green priorities, and Europe’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Coordinated Plan of 2021 aims to turn strategy into action by prompting to:

  • accelerate investments in AI technologies to drive resilient economic and social recovery, aided by the uptake of new digital solutions
  • fully and promptly implement AI strategies and programs to ensure that the EU maximizes the advantages of being an early adopter.
  • align AI policy to remove fragmentation and address global challenges.

To achieve this, the updated plan establishes four key sets of policy objectives, supported by concrete actions. It also indicates possible funding mechanism, and establishes a timeline to:

The 2024 Communication on boosting startups and innovation in trustworthy AI builds on both the 2018 and 2021 coordinated action plans on AI. This shows a policy shift to Generative AI in response to the latest technological developments. Similarly, the adopted version of the AI act also includes provisions on Generative AI. These rules expand on the Commission’s original proposal from 2021, which aimed to build a trustworthy AI ecosystem for the present and future.

The 2024 Communication proposes:

  • a strategic investment framework to leverage the EU’s assets – such as supercomputing infrastructure – to foster an innovative European AI ecosystem.
  • collaboration between startups, innovators, and industrial users, aiming to attract investments to the EU and provide access to key AI components like data, computing power, algorithms, and talent.
  • actions and investments to support startups and industries in Europe to become global leaders in trustworthy advanced AI models, systems, and applications.
  • a package of measures (Under GenAI4EU) to support European startups and SMEs in developing trustworthy AI that adheres to EU values and regulations, including respecting privacy and data protection rules.

Investment

The Commission proposed a minimum of €1 billion annual investment in AI from Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes which was achieved for the years of 2021 and 2022 EU funding for AI aims to draw and consolidate investments, fostering collaboration among Member States maximises its impact.

The Recovery and Resilience Facility provides an unprecedented opportunity to modernise and invest in AI. Through this the EU can become a global leader in the development and uptake of human-centric, trustworthy, secure and sustainable AI technologies. By September 2023, it had already invested 4.4 billion Euros into AI. More information can be found in the Report Mapping EU level funding instruments to Digital Decade targets.

The actions outlined in the plans have been actively implemented by both the Commission and Member States and progress was made in all chapters. Notably, the EU is fostering critical computing capacity through several successful actions:

  1. The Chips Act establishes a legislative foundation to enhance the semiconductor industry’s resilience.
  2. The Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) accelerates semiconductor technologies in Europe.
  3. The EuroHPC JU develops advanced computing capabilities accessible to European SMEs.
  4. The Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) support AI technology development for Edge AI Components and Systems.
  5. The Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) promote collaboration among Member States in cutting-edge microelectronics and communication projects.

Together, these initiatives create a synergistic ecosystem for advancing microelectronics and computing capacity in Europe. The Commission is also monitoring and assessing the progress of these actions and will – in collaboration with Member States – report on the monitoring during 2024.

Background

Member States and the Commission have collaborated closely and met regularly to work on the actions under the different plans. They progressed in all areas of the plan including by proposing a data strategy, supporting small and medium-sized enterprises and creating conditions for excellence in research and development and uptake of AI in Europe.

Overall, the first two years of implementation confirmed that joint actions and structured cooperation between Member States and the Commission are key to the EU’s global competitiveness and leadership in AI development and uptake. Most Member States have adopted national AI strategies and started to implement them. Investments in AI have increased, and the EU was able to mobilise critical resources to support these processes.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/plan-ai

Sectorial AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities under the Digital Europe Programme

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To make the EU the place where AI excellence thrives from the lab to the market, the European Union is setting up world-class Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) for AI.

Together with Member States, the Commission is co-funding the TEFs to support AI developers to bring trustworthy AI to the market more efficiently, and facilitate its uptake in Europe. TEFs are specialised large-scale reference sites open to all technology providers across Europe to test and experiment at scale state-of-the art AI solutions, including both soft-and hardware products and services, e.g. robots, in real-world environments.

These large-scale reference testing and experimentation facilities will offer a combination of physical and virtual facilities, in which technology providers can get support to test their latest AI-based soft-/hardware technologies in real-world environments. This will include support for full integration, testing and experimentation of latest AI-based technologies to solve issues/improve solutions in a given application sector, including validation and demonstration.

TEFs can also contribute to the implementation of the Artificial Intelligence Act by supporting regulatory sandboxes in cooperation with competent national authorities for supervised testing and experimentation.

TEFs will be an important part of building the AI ecosystem of excellence and trust to support Europe’s strategic leadership in AI.

The Digital Europe Programme 2023-2024 is proposing a Coordination and Support action (CSA), to apply a cross-sector perspective to all existing sectorial Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs). the action was launched on the 25 April. For more on the information session see our event report page.

TEF Projects

The selected TEFs projects started on January 1st 2023. They focus on the following high-impact sectors:

  • Agri-Food: project “agrifoodTEF”
  • Healthcare: project “TEF-Health”
  • Manufacturing: project “AI-MATTERS”
  • Smart Cities & Communities: project “Citcom.AI”

Co-funding between the European Commission (through the Digital Europe Programme) and the Member States will support the TEFs for five years with budgets between EUR 40-60 million per project. On 27 June,  the European Commission along with Member States and 128 partners from research, industry, and public organisations launched their investment in the four projects.

Smart cities:

Artificial Intelligence Testing and Experimentation Facilities for Smart Cities & Communities: Citcom.AI

The new EU-wide network of permanent testing and experimentation facility (TEF) for smart cities and communities will help accelerate the development of trustworthy AI in Europe by giving companies access to test and try out AI-based products in real-world conditions.

By further developing and strengthening existing infrastructures and expertise, CitCom.ai provides reality lab-oriented conditions in test and experimental facilities, relevant for AI and robotics solutions targeting sustainable development of cities and communities. In doing so, Citcom.ai helps European cities and communities in the transition towards a greener and more digital Europe and in maintaining and developing their resilience and competitiveness.

CitCom.ai focuses on three overarching themes:

  • POWER targets changing energy systems and reducing energy consumption.
  • MOVE targets more efficient and greener transportation linked to logistics and mobility.
  • CONNECT serves citizens through local infrastructures and cross-sector services.

These areas support AI and robot-based innovations that promote solutions organised according to the three overarching themes for use cases such as:

  • POWER:  energy such as local district heating load forecasts; environmental solutions such as adaptive street lighting; cybersecurity, ethics & edge learn.
  • MOVE: urban machine learning algorithms such as predicting pedestrian flow, smart intersection such identifying road safety concerns, electro-mobility and autonomous driving.
  • CONNECT: pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and noise management, urban development management, water and water-waste management, integrated facility management, delivery management by drones and tourism management.

Citcom.AI is organised as three “super nodes” Nordic, Central and South with satellites and sub-nodes located across 11 countries in the European Union: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Itay. The consortium of 36 partners is coordinated by the Technical University of Denmark. Co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, the 5-year project started in January with an overall budget of €40 million and is expected to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

Relevant Link:

Join us in building the European way of Digital Transformation for 300 million Europeans | Living in EU (living-in.eu)

TEF-Health:

Artificial Intelligence Testing and Experimentation Facilities for Health AI and Robotics: TEF-Health

The EU project TEF-Health is a network of real testing facilities, such as hospital platforms, both physical infrastructures and data and compute infrastructures, living labs, etc., and laboratory testing facilities that will offer to innovators to carry out tests and experiments of their AI and robotics solutions  in large-scale and sustainable real or realistic environments. The consortium is implementing evaluation activities that facilitate market access for trustworthy intelligent technologies, particularly by considering new regulatory requirements (certification, standardization, code of conduct, etc.). TEF- Health will ensure easy access to these evaluation resources (link with digital innovation hubs, etc.).

In doing so, TEF-Health contributes to increasing effectiveness, resilience, sustainability of EU health and care systems; reduce healthcare delivery inequalities in EU; and ensure compliance with legal, ethical, quality and interoperability standards.

A key component of an agile certification process are regulatory sandboxes where all relevant stakeholders can work together to create innovative testing and validation tools for trustworthy AI in medical devices for specific use-cases.

The use-cases are defined in four domains: 1) Neurotec, 2) Cancer, 3) CardioVascular and 4) Intensive Care.

The consortium comprises seven nodes in Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal, Slovakia, Italy, two associated nodes in Finland and Czechia and the pan-EU structures EBRAINS AISBL, EITHealth and EHDS2 Pilot initiative. The consortium of 51 partners is coordinated by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, the 5-year project started in January 2023 with an overall budget of €60 million and is expected to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

Relevant links:

European Cancer Imaging Initiative | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)

A cancer plan for Europe (europa.eu)

European Health Data Space (europa.eu)

European data strategy (europa.eu)

Agri-food:

Artificial Intelligence Testing and Experimentation Facilities for Agrifood Innovation: AgrifoodTEF

Built as a network of physical and digital facilities across Europe, the EU project agrifoodTEF provides services that help assess and validate third party AI and Robotics solutions in real-world conditions aiming to foster sustainable and efficient food production. AgrifoodTEF offers validation tools to innovators so they can develop their ideas into market products and services.

There are five impact sectors: arable farming (performance enhancement of autonomous driving vehicles), tree corps (optimisation of natural resources and inputs for Mediterranean crops), horticulture (finding the right nutrient balance as well as crop and yield quality), livestock farming (improvement of  sustainability in cow, pig and paltry farming) and food processing (traceability of production and supply chains).

The use cases include quality crops, agro-machinery, AI conformity assessment, agro ecology in controlled environments, co-creation in agrifood production, HPC for agrifood, AI for arable and farmland machinery, and new frontiers for sustainable farming in the North.

AgrifoodTEF is organised in national nodes (Italy, Germany and France) and satellite nodes (Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Austria). The consortium of 29 partners is coordinated by Fondazione Bruno Kessler. Co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, the 5-year project started in January 2023 with an overall budget of €60 million and is expected to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

Relevant links:

Fark to Fork Strategy

Manufacturing:

Artificial Intelligence Testing and Experimentation Facilities for Manufacturing Innovation: AI-Matters

The AI-MATTERS project is building a network of physical and digital facilities across Europe where innovators can validate their solutions under real-life conditions. The EU-project contributes to increasing the resilience and the flexibility of the European manufacturing sector through the deployment of the latest developments in AI, robotics, smart and autonomous systems.

AI-MATTERS will provide an extensive catalogue of services to innovators in the following key topics: factory-level optimization, human-robot interaction, circular economy and adoption of emerging AI enabling technologies. All consortium members bring their expertise in manufacturing for different sectors such as automotive, space and mobility, textile, recycling, etc.

The AI-Matters network will provide testing and experimentation facilities from companies across Europe at eight locations in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the Czech Republic. The consortium of 25 partners is coordinated by CEA-List. Co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme, the 5-year project started in January 2023 with an overall budget of €60 million and is expected to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/activities/testing-and-experimentation-facilities#tab_1

Commission launches AI innovation package to support Artificial Intelligence startups and SMEs

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The Commission has launched this week a package of measures to support European startups and SMEs in the development of trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) that respects EU values and rules.

This follows the political agreement reached in December 2023 on the EU AI Act – the world’s first comprehensive law on Artificial Intelligence – which will support the development, deployment and take-up of trustworthy AI in the EU.

In her 2023 State of the Union address, President von der Leyen announced a new initiative to make Europe’s supercomputers available to innovative European AI startups to train their trustworthy AI models. As a first step, the Commission launched in November 2023 the Large AI Grand Challenge, a prize giving AI startups financial support and supercomputing access. This package puts that commitment into practice through a broad range of measures to support AI startups and innovation, including a proposal to provide privileged access to supercomputers to AI startups and the broader innovation community.

Read more about:

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-launches-ai-innovation-package-support-artificial-intelligence-startups-and-smes