FCAI activities are well underway
Following the Academy of Finland Flagship status granted in the beginning of 2019, a lot of great things are going on in FCAI: excellent research is taking place and our flagship activities and organization are now getting their shape step by step. This fall, FCAI will advance many of its central functions, including Research Programmes and Highlights, and organize several events.
Tackling the shortcomings of the current AI and demonstrating the impact
The core of FCAI is formed around its goal-driven research programs. They are designed to pursue the ambitious goal of FCAI: to create AI methods and systems that are data efficient, trustworthy, and understandable. The first five programs have started their operations this year and two new programs are now in a ramp-up phase. The new programs, Autonomous AI and AI in Society, will further advance FCAI’s research mission by building fundamental AI solutions to enable diverse applications and tackling questions of societal change brought by AI development. To further concretize the impact AI brings in to various disciplines, FCAI has launched five multidisciplinary FCAI Highlights. The Highlights are run in close collaboration with the Research Programs and they aim to provide concrete AI-based solutions to illustrate the scientific and socio-economic impact of the Research Programs.
We welcome everyone to FCAI Community event on 21 October to get more information about FCAI. You can also approach the respective coordinating professor to learn more about the FCAI Research Programs and Highlights.
Growing community: FCAI Special Interest Groups and AIX Forum
To further serve the multidisciplinary AI ecosystem, we are also developing other mechanisms to engage in FCAI, aimed at people from our host organizations as well as from elsewhere.
During the fall we will introduce FCAI Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to gather people around a common theme of interest, e.g. a specific sub-field of AI or an application area of AI. We have three SIG pilots, FCAI SIG in Language, Speech and Cognition, FCAI SIG in Health, and FCAI SIG in 6G and AI – and more will soon be initiated.
We are also excited to present a new transdisciplinary series, AIX Forum. AIX Forum is designed to function as a meeting place for people applying AI in their specific domain, people working in similar problems in some other domain, and people actively developing new AI tools and methods that can potentially be applied in these domains. The first AIX Forum AI and Traffic was organized in September in collaboration with The Traffic Research Unit (University of Helsinki). Several other AIX seminars will be organized during the fall extending also outside the capital area.
AI Day 2018 brought together over 550 people from academia, industry and public sector to exchange knowledge and ideas on AI. Photo: Matti Ahlgren
Creative collaboration of academia, industry, and public sector
Alongside with top-quality research FCAI aims to create high impact with close collaboration with industry and public sector.
We are very proud of our versatile collaboration with various partners and are keen to strengthen this ecosystem even further. FCAI is actively growing its partner network. Most recently we have started cooperation with Neste and the City of Helsinki in summer 2019. We will also soon launch a streamlined FCAI membership model to better answer the needs and wishes of our members and researchers.
In November FCAI will organize the annual AI Day to bring together researchers, companies, students and the public sector to exchange ideas and to form news contacts in the fast-developing field of AI. The popular event will take place in Otaniemi on November 26. You can read more about AI Day here. The registration will open soon with an early bird registration option, so stay tuned!
In parallel with the close cross-sector collaboration, FCAI focuses on educational efforts to make the impact AI creates in society more understandable and accessible for everyone. One of our biggest goals on this front includes the initiative to provide basic AI literacy for all. This ambitious objective has been most notably advanced by the hugely popular MOOC Elements of AI that has reached almost 200 000 registered participants from more than 100 countries. The course was translated into Finnish in early 2019 and translations into other languages, including German and Swedish, as well as two follow-up courses are in preparation.
How to get involved?
Do you want to contribute to our mission? Please feel free to join our mailing list, to register as FCAI Community Member or come to our events to learn more!
FCAI RESEARCH AND IMPACT IN A NUTSHELL
Contact information at https://fcai.fi/researchers#coord-profs
FCAI Research Programs and coordinating professors
R1: Agile probabilistic AI, Aki Vehtari
R2: Simulator-based inference, Jukka Corander
R3: Next-generation data-efficient deep learning, Harri Valpola and Alexander Ilin
R4: Privacy-preserving and secure AI, Antti Honkela
R5: Interactive AI, Antti Oulasvirta
R6: Autonomous AI, Ville Kyrki
R7: AI in society, Petri Ylikoski
FCAI Highlights and coordinating professors
A: Easy and privacy-preserving modeling tools, Arto Klami
B: AI-driven health, Pekka Marttinen
C: Intelligent service assistant for people in Finland, Tommi Mikkonen
D: Intelligent urban environment, Kai Puolamäki
E: AI-driven design of materials, Patrick Rinke
Major upcoming events
21 October: FCAI Community Event
26 November: AI Day 2019
See more upcoming events at https://fcai.fi/calendar