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Ireland is to have a seat at the table when it comes to European AI research with CeADAR to join a new network of 30 innovation hubs.
Last week, the European Commission’s (EC) High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) published the ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI. As part of this news, the EC said that it will start setting up networks of digital innovation hubs in member states to develop and implement a model for best practices in data sharing among them.
Now, the Centre for Applied Data Analytics Research (CeADAR) has revealed it is the only Irish centre among a network of 30 AI innovations hubs across Europe selected by the EC. Each of these centres will collaborate on various AI projects and will lay the groundwork for future European policies on the technology.
A total of 150 applications were received from 27 different member states as well as three Horizon 2020-associated countries: Serbia, Switzerland and Norway. CeADAR, the technology centre funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, was chosen by a steering committee of independent external experts in both digital innovation hubs and AI.
“This is a huge accolade for CeADAR and we are looking forward to the close collaboration with the other network members across the EU, sharing best practice in the area of AI,” said CeADAR’s director, Edward McDonnell.
“It will be a great opportunity to leverage expertise from across all these countries to ultimately help SMEs and other companies here in Ireland. There will also be an opportunity for the network to provide evidence and have a voice at EC level. We are looking forward to working on pulling this community of 30 hubs more closely together.”
Within Ireland, AI adoption continues to grow, according to recent research by the National Standards Association of Ireland.
In a survey of more than 100 professionals working in large companies and SMEs in IT, business and technology sectors, more than half of the companies plan to use AI in the next five years.
