Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AI4EUROPE (AN AI ON-DEMAND PLATFORM TO SUPPORT RESEARCH EXCELLENCE IN EUROPE)
Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-06-30
OBJECTIVES
AI4Europe's main objective is to support and facilitate a sustainable digital platform and experimentation environment through the creation of open research channels and mechanisms that foster the European AI research ecosystem, academic and industrial, and that maximises the academic, social, and industrial impact while it seamlessly integrates other projects, platforms, and solutions.
The specific objectives are to:
1. Ensure platform support for the research community fostering a cooperative and transparent governance model open to contributions from all stakeholders to address their needs.
2. Design and execute a sustainability plan that supports and ensures the long-term viability of technical, financial, and legal features of the AIOD platform.
3. Integrate hardware resource provisioning into the platform to provide underlying computational resources, establishing it as a place to carry out and disseminate AI research.
4. Advance the AIOD platform as an open distributed tool extendable by the community with new services and tools, and ensure interoperability with other strategic EU platforms.
5. Enhance the accessibility and usability of the excellence science of Europe’s AI research community, and to ensure standard, secure, and executable reusable research assets.
6. Embed mechanisms to facilitate the development and use of Trustworthy AI aligned with policy and regulatory developments in the European Union.
7. Foster the uptake of AI in research communities, industry, and society at large by mobilizing and enriching efforts in AI education, upskilling and reskilling.
8. Enhance access, sharing, training and mobility for all European nations, ecosystems, and communities, with special attention on young AI scholars, facilitating cooperation and matchmaking.
9. Ensure cooperation with the AI, Data and Robotics PPP and other related Digital Europe initiatives, to support them and to maximise the impact of the AIOD platform.
IMPACTS
#1 - Scientific
• An AI platform to provide researchers with a comprehensive, sovereign, and sustainable infrastructure following European values.
• Mitigate many IPR challenges that restrict the sharing of AI, datasets, and solutions.
• An open governance model owned by the community, driven by their needs, based on contribution and fair principles.
#2 - Economic/Technological
• An EU-wide platform for AI researchers to translate research into innovation.
• By making online educational resources accessible, AI4Europe will promote European values to create a seal of quality.
• A sustainable platform that ensures its technical, legal, and financial continuation after the finalisation of the project.
• Easy-to-use set of services used by all researcher institutions on AI.
• Ease to access heterogeneous hardware.
#3 – Societal
• Increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centered approach to technology development, aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability.
• Explicit and more transparent connection of the EU’s AI ecosystem with policy priorities.
AI4Europe's main objective is to support and facilitate a sustainable digital platform and experimentation environment through the creation of open research channels and mechanisms that foster the European AI research ecosystem, academic and industrial, and that maximises the academic, social, and industrial impact while it seamlessly integrates other projects, platforms, and solutions.
The specific objectives are to:
1. Ensure platform support for the research community fostering a cooperative and transparent governance model open to contributions from all stakeholders to address their needs.
2. Design and execute a sustainability plan that supports and ensures the long-term viability of technical, financial, and legal features of the AIOD platform.
3. Integrate hardware resource provisioning into the platform to provide underlying computational resources, establishing it as a place to carry out and disseminate AI research.
4. Advance the AIOD platform as an open distributed tool extendable by the community with new services and tools, and ensure interoperability with other strategic EU platforms.
5. Enhance the accessibility and usability of the excellence science of Europe’s AI research community, and to ensure standard, secure, and executable reusable research assets.
6. Embed mechanisms to facilitate the development and use of Trustworthy AI aligned with policy and regulatory developments in the European Union.
7. Foster the uptake of AI in research communities, industry, and society at large by mobilizing and enriching efforts in AI education, upskilling and reskilling.
8. Enhance access, sharing, training and mobility for all European nations, ecosystems, and communities, with special attention on young AI scholars, facilitating cooperation and matchmaking.
9. Ensure cooperation with the AI, Data and Robotics PPP and other related Digital Europe initiatives, to support them and to maximise the impact of the AIOD platform.
IMPACTS
#1 - Scientific
• An AI platform to provide researchers with a comprehensive, sovereign, and sustainable infrastructure following European values.
• Mitigate many IPR challenges that restrict the sharing of AI, datasets, and solutions.
• An open governance model owned by the community, driven by their needs, based on contribution and fair principles.
#2 - Economic/Technological
• An EU-wide platform for AI researchers to translate research into innovation.
• By making online educational resources accessible, AI4Europe will promote European values to create a seal of quality.
• A sustainable platform that ensures its technical, legal, and financial continuation after the finalisation of the project.
• Easy-to-use set of services used by all researcher institutions on AI.
• Ease to access heterogeneous hardware.
#3 – Societal
• Increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centered approach to technology development, aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability.
• Explicit and more transparent connection of the EU’s AI ecosystem with policy priorities.
The key activities undertaken in RP1 in the technical Work packages (3-4-5) are as follows:
WP3
• Decentralized AI-on-demand core architecture design - corresponding deliverable submitted
• Software bundle implementation (implemented in 3 testing environments) and support - corresponding deliverable submitted
• Maintenance of AI-on-demand services and resources
• Refinement and stabilization of the Metadata model informing the AIoD Catalogue and the APIs depending on it
WP4
• Establishment of development processes for new tool integration
• Background work on collaboration tools for research collaboration, reproducibility, and responsible AI
• New experimentation tools to support general cognitive architectures - AI Playground, Jupyter-Connect Feature, Protobuf Parser, and Improved Tutorials
• AIoD portal design developments, work with user stories and user feedback with focus on AIoD portal and client APIs
• Developing search tools for finding relevant AI assets
• Developing recommendation tools for being recommended relevant AI assets
WP5
• Representation of physical resources as metadata so that they can be a) published in a catalogue; b) other assets (e.g. containers, datasets, etc.) can be deployed on them, taking into account particular aspects related to whether the resource is on the cloud, the edge, or it is HPC, for instance
• Selection of ontology defining computer resources, namely GLUE, and the definition of some properties not included in it but that are necessary to describe the physical resources managed in WP5
• Other contributions towards the refinement of the architecture design of the AIoD platform, especially regarding the definition of the scope and functionalities of AIoD nodes and their storage capabilities
WP3
• Decentralized AI-on-demand core architecture design - corresponding deliverable submitted
• Software bundle implementation (implemented in 3 testing environments) and support - corresponding deliverable submitted
• Maintenance of AI-on-demand services and resources
• Refinement and stabilization of the Metadata model informing the AIoD Catalogue and the APIs depending on it
WP4
• Establishment of development processes for new tool integration
• Background work on collaboration tools for research collaboration, reproducibility, and responsible AI
• New experimentation tools to support general cognitive architectures - AI Playground, Jupyter-Connect Feature, Protobuf Parser, and Improved Tutorials
• AIoD portal design developments, work with user stories and user feedback with focus on AIoD portal and client APIs
• Developing search tools for finding relevant AI assets
• Developing recommendation tools for being recommended relevant AI assets
WP5
• Representation of physical resources as metadata so that they can be a) published in a catalogue; b) other assets (e.g. containers, datasets, etc.) can be deployed on them, taking into account particular aspects related to whether the resource is on the cloud, the edge, or it is HPC, for instance
• Selection of ontology defining computer resources, namely GLUE, and the definition of some properties not included in it but that are necessary to describe the physical resources managed in WP5
• Other contributions towards the refinement of the architecture design of the AIoD platform, especially regarding the definition of the scope and functionalities of AIoD nodes and their storage capabilities
ALL expected results
1. Governance supported by stakeholders (Milestone 2 document published in RP1)
2. Platform self-sustainable through a legal entity that will ensure technical, legal, and financial continuation D2.1
3. Integration of plugin-like methods to deploy on heterogeneous hardware (Edge, 5G, HPC, Cloud) D5.1 D5.2
4. A toolkit with specific tools on AI and a set of repositories with contributions from researchers D3.3 D7.1
5. Dynamic user interfaces easing engagement with content D4.2 D2.2
6. Several repositories EU distributed beyond partner of consortium D3.1
7. Strategy plan and engaged academic community and PhD community D6.2
8. Catalogue of success stories on multiple market domains D7.2
9. Tools that enable Trustworthy AI research by design and validation of AI tools and datasets D4.2
1. Governance supported by stakeholders (Milestone 2 document published in RP1)
2. Platform self-sustainable through a legal entity that will ensure technical, legal, and financial continuation D2.1
3. Integration of plugin-like methods to deploy on heterogeneous hardware (Edge, 5G, HPC, Cloud) D5.1 D5.2
4. A toolkit with specific tools on AI and a set of repositories with contributions from researchers D3.3 D7.1
5. Dynamic user interfaces easing engagement with content D4.2 D2.2
6. Several repositories EU distributed beyond partner of consortium D3.1
7. Strategy plan and engaged academic community and PhD community D6.2
8. Catalogue of success stories on multiple market domains D7.2
9. Tools that enable Trustworthy AI research by design and validation of AI tools and datasets D4.2