The European AI community is fragmented, and this stands in the way of progress, particularly where methods and techniques from more than one area of AI are required. Leveraging the work done by the CLAIRE, AI4EU and others towards overcoming this fragmentation, the VISION project aims to bring together Europe's AI community and enable synergies, especially across the four European networks of excellence centres in AI (NoEs) under ICT-48-2020.
The VISION consortium has been constructed to maximally leverage existing efforts. Its partners are strongly connected to Europe's AI organisations, initiatives and projects, including CLAIRE (ULEI, CIIRC, DFKI, FBK, Inria, TNO), AI4EU (Thales, UCC), EurAI (UCC), and the DIH network (Intellera, TNO through DIHNET), as well as BDVA and euRobotics (Inria, TNO), ELLIS (CIIRC, Inria) and the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on AI (DFKI, UCC).
As human talent is a limiting factor in AI research and development in Europe, VISION is supporting the four NoEs, and the AI community at large, in attracting, educating, and harnessing talent through a range of coordinated and unified "European AI"-branded outreach, dissemination and promotion activities. VISION also facilitates mechanisms for leveraging Europe's strength in AI, ensuring diversity and inclusion across languages, cultures, and gender.
Closely working with the NoEs, VISION coordinates a Europe-wide approach to educating and up-skilling human resources in AI, including cross-disciplinary AI training initiatives and curricula, integrating ethics, humanities and technical disciplines, while leveraging the expertise brought together in the NoEs.
The overall aim of the VISION project is to reinforce, interconnect and mobilise Europe’s AI community, and to orchestrate and accelerate Europe's transition to a world-leading position in the research, development and deployment of AI technologies.
More specifically, VISION's objectives are to:
• mobilise the European AI community;
• strengthen the synergies between Europe's AI networks of excellence
• foster strong connections between academia and industry
• help develop a European approach to AI skills education
• promote the EU as an attractive environment for AI research and researchers